Proceeded by cyberattacks and rockets, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.
President Vladimir Putin wants to subordinate it to Russia, of course.
The situation is of such a dynamic nature, it's hard to tell what develops.
At first, missile attacks targeted mostly Ukraine’s military infrastructure.
Now it's an all out offensive.
A five-pronged assault has developed: from the Black Sea; out of Russia’s north-west and south-west; from Belarus; and from Transnistria.
The tanks are rolling but so far the Russian battlefield performance has been lackluster.
The fog of war has been thick. That means there is information overload which prevents us from seeing clearly. Both Ukrainian and Russian propaganda work overtime to assure us (and their respective populations) of their glorious victories.
Initially, Putin’s aims seemed rather limited. But now he has vowed to "demilitarize" and "de-Nazify" Ukraine.
This can entail several possible scenarios:
The Kremlin could encourage a collaborationist government to be set up in Kiyv without actually overrunning the Ukrainian capital.
Or, Moscow could choose a total war and occupation, which would result in a puppet regime or even an outright incorporation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
For now, Putin has recognized Lukhansk and Donetsk as "sovereign" states, while darkly hinting that they should recover their original borders.
This may be a signal for further expansion, perhaps a land bridge to Crimea.
First, the Russian troops joined their comrades in the Donbass, where they have been stationed unofficially for the past 8 years. Second, Lukhansk and Donetsk have de facto operated as stand alone entities since the Maidan upheaval of 2014, when Russia captured Crimea in the wake of the overthrow of a pro-Kremlin president.
Thus, Putin created a phoney “independent” zone and yet another “frozen conflict” to complement those that had arisen back in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s: in Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova.
They usually make international news when it fits the Kremlin.
Sometimes that entails violence as in the bout between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh last year; or during Russia’s invasion of Georgia "to liberate" South Ossetia in 2008. Sometimes it is just about economic warfare, as in Transnistria’s stemming the flow of Russian energy to Moldova.
The point is that "independent" separatist zones and frozen conflicts are convenient for Moscow. Divide et impera is the rule. And whenever the Kremlin meddles in such places, it usually ends up dispatching its troops as "peacekeepers" and as "guarantors" of "minority rights."
The Russian troops continue to occupy Georgian, Armenian/Azeri, and Moldovan soil.
There is a long tradition of that, too.
In the 18th century Peter the Great and Catherine the Great repeatedly sent their armies into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to "protect" religious minorities as well as Russia’s political clients. So did Prussia.
The partitions of Poland ensued incrementally: 1772, 1793, and 1795.
The Commonwealth disappeared from the map until 1918.
In 1939 both Hitler and Stalin claimed that their joint invasion of Poland was allegedly to thwart the Polish external aggression and internal persecution of its minorities: Germans, Ukrainians, and Belorusians. Stalin was particularly adept at convincing the gullible Westerners that he had the welfare of the minorities foremost on his mind.
Same goes for Putin. He will tackle his strategic tasks incrementally. He protects everyone everywhere, whether one wants it or not.
He is most keen on protecting the Ukrainians, who are one with the Russians.
According to him, only the machinations of the United States, the CIA, and George Soros, not necessarily in this order, have split them up and kept them apart. You know, this was in the aftermath of the 20th century’s “greatest geopolitical catastrophe,” the implosion of the Soviet Union.
Its captive people, however, consider this joyous event a liberation from “a prison of nation.” Many of its victims have historically held early modern Muscovy and its avatars -- the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and, now, the Russian Federation -- to be just that: the continent’s main slaver.
Putin’s objective is to restore Russia to the status of a global superpower. First, he aims to re-integrate the old USSR, hence his assault on Kazakhstan and, now, Ukraine. Second, the master of the Kremlin will secure the external empire: former Warsaw Pact countries.
Third, the Russian president plans to face the United States as an equal on the global stage.
Only then will "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" be remedied.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington D.C.; expert on East-Central Europe's Three Seas region; author, among others, of "Intermarium: The Land Between The Baltic and Black Seas." Read Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's Reports — More Here.
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