{"id":337264,"date":"2022-01-18T16:48:15","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T21:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=337264"},"modified":"2022-01-19T10:03:42","modified_gmt":"2022-01-19T15:03:42","slug":"is-putin-going-to-invade-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2022\/01\/is-putin-going-to-invade-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Putin going to invade Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
\"Vladimir

"There\u2019s something we don\u2019t know about Putin\u2019s calculation here," says scholar Alexandra M. Vacroux about the Russian leader, pictured.<\/p>

Via AP<\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\t

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\n\t\tIs Putin going to invade Ukraine?\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t
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\n\t\tChristina Pazzanese\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tHarvard Staff Writer\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tRussia scholar sorts through possible scenarios amid Moscow-U.S. tension\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
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Concerns over Russia\u2019s intentions in Ukraine mounted after talks in Geneva between Russia and the U.S.-led NATO security alliance ended last week without success. Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops and moved heavy weapons along its border with Ukraine in recent weeks and has begun positioning forces along the Belarus-Ukraine border. The Pentagon accused Moscow of deploying armed saboteurs into Eastern Ukraine to start violence as a pretext for moving its troops into the country, a tactic Russia used in 2014 during its invasion and occupation of the Crimean Peninsula. The Russians said they would withdraw if NATO agreed to a series of security measures, including permanently banning Ukraine from the Western military alliance, a proposal that has been flatly refused. Secretary of State Antony Blinken \u201984 will meet with Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, Friday in an attempt to find a resolution to the standoff.<\/p>\n

The Gazette spoke with Alexandra M. Vacroux<\/a>, executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies<\/a> and lecturer on government at Harvard, about why Russia appears to be readying for a military confrontation with Ukraine and what nonmilitary tools, if any, the U.S. and NATO have to prevent it. Interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n

Q&A<\/h2>\n

Alexandra M. Vacroux<\/h3>\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> What is Russian President Vladimir Putin up to? Is Russia going to invade Ukraine and if so, why?<\/p>\n

VACROUX:<\/strong> The Russians have been saying for a long time \u2014 and it\u2019s the subject of a lot of academic debate \u2014 that the Americans and NATO promised there wasn\u2019t going to be expansion to the east beyond the borders of the former East Germany at the end of the Cold War. The Russians have been fixated on this idea. When Russians talk about red lines, and \u201cthe Warsaw Pact was always there for a reason,\u201d it assumes that countries themselves don\u2019t get to choose what alliance they\u2019re going to belong to, and it assumes that the U.S. was deliberately trying to keep Russia weakened and without its traditional buffer of countries.<\/p>\n

So, the Russians see this is as unfinished business from the \u201990s after the Soviet Union collapsed. The other thing is that Russia has felt like it\u2019s encircled by hostile powers for 400, 500 years, 1,000 years. Whenever Russia wasn\u2019t expanding it was being invaded by Turks and the French and the Swedes and the Mongols. So, they feel they need a belt of countries around them to protect them from marauders crossing the steppe. Those buffer countries include Georgia and Ukraine. That\u2019s one of the justifications Russia gave to go to war with Georgia in 2008 \u2014 that Georgia was getting too close to the West and that was a red line. The U.S. and NATO\u2019s position has always been that Russia doesn\u2019t get to decide who joins an alliance. It\u2019s the countries themselves that decide. And Russia doesn\u2019t accept that.<\/p>\n\r\n

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Alexandra M. Vacroux is executive director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. <\/p>

Photo by Sarah Failla<\/p><\/figcaption>\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\"Alexandra<\/figure>\n\t\n\t\r\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<\/figure>\r\n\n

The Russians gamble that they\u2019re going to mass troops on the Russian border with Ukraine, which they\u2019ve done once before [last year] and then they came to the table and said, \u201cWe have these draft treaties for NATO and the U.S., and this is what we want: We don\u2019t want countries that are part of the former Soviet Union to join NATO, and we would like to have a discussion about how you\u2019re going to pull back from our borders.\u201d These draft treaties were complete nonstarters.<\/p>\n

Last week the U.S. and NATO said, \u201cThere are some points here that we can talk about,\u201d and the Russians said, \u201cThis is not a menu; this is a package. Take it or leave it.\u201d NATO and the U.S. said, \u201cOf course, we\u2019re not going to take it.\u201d I don\u2019t know if it was obvious to the Russians that this was going to happen, or if they had convinced themselves that there is a way in which this show of force is going to produce different results than before. One of the reasons we don\u2019t know that is because in an authoritarian regime like Putin\u2019s, there\u2019s a lot of group-speak, if not groupthink. Are there debates happening right now over in Moscow over whether the Russian version of the world order is something that can come into being? Or is it just that this is what they want, and they\u2019ve convinced themselves that it\u2019s necessary, it\u2019s desirable, it\u2019s possible, and therefore, we just have to apply the right degree of pressure? So that\u2019s the first part of it.<\/p>\n

The second thing is that we don\u2019t know if the Russians are really going to invade Ukraine. They\u2019ve got the equipment there. There\u2019s a school of thought that says that the Russians think once they have a mass incursion into eastern Ukraine, the population of Ukraine is going to realize that President Volodymyr Zelensky has totally failed them and will topple his government. And then it\u2019s not going to be an invasion because people are going to be glad that the Zelensky government has fallen. I have no idea if people are believing that. It seems completely fanciful and unrealistic. But it could be that the Kremlin has convinced themselves that Zelensky is incredibly unpopular, and it\u2019s not going to take much to topple him.<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cNobody really wants to get into exchanging cyberattacks because we don\u2019t know how that story ends. It\u2019s like an arms race without arms control.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n

GAZETTE:<\/strong> Since the Geneva negotiations ended, Putin has threatened a full break in diplomatic relations if the U.S. tries to further sanction Russia. Computers belonging to the Ukrainian government were hacked and infected with malware by Russia, according to Ukrainian officials. Broadly, what do these and other threats Russia has issued tell you about Putin\u2019s intentions or state of mind?<\/p>\n

VACROUX:<\/strong> Putin, in general, has a very aggressive style, so it doesn\u2019t surprise me that he says, \u201cIf you don\u2019t agree with what I want, I\u2019m going to do this and this and this.\u201d The arrest of the Russia-based REvil hacking group [that attacked several Western targets for ransom] was obviously something they could have done at any time. They\u2019ve done it now just to say, \u201cWe can be helpful when we want to be. Watch this.\u201d It\u2019s part of the way the Russians are trying to make their position as strong as possible and show that they can threaten the West or the United States or NATO in a number of different ways. What we\u2019re getting now is the list of the different ways in which they can be threatening.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has said one of the ways that we would respond is by potentially banning Russia from the SWIFT financial payment system. That would be a big deal. That would basically make it very difficult for Russia to do any international transaction. That has potentially very serious ramifications in the short term. In the medium and long term, there would be alternatives to SWIFT that would be found, which is what Iran has done, and it\u2019s probably not good for the U.S. if alternative systems run by the Chinese, for example, turned out to be functional as far as financial payments are concerned.<\/p>\n

The Russians now have a pretty blas\u00e9 attitude toward Western sanctions. There are two problems. Once they\u2019re applied, you have to continually tighten sanctions for them to remain as effective because people find workarounds. The second problem is that sanctions approved by Congress can only be lifted by an act of Congress, which the Russians don\u2019t expect to happen. The example the Russians use is the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was put in place in 1974 because the Soviet Union wasn\u2019t allowing Jews to emigrate. It was lifted only in 2012, decades after Jews were being allowed to emigrate. Once those sanctions are put in place, they\u2019re basically locked in. There\u2019s no incentive for Russia to try to do something to get them lifted because they\u2019re almost impossible to lift.<\/p>\n\r\n

\u201cPreventing Putin\u2019s inner circle from traveling to the West may be awkward and embarrassing, but at this point, that threat is not going to stop him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n\r\n

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