OPINION — Will past weeks of multi-national propaganda focused on military activity along the Ukraine/Russia border lead to a major conflict? Or is all this just huffing and puffing to set the stage for what comes next? Today’s video phone call between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin may provide some guidance, if not real answers.
The U.S. took the unusual step last Friday of releasing to The Washington Post what the newspaper described as “an unclassified U.S. intelligence document” that disclosed what would normally have been classified information about current and potential future deployments of Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) near the Ukraine border that evidenced “planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year.”
The so-called intelligence document, that included graphics showing deployed Russian BTG forces, provided backup details to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s December 1, statement after the NATO foreign ministers meeting that, “In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up planning for potential military action in Ukraine, including positioning tens of thousands of additional combat forces near the Ukrainian border.”
Blinken also said the Russian plans “include efforts to destabilize Ukraine from within,” citing “a massive spike – more than tenfold – in social media activity pushing anti-Ukrainian propaganda.”
However, the U.S. intelligence disclosure followed an earlier similar provocation from the Russian military. It was an announcement directed to Blinken on Russia’s state TV show 60 Minutes back on November 22.
On that show, Igor Korotchenko, a member of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Public Council said of the Russian military buildup, “If your satellites are seeing this that means it is being shown to you. Any American military analyst at the Pentagon can tell you that. You don’t know—and won’t know—Russia’s real plans and goals.”
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As Julia Davis described it at the time in The Daily Beast, Korotchenko’s public statement could have been “as an intentional signal, designed to elicit a reaction,” and last Friday’s unclassified intelligence release to The Washington Post could have been the U.S.’ answer.
Pro-Russian propaganda against Ukraine has also emphasized “the narrative that Ukrainian leaders had been installed by the West, harbored a hatred for the ‘Russian world,’ and were acting against the interests of the Ukrainian people,” a Biden administration official told The Post.
In fact, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky started his campaign last February to reduce the influence of a handful of tycoons who have controlled Ukraine in the past by sanctioning Viktor Medvedchuki, a businessman and politician who was and remains co-chairman of Ukraine’s largest pro-Russian political party.
The U.S. had placed financial sanctions on Medvedchuk back in 2014, when the Russians invaded the Crimea, calling him one of the Ukrainian officials who used “their resources or influence to support or act on behalf of senior Russian government officials.”
The 67-year-old Medvedchuk also happens to be a long-time, personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.
In May 2021, a judge ordered Medvedchuk put under house arrest based on charges of treason and looting natural resources by allegedly using coal and oil profits to help finance Ukraine pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine courts have extended his house arrest through today, December 7.
In the wake of the Ukraine legal moves against Medvedchuk, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has complained publicly about “repressive actions against the media, against citizens of Ukraine, against leading politicians.”
Meanwhile, in a July 2021 article, Putin appealed to Ukrainians by claiming that “Ukrainians and Russians are a single people” by providing his own version of the two countries’ shared history.
Putin also wrote that Ukraine was being run by “Western authors of the anti-Russia project,” which has “set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain.”
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Anders Aslund, a specialist on Ukraine with the Atlantic Council, undercut Putin’s Ukraine/Russian single people notion by describing the Russian President’s description of their shared history as “a master class in disinformation – and one step short of a declaration of war.”
Last Tuesday, Tass reported the head of the Ukraine breakaway self-proclaimed Donesk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, said he may ask for Russian assistance while claiming that it is Ukraine that “is increasingly engaging external forces.”
Medvedchuk said in an interview last Friday, that his Opposition Platform For Life party believes that Ukrainians must restore the state as a legal one in the first place; ensure the implementation of legal rights, responsibilities and freedom; and build a pragmatic economy, and restore relations with the Russian Federation.
On Sunday, Aslund tweeted about the role the Russian leader’s own domestic problems might be playing. Aslund wrote, “Putin is looking increasingly desperate. He needs external tension to justify his greater domestic repression & is anxious to utilize his military prowess before his stagnant economy reduces it. Declining powers are dangerous & destabilizing aspiring to ‘a small victorious war.’”
While Zelensky’s own Servant of the People party came into power overwhelmingly in July 2019, a January 26, 2021 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) showed at that time that he would garner just 11.2 percent of the vote. The same January 2021 KIIS poll showed in a hypothetical parliamentary election, the Medvedchuk-led Opposition Platform–For Life party would win more parliamentary seats with 20.7 percent of the vote.
It could well be that Putin is just waiting for Medvedchuk to gain additional political support among Ukrainian pro-Russian elements but is also urging them on by showing that Moscow is ready militarily to come to their assistance.
Meanwhile, Zelensky has gained political and military support from an odd source: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has kept an open relationship with Putin, but harmed relations with the U.S. and NATO by purchasing Russian S-400 anti-air weapons. Presidents Zelensky and Erdogan have met at least five times since the former took office in 2019, more than any other foreign leader.
In 2019, Ukraine purchased six Bayraktar TB2 type unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UAV) and three ground control stations from Turkey. The Bayraktar is one of the best armed drones on the market, having been battle-tested in conflicts in Syria and Libya. Last January, President Erdogan claimed, “Turkish armed drones are changing the methods of war.”
The drone is produced by a company owned by the three Bayraktar brothers. Selcuk Bayraktar, considered the engineering brains behind the drones, is married to Erdogan’s youngest daughter
Ukraine bought more than 50 of the Bayraktar TB2 drones and in September, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country plans to build a factory to produce the drones in cooperation with the Turkish drone maker, Baykar.
On October 26, 2021, the Ukrainian military posted on Facebook a video that it said showed a Bayraktar T2B destroying a Russian-made howitzer in the Ukraine separatist-controlled area.
The Ukraine military said the advanced drone was used “for the first time” to suppress artillery fire that killed a Ukrainian soldier and wounded another. After the strike, the shelling of Ukrainian positions stopped.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov last Friday, said the Bayraktar drone had “one tidy shot” at a separatist gun system, and since then enemy soldiers are afraid of doing such duty as they understand “how this could end.”
In a Friday phone call with Erdogan, Putin said that Ukrainian forces are carrying out “provocative activity” in using Turkish-made Bayraktar drones in the conflict zone, according to a Kremlin statement.
An Erdogan offer to serve as a negotiator between Moscow and Kyiv was turned down by the Russians.
The issue facing the Biden administration has been, how far does the U.S. go in providing military assistance to Ukraine?
Since 2014, the United States has given more than $2.5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, mainly though the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and Foreign Military Financing, the Congressional Research Service reported on October 5. For fiscal 2022, the Biden administration is seeking another $115 million for the foreign military sales program.
The Trump administration provided command and control, counter-artillery radars, counter-unmanned aerial systems, secure communications gear and electronic warfare equipment, as well as training.
In 2018 and 2019, the U.S. sold 360 Javelin portable antitank missiles, along with launchers, although they were to be stored away from the front lines. Last September, the Biden administration approved a new $60 million package for Ukraine for additional Javelin systems as well as armed Mark VI patrol boats to protect the Ukraine Black Sea coastline. The Javelins could be used “defensively,” but it is unclear whether they ever have been used in a fight.
With so many moving parts, it is clear today’s Biden-Putin talks will not solve the many elements of the Ukraine situation. Reducing the propaganda threats and opening up a Washington-Moscow-Kyiv Ukraine hotline to prevent a mistaken outbreak of fighting would be success enough for now.
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