Russia has recognized the breakaway Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk and will deploy troops to the region. The Hill. Vladimir Putin recognized the republics today. In response Joe Biden has put sanctions onto the Republics. There are still fears that Russia could invade Ukraine proper and not just the breakaway areas, but Putin has given no indication that he is going to do so.
My Comment:
The media and blue checkmarks on Twitter are salivating at the threat of war here, but this is a lot more minor than they are portraying it. Donetsk and Luhansk have been de facto independent since 2015 and having Russian troops there is not anything new.
You can tell this is not a big deal given how weak the response to the incident has been. All Biden has done is issue an executive order sanctioning the two Republics, an utterly toothless response. As expected the crippling sanctions for an invasion have not come into play and I sincerely think that they will not in the future.
Because this is not really an invasion. It's almost the status quo, with the main difference being that Russia is finally recognizing what it is doing in those two Republics. Indeed, I don't expect too much violence at all, other than the normal violence that has plagued the border for years now.
The media are still hyping up the possibility of a war, but I think it is pretty unlikely. Like I have been saying a war during winter is unlikely in the first place, but now that Putin has everything he wants it seems even more unlikely. Putin has little reason to invade now.
What could happen is that the Ukrainians could attack. That also seems unlikely given the forces arrayed against them. Russia could crush the Ukrainian military, which has already been bled dry over years of war, without too much trouble. They may want to launch a strike to save face but even that seems like a stupid move. They would get no military help whatsoever.
My guess remains that cooler heads will prevail. Russia launched wars in the region before. No wider war happened after Georgia in 2008 or when Crimea got taken back. What I expect to happen is for diplomacy to start again and I even expect that the Putin/Biden meeting will probably happen.
Why? Because there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about this move. Biden won't launch a war for Ukraine and I doubt that there will be any new sanctions. Indeed, this situation is still mostly manufactured. I doubt that anyone will be talking about this in a year, outside of historians.
But I do have to point out that I didn't expect this. I figured that Putin didn't need to take back these two Republics. There wasn't much to gain from this other than ensuring that the two Republics will stay in Russia's sphere of influence for the foreseeable future. In retrospect, that is kind of a big win for Putin and it looks like he got it without much in the way of costs.
Was Russia right to do this? I have almost no sympathy for Ukraine as they never even tried to follow the Minsk accords or treat their Russian speaking citizens as equals. But that doesn't mean that Putin is right either. I do think that NATO and the United States deserves a lot of the blame for this incident, but it takes two to tango and Putin could have tried diplomacy indefinitely and not pay any price for it.
I think that Putin may have made a major mistake largely because Joe Biden is so unpredictable. I don't think much will happen but you never know when someone as senile and foolish as Biden is your opponent. Putin is a rational actor but I don't know if he knows that Biden most certainly is not. It seems like Biden is acting like he was supposed to, a spineless coward that won't even launch the sanctions he promised, let alone launch a war. But that's a major risk.
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