Ten weeks into the conflict in Ukraine, a question for responsive defense policy reasserts itself: what constitutes escalation? In a war that has disrupted the global economy and established enormous stakes for the geopolitical distribution of resources, supply chain management is a primary tool of engagement. Both Russia and the West have leveraged sanctions as measures of aggression, initiating a war of attrition played out through the machinery of a globalized economy.
An Associated Press article reports that “Polish and Bulgarian leaders accused Moscow of using natural gas to blackmail their countries after Russia’s state-controlled energy company stopped supplying them with gas [on April 27th].” Gas embargoes are part of a strategy the Kremlin is leveraging to “punish and divide the West over its support for Ukraine,” the A.P. continues.
The Kremlin’s advancement strategy has also utilized the machinery of state-run media to promulgate Russian propaganda. Commentator Tom Nichols of The Atlantic writes for his newsletter Peacefield that “To judge from Russian media … the idea of Russia fighting N.A.T.O. to an honorable draw is far more attractive than enduring continuing defeats at the hands of the Ukrainians.” This analysis projects a deepened engagement on Russia’s part, sanctioned by the Kremlin’s narrative that the Ukraine is a proxy battlefield where the interests of the West and other powerful military alliances can be asserted.
The implications for Russia conceding to a military defeat have broad-reaching consequences for Russia’s engagement with the West. Moreover, the war reflects developments in Russia’s post-Soviet domestic policy; Russia must continue its military advance if it wishes to justify years of allocating mass resources to its defense budget.
A report from RadioFreeEurope underscores the role of narrative-crafting and situated perspective in the landscape of Russia’s military management: “Putin was allegedly ‘in another world,’ Chancellor Angela Merkel commented to former president Obama in 2014, referring to what analysts describe as the Russian leader’s alternate, some say paranoid, view of political events.”
Notoriously, Putin surrounds himself by a small circle of advisors and war hawks. “Putin is deciding his next moves … with input from just a handful of close advisers who share his conservative and conspiratorial view of the world,” the RadioFreeEurope piece continues.
As Reuters reports, Putin’s paranoid and aggressive pre-war diplomacy set the stage for conflict. His policies are “widely seen to have pushed Ukraine further from Russia’s orbit and strengthened its people’s desire for integration with the West.” And while Putin “certainly has not accepted it publicly,” he instead “[accuses] the West … of dividing Russians and Ukrainians, whom he has called ‘one people.’” Putin has crafted a rhetoric that blames the West for inciting aggression, creating an alibi for his response in kind. “Putin says the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia,” concludes the Reuters report.
Perhaps the largest incentive behind the war is the establishment of Russian diplomatic supremacy in formerly-Soviet regions. Putin warned on May 4th that “if any other country intervenes in Ukraine, Russia will respond with ‘instruments…nobody else can boast of, and we will use them if we have to.’” This report comes from The Daily Beast, which details a series of propagandistic pushes from the Kremlin and state-controlled media advocating for Russian advance. “Every major channel is promoting the idea of an inevitable, never-before-seen escalation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is being portrayed as a war waged against the Kremlin by the collective West,” the article continues.
Russian media rhetoric is a key component in morally sanctioning the military escalations the Kremlin already has planned. “[Media figure] Vladimir Solovyov lamented the West’s refusal to heed the Kremlin’s warnings,” the Daily Beast says, quoting Solovyov: “If they decide to support Ukraine – even though [Russia’s Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov told them that this could lead to WWIII – nothing will stop them.”
Further fueling the fires of Russian aggression is the notion that military advances are made in response to Western escalations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova proclaimed that the West “[will] go as far as they’re allowed to. If they aren’t stopped, they will go all the way.” Military expert and retired Colonel Yury Knutov concurs with this view: “For some reason,” he says, the West “believes that Russia … will never respond or use its nuclear weapons or its nuclear potential… They themselves are creating the situation when there is a threat to the existence of our nation and our military doctrine prescribes that it gives us the right to use nuclear weapons.”
Amidst ongoing speculation on the direction of Russian strategy, the Kremlin in fact dispelled rumors that the coming week would provide occasion to up the stakes on its engagement with Ukraine. “Putin has so far characterized Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a ‘special military operation’, not a war,” Reuters reports. “But Western politicians and some Russia watchers have speculated that he could be preparing for a major announcement … with a range of possible scenarios ranging from an outright declaration of war to a declaration of victory.” This confirms only the mercurial unpredictability of a paranoid politician wielding weapons he seems bent on using. While Putin’s strategy continues to find ways to defend itself, the West and the rest of the world remain poised to see what he will do.
