Russia says it is pulling troops back from the border with Ukraine after ending military exercises. ABC News. Video has been released showing tanks being loaded back into trains and Russian soldiers pulling out of Crimea. Exercises are continuing in Belarus and in the Black Sea. Western intelligence agencies are skeptical of the reports. Russia did vote to recognize The People's Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk, the breakaway region of Ukraine, but Putin signaled that he would not move on that vote because he wanted to work within the framework of the 2015 Minsk peace agreement. Intelligence agencies had warned that an invasion of Ukraine was imminent.
My Comment:
As expected the so called Ukraine crisis has fizzled. I don't believe for a second that Putin was prepared to invade Ukraine, it was just a manufactured crisis to prop up NATO leadership, all facing their own crisis's.
The idea that Russia would invade Ukraine at this time never made any sense. More than one army has been destroyed because they invaded the region during winter. Tanks would be stuck in the mud, soldiers would freeze to death and logistics would be difficult to impossible. And not to mention that the Olympics are on right now (though you would be forgiven if you didn't notice given how apathetic everyone is to it).
I also didn't think that Russia had anywhere near the troops necessary deployed to the border to effectively invade. The numbers I saw was around 100,000 to 150,000 troops deployed and I think they would need at least twice that.
Could an invasion still happen? It's unlikely now. The troops that are being pulled out are the ones that border Ukraine, and the ones that would be poised to take over the breakaway republics are the ones getting pulled out. To see an invasion now we would need to see those troops redeployed back as well as more units and logistics outfits put back to the border.
I do think that Russia has a reason to be upset. Bringing Ukraine into NATO would be the equivalent of the old Soviet Union bringing Mexico or Canada into the Warsaw Pact. Indeed, the Cuban Missile crisis was caused by similar behavior by the Soviet Union.
But if there is a similar historical event that the current crisis resembles it is Able Archer 83. That exercise was just that, and exercise. But the Soviet leadership was so out of touch and senile they thought it was a preamble to an outright nuclear war. Does that remind you of anything? If there ever was an American equivalent to Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov it's Joe Biden.
The question is how did the intelligence agencies get it so wrong? It seemed clear as day to me that the Russians aren't going to invade Ukraine. It never made any sense to me, but why did the CIA and others seem to be certain of it?
I think there are two options. The first is the most obvious. The intelligence agencies are completely incompetent. That is backed up by the debacle that was Afghanistan. They got that almost completely wrong and didn't see the fall of Kabul falling. They also failed to stop a major terror attack at the airport and then destroyed a totally innocent family they mistook for ISIS fighters. I could see the same thing happening again in Ukraine.
The other option is that the whole scenario was cooked up as a distraction for domestic issues. Most NATO members desperately need a win. France has Macron facing major protests against him, Germany has new leadership, the UK has Boris Johnson with various scandals and, worst of all, everything in the Biden administration. All of these folks desperately need a win and a supposed victory against Putin is useful for them.
I am pretty sure that the crisis in Ukraine is back to being a nothingburger. There might be some diplomatic moves but I am expecting status quo ante, with Ukraine probably tabling plans to join NATO. I don't think a breakthrough with Russia and Ukraine will happen but it's possible. My guess is that nothing serious will change.
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