Russia's Power Plays

"[Russia is involved in the] penetration of the Ukrainian state intelligence apparatus, through the SBU or Security Service of Ukraine by Russian intelligence agencies including GRU (Russian military Intelligence), the FSB (Federal Security Service) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service)."
Roger McDermott: Brothers Disunited: Russia's Use of Military Power in Ukraine

Russian S-300 missile system (Photo: AFP)

Ukrainians sympathetic to Moscow are also believed to be intimately involved in espionage inside or close to almost all Ukrainian military units, alongside formal intelligence operatives. All areas relating to the conflict -- inclusive of war training -- have been compromised by this broad infiltration, resulting in far more difficulties impacting those dedicated to aiding the Ukrainian perspective.

The sheer extent and depth of the pervasiveness of Russian intelligence operations within Ukraine has alerted Canada, which has been supplying satellite imagery to the Kyiv-loyal military, leading to the suspicion that that imagery data could be filtered directly through to Moscow. Validating, some believe, Washington's reluctance to share its satellite imagery with the Ukrainians; its unwillingness to have Russia discover the full capabilities of American satellite function.

Russian espionage has become a titanic headache for the Ukrainian military and its government, apart from and above the threat in its totality of Russia's malignant undermining of Ukrainian sovereignty and its encouragement and practical assistance through arms provision, training, and troops presence stealthily working to destroy Ukraine's economy, political system and plans to distance itself as far as possible from Russian influence.

Russians have been training the ethnic Russian Ukrainian rebel forces for a year, teaching them tactics and strategy, how to use advanced weapons systems inside eastern Ukraine and in southern Russia. It was one of those lessons in the use of a lethal aerial weapons system that went awry last year, taking down a Malaysian passenger jet, to the horror of the world community. An incident that both Russia and the rebels deny having had any part in, evidence to the contrary.

The separatists can be fairly certain that they don't face anywhere close to to a similar level of penetration by Ukrainian intelligence, let alone eastern Ukrainians loyal to Kyiv, for they have long since fled the scene of skirmishes and deadly conflict. Russia has been responsible for triggering many key battles while supplying and equipping the rebels; above all they had committed to training the Ukrainian Russian-speakers long before NATO decided to do the same in reverse.

Ukraine has been begging its supporters and sympathizing nations to supply it with advanced weaponry to match those the rebels are using supplied by Russia. The response from those same Western nations has been disappointing to Ukraine despite what it sees as its existential urgency. For decades Ukraine itself has placed few resources into the training or equipping of their forces with new, advanced gear.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 placed its former satellites, along with its former adversaries in a blissful fog of release from Cold War tensions. No one, it seems, fully realized that the Cold War was heating up again when Vladimir Putin waxed nostalgic about the past, and sought to reinvigorate Russian pride in that vast near-abroad collective known as the United Soviet Socialist Republic. His longing for a return to world power status has driven him to spurn the blandishments of western Europe to be satisfied with being a global member-country.

He has his agenda, and nothing much appears capable of diverting him from it. And slowly, Russia has been rearming itself with the latest advances in powerful technological armaments. And nor has it been loathe to sell those advanced weapons to other rogue nations like itself. So while the nations belonging to NATO sign on to aiding Ukraine as best they can through training efforts while withholding serious weapons, their obvious support of Ukraine against the belligerence of Russia is moving the world on an uncomfortable and extremely dangerous trajectory.

Russia has warned through Mr. Putin's statements, casual as they appeared at the time, but loaded with menace, that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons at the time that Crimea was annexed. An intervention to halt that international crime of territorial looting might have seen Russia raising the red flag of doom. That would have been a departure from the mutually assured destruction that underpinned the understanding between Russia and the U.S. during the Cold War.

This present era represents a frigid war in frozen suspension not leading, we can still hope, to a melt-down.