The doubt about Russian forces amassed in thousands – every media report suggested over hundred thousand troops – on the Ukrainian border, which includes Belarusian border as well as Crimean Peninsula, waiting for orders on whether to invade will be cleared in a few days. However, the tense developments from the past three months have transformed into a hostile situation in the past few days.

Moscow has obviously repeatedly denied that it is preparing to invade Ukraine despite stationing around thousands of troops and building up military hardware. The international community, however, has not forgotten the 2014 Crimean Peninsula annexation by Russia, and looks suspiciously at every statement generating out of the Kremlin.

Latest developments – India stays neutral

India took a cautious neutral stance in the war of words between the US and Russia, abstaining from the procedural vote on whether to hold debate on the Ukraine issue at UN High Table i.e. the United Nations Security Council. Despite four countries voted against the debate, the UNSC went ahead with the discussion, and the US-led western bloc succeeded in getting 10 countries' votes in its favour – it needed 9 ‘Yes’ votes.

The heated arguments from both sides ended without any deliberative conclusion as outcomes in terms of resolution arising from debate can be vetoed by any one of the permanent five UNSC members.

Although, the arguments suggested that perceptions of both parties stand at polar opposite with no sign of convergence in sight. The US-led bloc accused Russia of endangering peace and destabilising global security by massing more than 1,00,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, while Kremlin diplomats dismissed what they called baseless and hysterical U.S. fear-mongering aimed at weakening Russia and provoking armed conflict. US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the mobilisation was the biggest Europe had seen in decades. Her Russian counterpart accused the US of fomenting hysteria and unacceptable interference in Russia's affairs.

Issue at hand

Russia, exercising its territorial sovereignty inside its international border which Moscow does not have any trouble in altering as the history suggests, says it has every right to move military personnel and equipment wherever it likes. Russia accused the Western powers of plotting “provocations” in Ukraine, which aspires to join both the EU and NATO as its government under President Volodymyr Zelensky wishes to build closer ties with West, considering the bone of contention and motivating factor for President Putin to amass troops in such large numbers on the Ukrainian border, thanks to geopolitics.

The developments that arrived from Paris is that both Moscow and Kyiv agreed on observing the ceasefire in the eastern region of Ukraine, Donbas, which witnessed civil war that has already claimed more than 14,000 since 2014.

An aide to French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NDTV that the Paris talks had been about resolving the separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine since 2014, not about the threat of a Russian invasion. Ukraine and Russia agreed to sign a joint statement, for the first time since 2019, along with France and Germany, about the ongoing conflict between Ukrainian nationalist forces and separatists in the Donbas region. The four nations, collectively known as Normandy Group, have been working towards reaching a peace deal since the conflict broke out after Russian forces invaded Crimean Peninsula towards which agreement of ceasefire is a welcoming step.

The joint statement committed both sides to "an unconditional respect for the ceasefire", and said that they would meet again in two weeks' time in Berlin. This provided the crucial window of two weeks in which it is highly unlikely that Russian troops would cross the Ukrainian border. 

Russian Demands

Winters were at peak in December last month when Russian forces and equipment moved towards the Ukrainian borders, and the eight-point draft treaty got released by Russia’s Foreign Ministry from Kremlin as its forces amassed within striking distance of Ukraine’s borders. The draft carries highly contentious list of security guarantees Kremlin says it wants the West to agree to in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine.

The demands, spelled out by Moscow in full for the first time, were handed over to the US in December included, 1) NATO rules out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and it does not hold drills in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Caucasus countries such as Georgia, or in Central Asia without agreement from Russia, 2) NATO removes any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997 which would include much of Eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries, 3) mutual restrictions on the deployment of short and medium-range missiles, replacing the previous intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty that the US left in 2018, and 4) greater information sharing on military exercises.

These proposals were viewed extremely negatively by NATO countries, especially Poland and Baltic states as they have argued that Moscow is attempting to re-establish a ‘sphere of influence’ in the region on the lines of Soviet Union, and view the document as proof Moscow is seeking to limit their sovereignty. 

Geopolitical dilemma and Economic severity 

Russia has generated ‘fault lines’ against Ukraine’s deepening relationship with the West and NATO. The expansion by NATO is taken as a threat by Moscow, which sees its sphere of influence shrinking in the Eastern Europe, whose origin dates back to the collapse of Soviet Union and accession of the Eastern Bloc countries into NATO one by one. This had developed the security dilemma for Russia as NATO borders were increasingly coming closer to its border, and the “red line” for that shift is Ukraine.

In a speech in late December, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of making false promises about its intentions to expand east. “We were fooled by five waves of NATO’s eastward expansion. We are not threatening anyone — they came to us,” he said during his annual year-end press conference.

A senior US official said after Moscow made its demands that the Kremlin knows that some parts of its proposals were “unacceptable”. Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote that Russia’s public release of its proposed agreements “may suggest that Moscow [rightly] considers their acceptance by West unlikely.” “This logically means that [Russia] will have to assure its security single-handedly, most probably by mil-tech [military technical] means,” he wrote. This totally makes sense, otherwise why would Moscow advance its troops to the Russian-Ukrainian border as well as on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, if not to gain leverage against NATO and the US in the negotiations to its demands. It clearly shows the Russian insecurity towards Ukraine that Kyiv would last bastion to the borders of Russia, and would fall to the NATO, thanks to geopolitics. Vladimir Putin has demanded that the West provide Russia “legal guarantees” of its security. Moscow said ignoring its interests would lead to a “military response” similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 which created quite a stir in international security arena.

In another development that increases the speculation of invasion on Ukraine in past two weeks is the stationing of Russian troops inside Belarus. In response to the rising tension between Russia and the Ukraine/West, Belarusian President Aliaksandra Lukashenka has sought to demonstrate his loyalty to Putin by threatening to station Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, promising to fight against Ukraine if needed, and agreeing to joint military drills with Russia.

For Russia, deploying larger forces in Belarus for manoeuvres is a convenient way to increase pressure on Ukraine. While these manoeuvres are scheduled to be conducted during 10-20 February, troops from Russia’s Eastern Military District are already arrived in Belarus. Russia has deployed these troops not only near the border with Ukraine but also in other areas of Belarus far from those in which the exercises are set to occur. Russian forces have brought an unprecedented quantity of military equipment into Belarus. 

By amassing its forces on Ukrainian borders and creating a havoc of “invasion” to gain leverage onto the negotiation table, Moscow, apart from blocking Ukraine from entering into NATO, also wishes that the US and EU ease the western-imposed economic sanctions on the Russia which crippled its economy in past seven years.

The economic impact of financial sanctions on Russia has been greater and has hit the Russian economy badly. Since 2014, it has grown by an average of 0.3 percent per year, while the global average was 2.3 percent per year. They have slashed foreign credits and foreign direct investment, and may have reduced Russia’s economic growth by 2.5–3 percent a year; that is, about $50 billion per year. The Russian economy is not likely to grow significantly again until the Kremlin has persuaded the West to ease the sanctions.

Two big US sanctions programs are linked to Russian aggression in Ukraine; firstly toward the Russian occupation of Crimea in February–March 2014, and secondly against the Russian military aggression in eastern Ukraine from July 2014. Both have been coordinated with the European Union and some other allies.

A novelty of the March 2014 US sanctions was that they hit Putin’s cronies, four businessmen from St. Petersburg who were old close friends of Putin and had become billionaires entirely because of their friendship. Putin complained at least five times in public about the West sanctioning his close friends, showing that these sanctions hit hard. In addition to export controls against Russian defense industries adopted by the United States and the EU, in 2017 the US Congress passed a law sanctioning foreign companies and governments that engage in “significant transactions” with the Russian defense sector, though Russia still remained the world’s second-largest arms exporter.

By blocking Russia’s access to technologies with major military applications and withholding resources from Russia’s military, the West had put pressure on Russia’s defense industry. Currently, the United States has about fifteen different sanctions programs impacting Russia, and several others have been proposed. Sensibly, the Biden administration has called for a review of US Russia sanctions, and Joe Biden has warned Putin of “sanctions like he’s never seen” should his troops attack Ukraine. 

Conclusion

In short, President Putin is using Ukraine as leverage against Western powers so that the latter lift the political and financial sanctions in place against Russia, and against Russia’s potential allies and business partners. A Russian attack on Ukraine could prompt more diplomatic conversations that could lead to concessions on these sanctions.

Last week on Wednesday, giving Moscow a formal response to its demands to resolve the crisis in Europe, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave no concessions, but said that he was offering Russia "a serious diplomatic path forward, should Russia choose it."

In response, Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said President Vladimir Putin would now assess Mr Blinken's response. While the document – delivered by the US in coordination with the NATO military alliance – does not address Russia's "main concern" about the alliance's expansion, Mr Lavrov said it "gives hope for the start of a serious conversation" on secondary questions. This readily acceptance of ‘coming to table’ despite amassing troops on Ukrainian border shows that Moscow is aware of cost and benefit of the invasion and surely, the former would outweigh the latter.