The Russia invasion of Ukraine is the biggest military mobilization in Europe since World War II, why did Russia invade Ukraine Granddad, asked my 11-year-old grandson, here is my explanation as to how it came about, and what’s at stake for Russia, the U.S. Canada and NATO.
It felt like a scene from the Cold War, a perilous episode from a bygone era. An unpredictable Russian leader was amassing troops and tanks on a neighbor’s border. There was fear of a bloody East-West conflagration.
Then the Cold War turned hot: Vladimir V. Putin’s ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine. The repercussions were immediate, and far-reaching.
Now, following the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, the largest mobilization of forces Europe has seen since 1945 is underway. So far, Moscow has been denied the swift victory it anticipated, and has failed to capture major cities across the country, including Kyiv, the capital. It has been weighed down by an ill-prepared military and has faced tenacious resistance from Ukrainian soldiers and civilian resistance fighters. Still, Russia has superior military might, and Mr. Putin has indicated that he likely won’t back down from his goal of capturing Kyiv, toppling Ukraine’s democratically elected government, and subsuming the country into Russia’s orbit.
The invasion threatens to destabilize the already volatile post-Soviet region, with serious consequences for the security structure that has governed Europe since the 1990s. Mr. Putin has long lamented the loss of Ukraine and other republics when the Soviet Union broke apart. Now, diminishing NATO, the military alliance that helped keep the Soviets in check, appears to be part of his mission. Before invading, Russia made a list of far-reaching demands to reshape that structure — positions NATO and the United States rejected.
With the war grinding on, U.S. intelligence agencies say Mr. Putin has been frustrated by the slow pace of the military advance and Russian commanders have been increasingly intensifying attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure and resorting to tactics used in previous wars in Chechnya and Syria: flattening cities with overwhelming and indiscriminate firepower.
The war has unleashed a devastating humanitarian toll and claimed thousands of lives. It has also prompted more than two million people to flee Ukraine in less than two weeks, spurring what the United Nations has called the fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II.
In the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, a Russian strike on a maternity hospital on March 9 killed at least three people and injured 17. The city has no electricity or water, and people have been boiling snow for water, felling trees to burn for heat and digging trenches to accommodate the city’s mounting numbers of bodies.
Several rounds of diplomatic talks between Russia and Ukraine have failed to stop the war. The United States and the European Union have mobilized to impose some of the toughest economic sanctions ever on Mr. Putin’s government.
Hundreds of Western businesses — manufacturers, oil companies, retailers, and fast-food chains like McDonald’s — have suspended operations in Russia, turning back the clock on the country’s opening to the west.
As a result, NATO moved hundreds of miles closer to Moscow, directly bordering Russia. And in 2008, it stated that it planned — some day — to enroll Ukraine, though that is still seen as a far-off prospect.
Mr. Putin has described the Soviet disintegration as one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century that robbed Russia of its rightful place among the world’s great powers. He has spent his 22 years in power rebuilding Russia’s military and reasserting its geopolitical clout.
The Russian president calls NATO’s expansion menacing, and the prospect of Ukraine joining it a major threat. As Russia has grown more assertive and stronger militarily, his complaints about NATO have grown more strident. He has repeatedly invoked the specter of American ballistic missiles and combat forces in Ukraine, though U.S., Ukrainian and NATO officials insists there are none. Mr. Putin has also insisted that Ukraine is fundamentally part of Russia, culturally and historically.
East-West relations worsened drastically in early 2014, when mass protests in Ukraine forced out a president closely allied with Mr. Putin. Russia swiftly invaded and annexed Crimea, part of Ukraine. Moscow also fomented a separatist rebellion that took control of part of the Donbas region of Ukraine, in a war that still grinds on, having killed more than 13,000 people.
Mr. Putin at his annual news conference in Moscow, on Dec. 23. has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an unacceptable threat to his country. Putin appears intent on winding back the clock more than 30 years, establishing a broad, Russian-dominated security zone resembling the power Moscow wielded in Soviet days. Now 69 years old and possibly edging toward the twilight of his political career, he clearly wants to draw Ukraine, a nation of 44 million people, back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
Russia presented NATO and the United States in December with a set of written demands that it said were needed to ensure its security. Foremost among them are a guarantee that Ukraine would never join NATO, that
NATO draw down its forces in the Eastern European countries that have already joined, and that the 2015 cease-fire in Ukraine be implemented though Moscow and Kyiv disagree sharply on what that would mean.
The West dismissed the main demands out of hand. Moscow’s aggressive posture has also inflamed Ukrainian nationalism, with citizen militias preparing for a drawn-out guerrilla campaign in the event of a Russian occupation.
The Russian leader may also want to energize nationalists at home by focusing on an external threat, as he has in the past. Nevertheless, since the invasion began, thousands of Russians, some at great personal risk, have taken to the streets to protest the war.
Russia’s Red Square in Moscow last year. Mr. Putin is seeking to energize nationalist support at home amid a raging pandemic. In an era of rising risk and uncertainty, safety & security professionals are all but guaranteed to face one or more critical events in the future.at some point.
Think about the lives of the people of Ukraine, it is still winter there, snow, sub zero temperatures, every night sirens blast, It’s three o’clock in the morning, and families are trying to flee their homes, carrying all their worldly possessions, in whatever bags and cases they can carry.
Hooded and masked – not against COVID but against the cold – the evacuees will not reach their destination for hours, maybe days, not knowing what the future holds, or how they will survive in the country when they arrive.
Dr Bill Pomfret; MSc; FIOSH; RSP. FRSH;
Founder & President.
Safety Projects International Inc, &
Dr. Bill Pomfret & Associates.
26 Drysdale Street, Kanata, Ontario.K2K 3L3.
www.spi5star.com pomfretb@spi5star.com
Tel 613-2549233