In only few
months a full scale panic about Russia invading Ukraine has been sold to the
Western media. There will be all kinds of threatening gestures and special military operations, but Russia will
not occupy Ukraine.
What does Putin want?
A security framework in Europe favorable to Russia based on pre-1997 conditions, in which NATO agrees to cease all expansion and Ukraine remains well disposed to Moscow.
1- Putin wants respect and treatment as a peer. He wants to expand the buffer between NATO and the European Union through Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. He is applying intimidation to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accommodate Russian demands to cease its western impulses to join NATO that almost certainly never will occur.Read more: The 11 reasons why America supports Israel
2- Moscow is only a six-hour drive up highway from Ukraine’s northern border. NATO has been alert enough to Russian sensitivity on this topic not to invite Ukraine to join, but the prospect does weigh heavily on Putin’s mind. So Putin wants a written promise that Ukraine will never join the Western alliance. NATO countries would never allow it anyway, precisely because there is some risk that it could drag them into a war with Russia, but Biden is unwilling to put it in writing.
3- Putin’s current popularity within his nation is high by Western standards, but low compared with earlier in his tenure. Any prolonged war in Ukraine could foster the same kind of domestic backlash resulting from Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s, because Russians don’t like losing their sons to ill-conceived military adventures any more than Americans do.
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4- On the other hand, as veterans of the Cold War they both understand that Russia and the United States must never do anything that risks bringing them into a direct military conflict.
5- Putin fully recognizes the potential calamity of an occupation. Russia could face an insurgency as deadly as Afghanistan’s, with possibly 30,000 or more Russian casualties and devastating negative effects to his standing at home. Further, an attack would almost certainly provoke more defense spending by NATO and increased deployment of forces to this region, disrupting his plans for expanding his buffer.
6- At last, Putin knows that the costs to Russia and to him personally will be high and possibly unaffordable. Sanctions and further isolation will hurt.
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