War in Ukraine: six questions about the start of the Russian offensive

He is 5 h 55 in Moscow this Thursday, February 24, an hour that should go down in recent European history. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on television that he had decided to launch a “military operation” in the Donbass region, where the two separatist states recognized by Moscow are located earlier this week. This is the start of what US President Joe Biden has called a “premeditated war that will cause catastrophic human suffering and loss”.

Western warnings, diplomatic efforts and threats of heavy sanctions will therefore not have been enough. The bombings and Russian troop movements started in Ukraine, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky declared martial law and promised to arm all volunteers.

The Russian offensive has drawn almost unanimous condemnation from the international community, which is considering the best way to respond to Vladimir Putin. Many questions remain, at present, open, concerning the timing of the launch of the operation, the goal of Vladimir Putin or even the Ukrainian capacity to face this aggression. Four specialists in Russian military issues have agreed to shed light on this beginning of a new war in Europe.

• What is the scale of the offensive?

For the moment, “it is mainly about air strikes and missiles launched against infrastructures such as airports and military and civilian command centers”, notes Gustav Gressel, specialist in Russian military issues at the European Council on International Relations. . According to him, this first phase should last a few days in order to limit as much as possible the Ukrainian capacity to organize itself and to counter the advance of ground troops.

But the latter did not remain motionless. Images of convoys coming from Belarus (in northern Ukraine), Crimea (in the south) and troops heading towards Kharkiv (east) have been published by the Ukrainian authorities. “This is a sign that this is indeed an invasion and not just targeted strikes,” said Glen Grant, a senior analyst at the Baltic Security Foundation and specialist in Russian military issues.

This decision to carry out the airstrikes and the ground invasion in parallel also suggests that Moscow wants to move quickly in order to leave as little time as possible for Westerners in NATO to provide additional military support to Ukraine.

The offensive “could however have been much more violent. Russia did not decide to bomb civilian centers in the hope of totally paralyzing the country. The aim is clearly to ’emasculate’ the country militarily in order to leave it defenseless to be able to hold the population hostage in the negotiations to come”, continues Glen Grant.

The exit of Vladimir Putin was called a “surprise announcement” in Western media. If a Russian military operation was feared, part of the analysts did not think that it would intervene so quickly after the recognition of the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

“Vladimir Putin eventually realized that the Ukrainian regime would not collapse from within despite the pressure exerted,” said Jeff Hawn, Russia specialist at the London School of Economics. The government of Volodymyr Zelensky held firm despite cyberattacks, troops massed on the border to intimidate Kiev, disinformation warfare and recognition of separatist regions.

The Russian president then “decided that the military option would cost him politically less than simply continuing to threaten”, judges this expert from Russia. He recalls that the war in Ukraine is not a popular conflict in Russia, and especially that it is less and less so. At the same time, escalating tensions only increased pro-Western sentiment in Ukraine. A shift to the West which represents “Vladimir Putin’s worst nightmare”, believes Jeff Hawn. He therefore had to move up a gear before it was too late.

• A “military operation” for what?

Vladimir Putin has been vague about his war goals. He contented himself with evoking a “special operation” to “protect” the pro-Russian populations of Donbass. It would therefore be a limited offensive to protect the inhabitants of a region. But he added that to do this one must “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine”, suggesting a far more ambitious plan.

“The repeated use by the Kremlin, for days, of the comparison with the Nazis to evoke the Ukrainian leaders and the idea of ​​demilitarizing the country clearly indicates that Vladimir Putin wants to overthrow the regime to install a puppet government there”, estimates Gustav Gressel. “His goal has always been to make Ukraine a de facto province of Russia, just like Belarus,” adds Glen Grant.

But the hypothesis of the total invasion is not unanimous. According to some experts, the master of the Kremlin could be content with part of Ukrainian territory. “We must not forget that by recognizing the separatist regions, Vladimir Putin omitted to say in which borders he recognized them. This is not trivial because it gives him a war goal”, underlines Ofer Fridman, specialist in the questions Russian military at King’s College London. These may be the territories currently under the control of pro-Russian troops or the regions claimed in 2014 “which corresponds to twice as much territory”, he notes.

For him, the warlike rhetoric of the Kremlin does not suggest a full-scale invasion followed by occupation. “All the propaganda has been centered around the suffering inflicted on the pro-Russian populations of Donbass and the Ukrainians have also been presented as victims of the actions of their leaders. It is difficult, in this context, to justify to the Russian population a large-scale war against individuals presented as victims,” ​​adds Ofer Fridman.

Repatriating part of present-day Ukraine under Russian rule under the nose and beard of NATO would be enough to achieve Vladimir Putin’s objective, which is “to restore Russia’s luster on the international scene”, believes this specialist.

• What can Ukraine do?

“Hold on, hold on and hold on again. As long as possible,” says Glen Grant. For this Baltic Security Foundation specialist, Ukraine’s main asset is time. The longer the fighting lasts, the more likely there will be casualties on the Russian side. A bloodbath “which could appear politically too costly for the Russian elite, which could decide them to put pressure on Vladimir Putin to stop the fighting”, adds Glen Grant.

Ukraine has advantages to hold. “A defense in major urban centers could seriously complicate the task of the Russian invader. In addition, Ukraine has an advantageous geography, in particular thanks to the Dnieper River which is a major obstacle to launching a ground offensive against Kiev”, summarizes Jeff Hawn.

• What can Westerners do?

NATO and the allied countries “cannot do much except watch the drama unfold before their eyes”, regrets Gustav Gressel. Economic sanctions “are long-term tools to change the state of mind in a country. They are useless against tanks,” he said.

For Glen Grant, this war is the consequence of a missed opportunity. “After the war in Georgia in 2008, and at the latest after 2014, NATO should have increased its military presence in Eastern Europe. It was the only way to curb the ambition of Vladimir Putin, who is to succeed where the Soviet Union failed: to break NATO.

Which does not mean, for these specialists, that Western countries should sit idly by. “We must send ammunition and weapons because that’s what will be missing the fastest,” concludes Glen Grant.

• What did Putin threaten the West with?

During his televised address, Vladimir Putin threatened the West with “consequences that you have never experienced before” in the event of intervention to help Ukraine.

For all the experts questioned, the Russian president “wields the threat of the nuclear arsenal”, sums up Ofer Fridman. For this expert, Vladimir Putin does not say that he will use it, but “recalls that he can deploy his arsenal quickly if NATO intervenes in what he considers to be his internal affairs”.

But Vladimir Putin would only resort to nuclear weapons “if Westerners become openly aggressive”, nuance Jeff Hawn. The delivery of ammunition or military equipment to the Ukrainian army would not fall into this category. For him, it would take a more radical decision such as “the establishment by NATO of a no-fly zone over Ukraine because that would mean that Western planes would be ready to intercept Russian fighters”.