What to make of the military analysts who calmly list the reasons why the most serious war in Europe since 1945 might begin in January? The flat, muddy terrain of south-eastern Ukraine will be frozen solid by then, allowing Russian tanks to roll in. It is in the middle of the deployment cycle for the conscripts who make up much of Russia’s ground forces. And Russia may find itself with a pretext for invasion, since the new year has in the past brought front-line flare-ups in Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed separatists. Besides, the 100,000 Russian troops massed near the border are more than mere theatre; Russia is setting up field hospitals and calling up its reserves.
Dima is unimpressed. A colonel in the Ukrainian army, he has watched the rapid transformation of his country’s armed forces from a bad joke to something approaching a modern army. And he thinks Russia has been watching, too. “They are afraid of us, because since 2014 we have shown what we can do,” says Dima, who prefers not to use his real name. “It would be a third world war, at a minimum,” he says, perhaps with a touch of hyperbole. In the corner of a café in Kyiv, fidgeting with cigarettes and coffee, he remembers how far Ukraine has travelled.
In 2014 Dima was commanding a battalion near Luhansk, a city in the south-east near the Russian border. Of his 700 soldiers, only 40 were ready for active duty. His men did not bother to wear their clumsy Soviet-army vests or helmets, which offered little protection against bullets. Soldiers instead, when possible, dressed in German gear scrounged abroad from second-hand stores by volunteers. His tanks had the wrong engines installed. Few men had the training they needed to fight well. But had Ukraine enjoyed today’s armed forces back in 2014 “Donetsk and Luhansk would be free today,” claims Dima, with a snap of his fingers.
But they are not. Ukraine failed to stop Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the self-declared “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk remain outside Ukraine’s control (see map). That Ukraine had just 6,000 combat-ready troops at the time was a result of decades of neglect. Well-intentioned Ukrainian politicians were complacent after the signing in 1994 of the Budapest memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from America, Britain and Russia. Ill-intentioned officials sold off equipment and took their cut.
Now Ukraine is getting its act together. Military spending as a share of gdp has more than doubled, to 4%, funded in part by a “military levy” on incomes. America has given $2.5bn-worth of equipment to Ukraine. That includes Harris radios to ensure troops can communicate, and counter-battery radars to detect the source of enemy fire. Ukraine now has 250,000 troops and a further 900,000 reserves; some 300,000 of them have experience on the front line. Ukraine has bought Bayraktar tb-2 combat-capable drones from Turkey, a nato member. America has sent Javelin missiles, though on the condition that they are stored far from the front line.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wants more than new weapons. He covets accession to nato. That would commit America and 29 other countries to leap to Ukraine’s defence if it were attacked by Russia. But such an invitation looks highly unlikely; nato does not want an unambiguous commitment to defend a country Russia has already attacked. However, Ukraine is preparing its forces to work with nato’s anyway. Joint exercises are increasingly common, and getting bigger. A new policy requires all Ukrainian troops to have a command of English by 2025.
Much of Ukraine’s improvement has been based on the premise that Russia wants to challenge Ukraine, but does not want the cost of waging a war in its own name. This has produced the kind of disorganised ground war that Ukraine has been getting better at fighting since 2014.
But the Kremlin’s thinking may now be changing in response to a version of the future it claims to find intolerable. It fears that a West-veering Ukraine will abandon its historical role as a buffer between Russia and the West, and instead play host to American firepower only a short distance from Moscow. On December 1st Mr Putin used a speech to demand that nato commit not to station troops or missiles in Ukraine, pledges that nato will not be prepared to give.
Russian impatience with what it claims is threatening behaviour does not mean it wishes to gobble up swathes of Ukrainian territory for good. Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign-policy analyst close to the Kremlin, suggests that a quick, hard incursion akin to Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008 could occur, followed by merciless talks. A pretext would be easy to manufacture.
If Russian force were unleashed fully upon Ukraine’s troops, it would pulverise them. Nothing in Ukraine’s arsenal would be able to stop Russia’s air force of modern jets, which recently proved their power in a bombing campaign over Syria. Most of Ukraine’s navy vanished along with Crimea in 2014, and it has not been rebuilt since then. Russian troops are better armed, greater in number and backed by a smoother logistics set-up. No Western power looks willing to wage war against Russia for Ukraine’s sake. Mr Putin is probably bluffing. If he is not, Dima’s confidence will face a fearsome test.
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