Up The Garden Path In Ukraine: As Russia Initiates Military Operations; NATO Responds With 'Defensive Steps'

The situation in Ukraine took a definitive turn during the early hours of 24 February, with Russian troops crossing the Ukrainian border at multiple points, and Ukrainian military installations getting badly hit by Russian fire.

This followed Russia’s formal recognition of the two breakaway regions, of Lugansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, as independent republics the day before.

In a televised address, President Vladimir Putin of Russia provided some precise motives and details to a stunned world, in his characteristically blunt manner. He said, first, that Russia had commenced ‘special military operations’ in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, to secure the safety of the ethnic-Russian majority population there.

Second, he said that Ukraine would be de-militarized and ‘de-Nazi-fied’. Third, he said that Ukraine would not be permitted to possess nuclear weapons (an option signalled by the Ukrainian government a few days earlier, as the rhetoric rose to breaking point).

Fourth, and this is crucial, he said that Russia did not plan to occupy Ukrainian territory. To stress this point, Putin asked the Ukrainian military to lay down their arms; if they did, they would be allowed to return to their homes and families.

And fifth, Putin announced that if anyone were to interfere in these military operations, Russia would unleash a more fearsome response than those nations had ever experienced in all of history. This warning was, of course, addressed to NATO, who had propped up and egged on the Ukrainian regime of President Zelensky all this while.

Within hours, multiple press reports started emerging – with a twist: the Western media showed footage of shells and missiles landing on Ukrainian bases, while the Russian media showed live footage of Ukrainian shells bombarding the other side.

Explosions were reported from multiple Ukrainian cities, and social media was flooded with purported images of Russian paratroopers parachuting into the coastal city of Odessa (found later to be a fake). Nonetheless, the general excitement allowed Indian self-styled military experts, in particular, the sort who can’t tell a rifle from a gun, to have a field day, and drop jargon and details with authoritative imbecility until their audiences grew bored.

Very little of such wild reporting and rumour-mongering could be verified, but three points became clear as the day progressed: one, as late as evening, India-time, no civilian casualties had been confirmed by either side; two, the Ukrainian air defense systems appeared to have been put comprehensively out of action; and, three, Ukraine was not putting up a military resistance, except in isolated pockets in the east.

Indeed, Ukrainian president Zelensky was reduced to broadcasting encouraging words to his citizenry and troops from a well-appointed presidential bunker, and desperately calling on the West to come to his country’s aid.

Once these three aspects became clear, the focus swiftly shifted to how NATO, led by America, would react. This was vital, because if the past week’s statements of American president Joe Biden, and others like NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, were to be taken at face value, any move by Russia on Ukraine would attract a devastating response from the West.

The first step was another emergency convening of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), in the dead of a New York night. But like its last meeting the night before, when Russia recognized Lugansk and Donetsk as independent republics, the outcome was a big nothing. However, it allowed the Ukrainian permanent representative to have a fairly bad-tempered exchange with his Russian counterpart.

Already by the conclusion of the UNSC meeting, it was also becoming clear that the West would be able to do little to prevent Russia from pursuing the objectives stated by Putin in his address. Taking a tough military stand on Russia was apparently not yet on NATO’s menu.

This was made worse by Biden, who issued a bland statement saying that the prayers of the world were with the Ukrainians, and that he would convene a meeting of the G7 nations the day after, to plan a way forward. That offered little solace to Ukraine, since, as many promptly pointed out, Ukraine would, in most probability, have been overrun by Russia by then. Biden also admitted that sanctioning Russia is partly self-defeating.

But by far the worst response, which reduced NATO’s crisis response plans to a truly theatrical absurdity, was an off-the-cuff remark made on camera by Britain’s Defense Minister, Ben Wallace. Speaking to British troops headed for postings abroad, he said, unbelievably, that the British had ‘kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas’ in Crimea, in 1853, and that ‘We can always do it again’.

Not only did he get the year wrong (it was 1854), but Wallace’s absolutely unwarranted remark revealed a persistent, colonial mindset filled with delusions of its omnipotence. Here was a man in charge of Britain’s defense policy-making apparatus, speaking about an adversary as powerful as Russia, with a mockery and superciliousness born only of misguided, imperial notions that Britannia still ruled the waves.

It is a mistake which will hurt Britain, America and NATO for years to come, because the truth is that Wallace would be hard-pressed to muster an assault force larger than a division on weekdays (less on weekends), and his chances of landing such a force, intact, on Russian soil, are about as high as Meghalaya winning the Ranji trophy this year.

Meanwhile, President Zelensky, still in his bunker in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, declared martial law, and severed diplomatic ties with Russia. A little later, around tea-time in India, the world received the first, formal response to the ongoing crisis from the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg.

Stoltenberg is a dynast Labour party politician from Norway, and a doyen of the left-liberal clique, who served two terms as Prime Minister, and is shortly set to relinquish his NATO post to take over the Central Bank of Norway.

His statement was a most curious one, under the circumstances. Lathering his speech with platitudes about a ‘new reality’, a ‘new normal’, and a ‘new Europe’, Stoltenberg revealed that NATO’s response to Russia’s moves would be defensive, not offensive.

He said that NATO was increasing its troops and military platforms on sea, land and in the air in eastern Europe, to guard against Russian moves beyond Ukraine. But on the matter of rushing to Ukraine’s aid, there was nothing. In fact, Stoltenberg repeated the ‘defensive-not-offensive’ line, so many times, that even the dimmest functionary in the Kremlin would have gotten the point: NATO wouldn’t be riding in to Ukraine’s rescue.

That didn’t go down too well with the attendant press corps, some of whom had had hoped for a more muscular response from NATO. But Stoltenberg was adamant: their stance was defensive, not offensive, meaning that after a month of egging Ukraine on, and searing militaristic rhetoric, Ukraine’s fate was coolly being left by NATO to Russia’s whims. So much for credibility.

When asked specifically on what NATO planned to do with Russia, its head was unequivocal: ‘We do not have any plans to send NATO troops into Ukraine… we will impose costs’ (he meant sanctions).

Stoltenberg’s answer, when pressed on what NATO’s plans were, specifically, deserves to be framed for posterity: “These are plans evolved over the years, to ensure that there are plans in place… defensive plans…prudent plans”

Now, the situation may change from a defensive posture by NATO, and the imposition of sanctions on Russia, to something else tomorrow, once Biden and others wake up to just how ineffective and feeble their vaunted military alliance appears to the rest of the world. Perhaps a new, aggressive tack may be adopted by America and the West after the G7 meeting scheduled for 25 February.

But until then, the Ukrainians will have to suffer NATO’s ‘defensive response’, and dejectedly admit to themselves, that the only offensive component of Stoltenberg’s response was a surfeit of meaningless homilies.