Check, Mate

The phone call had been delayed since Monday owing to Johnson’s need to answer questions on the Sue Gray report. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock

"The prime minister expressed his deep concern about Russia's current hostile activity on the Ukrainian border,"

"He emphasized the need to find a way forward which respects both Ukraine's territorial integrity and right to self-defense. The prime minister stressed that any further Russian incursion into Ukrainian territory would be a tragic miscalculation."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Office

 

"It's already clear now ... that fundamental Russian concerns were ignored."

"Let's imagine Ukraine is a NATO member and starts these military operations. Are we supposed to go to war with the NATO bloc?"

"Has anyone given that any thought? Apparently not."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a session of the board of trustees of the Russian Geographical Society via a video conference call in Moscow (credit: VIA REUTERS)

Indeed, much attention has been given to that question. It is actually so fundamental to the reason that Ukraine would like to be a member of NATO, like some of its neighbours. For the assurance that Moscow would think deeply about what it is considering in returning Russia to its former glory days of absorbing its near-abroad neighbours once again into the warm embrace of its octopus grasp as satellites revolving around Soviet Russia.

 

And it is precisely that aspiration that so concerns Russia's neighbours that they grasp at the opportunity of having the assurance that a group will be looking out for their interests of sovereignty and security. So Mr. Putin in posing that hypothetical question is merely being disingenuous. His actions belie innocence of that knowledge and the question answers itself poignantly in the dread memories haunting the former captive members of the USSR.

On Tuesday Mr. Putin accused the West of ignoring Russia's security concerns, deliberately creating a war scenario to suit their purposes with the added insult of humiliating Russia. On Wednesday, Mr. Putin shared a conversation with Britain's Prime Minister, but before that conversation took place, an odd occurrence had Britain slightly on edge as they scrambled fighters to 'escort' Russian bombers approaching British airspace. Intimidation? heaven forfend such a thought...!

 

A Russian TU-95 bomber   photo credit: REUTERS)

"Quick Reaction Alert Typhoon fighters based at RAF Lossiemouth supported by a Voyager from RAF Brize Norton were scrambled today against unidentified aircraft approaching the UK area of interest."

"Subsequently, we intercepted and escorted four Russian Bear aircraft,"

Royal Air Force spokesman

Mr. Putin shared a news conference with the prime minister of Hungary, visiting, as one of several NATO leaders making an effort to intercede with him, during the crisis where it is abundantly apparent that Russia has planned another invasion of Ukraine. Mr. Putin, defiant against NATO demands that he have Russian troops and armaments removed from the border with Ukraine, has no intention of backing away from his own security demands.

NATO warns Russia that it will not tolerate an invasion of a sovereign nation without exacting painful sanctions against Russia, while Russia insists that it has the right and the will power to persuade the Western alliance to withdraw its presence from Russia's near-abroad -- where NATO member-states have sent troops to other invasion-vulnerable former satellites of the USSR -- and never consider allowing Ukraine to join the alliance.

Russia, which in 2014 surprised the international community by invading Ukraine -- and supporting ethnic Russian Ukrainian separatist rebels in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in their violent separation aspirations in Donetsk and Luhansk, then swooped in on the Crimean peninsula to claim it as Russian territory -- expresses concern that as a member of NATO Ukraine might take it upon itself to reclaim Crimea, is downright risible.

With over 100,000 troops massed on the border with Ukraine, setting itself up for an invasion, Russia denies it has any such intentions; the troops, the arms, and the field hospitals are merely a practise performance, not a rehearsal. However, it now says, should its security demands not be met it could decide to take military action of an unspecified nature. Denials and verification.

"If President Putin really does not intend war or regime change, the Secretary [U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken] told Foreign Minister Lavrov then this is the time to pull back troops and heavy weaponry and engage in a serious discussion ... that can enhance collective European security."

U.S. State Department official

President Putin has been silent since mid-December until the present, with an atmosphere of ambiguity on his decision-making, inspiring diplomats from Russia and the West to engage in repeated rounds of talks in the hope of defusing the crisis. His remarks this week paint a picture of Russia's need to defend itself from a hostile U.S. concerned not with Ukraine's security, but its intention to contain Russia.

And just as Russia refuses to be dictated to by the United States, the Biden administration has now announced its decision to deploy 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, members of the 82nd Airborne Division infantry brigade to go to Poland. The deployment, said Poland's Defense Minister is "a strong signal of solidarity in response to the situation in Ukraine".

 

Of the total number, several hundred with the 18th Airborne Corps are set to arrive in Germany representing what the Pentagon spoke of as a "joint task force-capable headquarters". And Mr. Putin is free to make of that what he will.

A Ukrainian serviceman on the frontline in Donetsk. Photograph: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images