passing through southwestern Russia was a bad omen for negotiations to prevent a major war with Ukraine. This is the view expressed by The Guardian.
On board was the Buk-M1, a medium-range anti-aircraft missile system that became famous in 2014 after a missile that shot down a Malaysian airliner and killed all 298 people. If Russia goes to war with Ukraine, it will still have to take a number of steps: install fuel pipelines, open field hospitals and deploy air defense systems, such as Buk, to protect its heavy weapons and front-line soldiers. , according to British authors.
Although Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin negotiated an end to the crisis, Russia was gradually approaching its neighbors' readiness to launch a large-scale ground invasion, according to the authors of the publication. “These data allow us to conclude that, despite negotiations between Biden and Putin, the concentration of Russian troops in areas bordering Ukraine-controlled territory continues,” wrote the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), an online research group that used social media, trained. plans and other data that reveal details of the Russian border army.
Putin may still choose not to launch an invasion because he leaves troops at the front as a lever for action. But Russian and Western analysts predict that this build-up of an army – the second this year – heralds a series of future crises in Ukraine as Putin tries to reverse his trajectory to the West.
“Even if Putin gets something … either from the West, serious negotiations or a discussion about guarantees – will that be enough for Putin?” Said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the analytical company R. Politik. “We are witnessing a new geopolitical adventurism emerging from Russia.”
Despite talks between Putin and Biden, the crisis is deepening.
On Thursday, the Russian FSB announced that it had detained a Ukrainian vessel in the Sea of Azov near Crimea for failing to comply with orders. A day later, Russia closed almost 70% of the Sea of Azov. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia and the United States could seek to repeat the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And Putin said the situation in eastern Ukraine “looked like genocide” at a recent meeting, raising fears he might seek an excuse to bring his troops to the country.
Due to the military threat, the Russian Foreign Ministry published a list of demands on Friday to end the crisis. The main one was that NATO “officially distanced itself from the decision of the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008 that” Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. “
Putin has spent the last two decades trying to fight NATO enlargement, but Ukraine's possible entry into the military alliance has always provoked deeper emotions, the authors of the publication believe.
The US tried to persuade Russia that Ukraine would not join the alliance in the foreseeable future, but Moscow demanded a more formal statement on Friday. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said there was no reason to start. “NATO's relations with Ukraine will be decided by 30 NATO allies and Ukraine – no one else,” he told a news conference with new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Support for NATO membership has increased significantly in Ukraine in recent years, and for countries on NATO's eastern flank, “Russia's permission to dictate the Alliance's policy towards Ukraine is seen as the first step on the slope towards recognizing Russia's sphere of influence.”
“History shows that promises of neutrality by Ukraine or any other country in the region do not diminish Putin's appetite; rather, they feed them, “wrote Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in an article published by Foreign Affairs on Friday. “The best way to respond to such ultimatums is to ignore them altogether.”
There are doubts as to whether Russia really wants to conclude an agreement. Analysts note that despite Moscow building its forces for several months, Russian diplomats have not prepared any official documents or formulated the country's demands until last week. And the idea of gathering nearly 100,000 troops in close proximity to Ukraine's borders (the United States said Russia could increase that number to 175,000 by the end of January), just because of negotiations with Biden, seemed useless to Western observers.
At the end, the authors of the article come to this conclusion: “The clock is ticking. Putin may back off, but it would be embarrassing to do so without a solid victory. And Russia's demands seem unfeasible to the West: “Putin thinks that if Biden wants to, he can move mountains, he can persuade allies and persuade Kiev [to make concessions],” Stanovaya said. “This problem could make Putin demand the impossible and bet everything will end in war.”