Ukraine War Turns Into Russian Roulette

by M.K. Bhadrakumar Indian Punchline | Sep 16, 2024

UK. Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with U.S. President Joe Biden in the White House on Friday with the question of the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine to hit deep inside Russia on their agenda of conversation. But there were no announcements, nor was there any joint press conference.

Starmer later told the media that the talks were “productive” but concentrated on “strategy” rather than a “particular step or tactic.” He did not signal any decision on allowing Kiev to fire long-range missiles into Russia.

Starmer said no final decision had been taken on the Storm Shadow missiles and hinted that further developments may follow at the gathering of the U.N. General Assembly later this month. “We’ll obviously pick up again in UNGA in just a few days time with a wider group of individuals,” he said.

One reason for such extreme secrecy is that the U.S. and U.K. are intensely conscious of the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s explicit warning on Thursday that any use of Western long-range missiles to strike Russia “will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically.”

Putin added in measured words: “This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries –- are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

Admittedly, Putin has given similar warnings before also, but did not follow through even when Western weaponry was used by Ukraine with impunity to invade Russia recently. So much so that Biden was plainly dismissive about the latest Kremlin warning, saying, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”

On its part, Moscow estimates that although no official decision on the matter has been announced, it has already been made and communicated to Kiev, and that Moscow would have to respond with actions of its own.

Biden and Starmer at the White House on Friday. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, CC BY 2.0)

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, Moscow’s point person on the diplomatic track, was quoted as saying on Saturday,

“The decision has been made, the carte blanche and all indulgences have been given (to Kiev), so we [Russia] are ready for everything. And we will react in a way that will not be pretty.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the country’s security council, went a step further saying that the West is testing Russia’s patience but it is not limitless. He said Ukraine’s invasion already gave Russia formal grounds to use its nuclear arsenal.

Medvedev warned that Moscow could either resort to nuclear weapons in the end, or use some of its non-nuclear but still deadly novel weapons for a large-scale attack. “And that would be it. A giant, grey, melted spot instead of ‘the mother of Russian cities’,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, referring to Kiev.

Putin, in his remark on Thursday once again rejected the Anglo-American sophistry that it is Ukraine that will be using any Western long-range missiles and not NATO. He pointed out that the Ukrainian army

“is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or U.S. satellites – in general, NATO satellites…

 

“most important, the key point even – is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not.”

Interestingly, neither Washington nor London has so far refuted Putin’s above explanation and, curiously, it has been missing from British press reports — perhaps on  fears that public opinion might militate against such direct involvement by the U.K. in a war against Russia in a combat role.

Moscow anticipates that the U.S.-U.K. ploy may be to test the waters by first (openly) using Britain’s Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missile, which has already been supplied to Ukraine. On Friday, Russia expelled six British diplomats assigned to the Moscow embassy in a clear warning that U.K.-Russia ties will be affected. Russia has already warned the U.K. of severe consequences if the Storm Shadow were to be used to hit Russian territory.

U.K. embassy in Moscow. (NVO, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

What makes the developing situation extremely dangerous is that the cat-and-mouse game so far about NATO’s covert involvement in the Ukraine war is giving way to a game of Russian roulette that follows the laws of Probability Theory.

That is to say, although Russia cannot be defeated or evicted from the territories in eastern and southern Ukraine that it annexed, Washington and London regard that the final outcome of this random event cannot yet be determined before it occurs; it may even be any one of several possible outcomes, and the probability cannot be ruled out that the actual outcome  might even be determined by chance.

Apparently, Biden believes that Russia’s current battlefield dominance is a random phenomenon and possible outcomes range from an annihilation of Russian military power to a large-scale disruption of life in Russia and a possible collapse of Russia — at a minimum, the weakening of the Russian hand in any future negotiations. Simply put, the war is now about Russia rather than Ukraine and long-range missiles can be a game changer.

Storm Shadow missile on display at the Royal Air Force Museum London. (Corrado Baldassi, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Thus, Biden, with no political constraints working on him anymore, is escalating the war to create new facts on the ground before his presidency ends in January, which may create conditions for permanent NATO military presence on Ukrainian territory and present Russia with a fait accompli.

Such a strategy built on the quicksands of probability is akin to a game of Russian roulette — an act of bravado. Indeed, Biden’s options to support Ukraine are shrinking with each escalation. As The Wall Street Journal puts it,

“With only four months left in the Biden administration and little hope of Congress approving additional funding for Ukraine no matter who wins the presidency, the White House is debating how best to help Kyiv given its limited toolbox.”

Equally, Europe’s interest in the war is also waning. European politics is becoming unpredictable with the ascendancy of the far-right in Germany, the crisis of leadership in French politics, the relative decline of EU’s economy vis-a-vis global rivals due to limited innovation, high energy prices and skills gaps, etc. and, of course, the overarching economic crisis in Europe with no end in sight, as brought out starkly in the recent report by Mario Draghi.

Basically, Biden is pre-setting the trajectory of the war beyond next January so that even after his retirement, his policy approach aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia remains on track. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Saturday that Washington is working on a “substantial” round of further assistance for Kiev. He confirmed a meeting this month between Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Zelensky.

Sullivan noted that Biden is working to put Ukraine in the “best possible position to prevail” during his final months in office. The bottom line is that Biden’s war strategy is attenuating as “escalation management” while NATO transitions as a direct party to hostilities.

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