The Origins of the Ukraine War

What happened in August 2021?

Under conditions of information dominance, it is the anomalies that can help us get a handle on objective realities. In the case of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, the anomalies have been piling up especially hard and fast. The first anomaly that grabbed my attention was this piece by Margarita Konaev and Polina Beliakova in Foreign Affairs. In the first paragraph, we’re told that, on the eve of the invasion, Putin thought Ukraine’s armed forces were weak:

In 2014, when Russian forces entered the Crimean Peninsula, they faced remarkably little resistance. The Ukrainian military was weak, poorly trained, and corrupt. That was the Ukrainian military Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to encounter when he invaded the country again in February 2022.

Margarita Konaev and Polina Beliakova, Foreign Affairs, May 2022.

In the second paragraph, we learn that the Congressional Research Service reported in January that Ukraine’s army had grown from 6,000 combat-ready troops in 2014 to 145,000-150,000 troops on the eve of the invasion.

As Putin discovered, Ukraine’s military has undergone a radical transformation over the past eight years, thanks to intensive reorganization and reform efforts and billions of dollars in Western security assistance. In January 2022, the Congressional Research Service reported that the Ukrainian army had grown from about 6,000 combat-ready troops in 2014 to nearly 150,000 troops…

Margarita Konaev and Polina Beliakova, Foreign Affairs, May 2022. Emphasis mine.

The anomaly is this: if the CRS reported that Ukraine’s army had grown from six thousand troops to a hundred-and-fifty thousand, with “significantly improved capabilities, personnel, and readiness,” in January, how could the Russians have not been informed of this development? One would have to assume that KGB was the least competent intelligence agency in the history of the world, for them to make such a glaring error. That’s simply not plausible.

Instead, we must assume that Putin had at least roughly credible estimates of Ukrainian strength on the eve of the invasion. Now, it is generally accepted among military experts that you need a three-to-one force ratio to have confidence in a successful operational offensive against a well-prepared defender. Yet — and this is the second glaring anomaly — Putin sent an invasion force no larger than 190,000 and possibly even smaller than 100,000 troops.

As of Feb 4, American officials reckoned that the Russian invasion force amassed on Ukraine’s border included 97 battalion tactical groups (BTGs), each made up of 600-1,000 troops; and expected the buildup to top out at 120 BTGs. That gives us a ballpark of 60,000-120,000 troops — very far from later guesstimates of 200,000 troops being thrown around. But note that even if the latter, larger, number were accurate, that’s not much larger than the defending force; and dramatically smaller than what would be militarily desirable. There’s no way Russian generals and Putin could expect a decisive victory with that small an invading army against committed defenders, fighting on their home turf, and with the military and economic backing of the Western powers.

The favorable force ratios, together with Ukrainian morale and Western support (especially US tactical intelligence support), go some way towards explaining the course of the war. But the basic arithmetic deepens the puzzle of the Russian attempt. Why did Putin send in such an inadequately-sized army to invade Ukraine? And why — given the poor odds that such a force would surely face — were they ordered to conquer the center of Ukrainian strength, and especially the capital city, Kyiv? What was he trying to do?

If Putin was constrained to that force size — say, because he had to hold just as many BTGs in reserve for contingencies in the Baltics, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, etc — then why did he not order his armies to focus on conquering southeastern Ukraine where the anthropological terrain was more attractive? Surely, limited war aims were more appropriate given the scale of the forces he could field?

A final puzzle concerns the timing of the Putin escalation. What triggered the Russian decision to invade? Any theory of the origins of the Ukraine war must explain why Putin choose to invade Ukraine when he did. Most theories, particularly ones that focus on Putin’s desire to expand Russia’s sphere of influence, fail hard on this test. For even if we concede that expansion of Russian influence was Putin’s central war aim, that does not explain why he chose to invade when he did. After all, this was a major departure from the military policy playbook he’s articulated since his speech at the Munich Conference in 2007.

In trying to piece together the puzzle of Russian military policy, I’ve been working under the assumption that the war emerged from a breakdown of Russo-Western relations on the question of the status of Ukraine.

Why did Russo-Western relations break down in 2022? We do not know what precisely happened on the Ukrainian question. The most reasonable guess is that the US rejected Russian demands and Putin supposed [sic] felt compelled to deliver on his compellence threat.

Policy Tensor, The Moscow-Berlin Line.

Put another way, my working theory of the origins of the Ukraine war posited that Putin was forced to deliver on a compellence threat after Washington rejected his demands in Ukraine. More recently, I’ve come to realize that this reference frame is not quite right. In order to understand the true origins of the Ukraine war, we must dig deeper into recent history.

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In the immediate aftermath of the Biden election, the FT reported that Moscow was bracing for the incoming Democratic administration.

There is a hatred for Russia amongst [Biden’s team] that is really amazing. It’s not just rational; it’s also very emotional.

A “high-ranking Western diplomat” to the FT. Nov 9, 2020.

While concern over Russian intelligence operations was bipartisan and growing, it was especially pronounced among Democrats, who were convinced that Russian meddling was at least partly responsible for the catastrophe of the 2016 election.

Then, in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration, US intelligence uncovered “a massive cyber-espionage attack on US government computers.” Concern over Russian dark arts had already been growing with Putin’s attempt on Alexei Navalny in August 2020. Perhaps as a signal to the incoming administration, the dissident was arrested during the transition of power in Washington.

Zelensky, who come to power in 2019, desperately wanted closer ties with Washington. Even though US-Ukrainian military ties had been growing since Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and Trump had signed off on supplying some advanced weapons to Ukraine, the prospect of a US security guarantee still looked like a pipe dream. Even though Zelensky had reasons to hope for a more favorable treatment from the Democrats, it was far from guaranteed.

On February 3, 2021, Zelensky shut down three pro-Russian TV channels controlled by Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s man in Ukraine. Medvedchuk had been the backchannel between Kyiv and Moscow for many years. Zelensky signed a decree accusing Medvedchuk of financing terrorism and froze his assets. In May, he was accused of treason and placed on house arrest. This move against an oligarch close to the Kremlin —  Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk’s youngest daughter — was seen by Moscow as a major escalation. Putin warned that Ukraine was turning into “a kind of anti-Russia.”

Zelensky’s heart must’ve fluttered a little bit when Biden called Putin a “killer” in March. The administration imposed new sanctions on Russia in April; formally blaming Russian intelligence for the cyber-espionage attack (the SolarWinds hack). Sanctioned individuals and organizations included those accused of interfering in the US election. Washington also condemned the arrest of Navalny. Earlier, US intelligence had concluded that Russian intelligence had paid the Taliban to attack US personnel in Afghanistan. Putin issued a stark warning in response to US moves: “Washington must realize that it will pay for the degradation of bilateral relations.”

As a show of force, Putin massed forces on the border. According to Kyiv, Moscow had massed some 100,000 troops on the border. The divisions were soon ordered back, however, for reasons that are not entirely clear — perhaps because Biden agreed to meet with Putin. Their meeting would take place in June. Ahead of the great power meeting, on May 6, Secretary Blinken visited Ukraine, where he declared that the US will “make sure that Ukraine can defend itself.”

But the revolution in US Ukraine policy had not yet begun in earnest. At this stage, the Europeans were not keen on taking a hard line against Moscow. In Germany, CDU’s candidate for German Chancellor, Laschet, pointed out that “North Rhine-Westphalia contains 1,200 companies that have traded with or invested in Russia.” Two years earlier, Macron had warned that “pushing Russia far from Europe is a profound mistake.” As late as August 22, Merkel was still declaring “Russia cannot use Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a ‘weapon’.”

Although Washington had opposed the pipeline, the US reached a truce with Germany: in exchange for Washington’s green light on Nord Stream 2, Berlin promised to impose sanctions if the pipeline “was used to threaten the energy security of American allies in the region” [emphasis mine]. The language was clearly meant to reassure Zelensky that the northern pipeline, by reducing reliance on the pipelines going through Ukraine, would not increase Russian leverage against Kyiv.

While the State department was finalizing the deal with the Germans, American and German intelligence uncovered yet another case of the Havana Syndrome — believed to be the handiwork of Russian intelligence — this time in Germany. This may have been the last straw that pushed the United States to finally commit to issuing a de facto security guarantee to Ukraine. In any case, something quite dramatic must have happened in August because US policy on Ukraine and Russia was completely upended in a matter of days or weeks.

To get a sense of this revolution in US Ukraine policy, note that Zelensky had long asked to visit the White House. All of a sudden, his request was approved. Zelensky was told to visit the White House almost immediately on September 1, 2021. As an analyst without access to informed insiders, I can only guess. But members of the press with contacts in the administration need to find out what exactly triggered the reversal of US Ukraine policy in August. Why was Zelensky suddenly invited to the White House? The answer to that question is crucial to pinning down the origins of the Ukraine war.

What happened then was simply not understood by external observers. As late as the day before the Biden-Zelensky summit, the FT announced that “Ukraine feels the chill of Biden’s foreign policy.” In reality, the administration had already decided that Ukraine was to be fully incorporated into a tight military alliance with the United States. This is the gist of the decision relayed by Biden to Zelensky on September 1. By November, the paperwork was ready. The United States and Ukraine signed an explicit agreement that extended US security guarantees to Ukraine.

The US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership laid out the goal as Ukraine’s “full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions” — the latter being a euphemism for Nato. In the Munk debate, the liberal hegemonist side had declared that there were no plans to bring Ukraine into Nato — the 2008 Bucharest declaration was just for show. They were either ill-informed or simply lying. For all intents and purposes, Ukraine had been declared a US protectorate by the Biden administration. Nato or not, US credibility was most certainly now on the line in Ukraine.

As Bill Burns stated in his autobiography, incorporating Ukraine into Washington’s security orbit had long been “the reddest of red lines” for Russia. Washington had quite deliberately and openly challenged the Kremlin. Putin’s choice at this point was to either accept this fait accompli or go to war.

Putin was now stuck between a rock and a hard place. If Russia capitulated, it could hardly be considered even a lesser great power — one unable to defend even the most vital Russian interest forcefully against Western incursion. If Russia went to war, it was sure to face a brutal war of attrition that risked irreparably harming Russian military prestige, and again threatening to kick it out of the ranks of the great powers. Given the force ratios and the expected Western response, Putin must have taken the decision to wage war extremely reluctantly. He must’ve felt he had no choice but to make one last stand. In essence, he was cornered into a Zugzwang by the Americans.

Russia immediately began preparations for war. Unlike the troop buildup in April 2021, this time it was for real. But Putin still hoped to avoid invading Ukraine. He must’ve made it clear that unless the United States agreed to Ukrainian neutrality, he would have no choice but to invade. It’s clear that Washington decided to call his “bluff.”

This theory of the origins of the Ukraine war explains why he ordered his armies to attack the center of Ukrainian strength. It was the rising power of the Ukrainian armed forces that was the main objective on the assault. The Russians hoped to destroy the military instrument being built at breakneck speed with American help. In that sense, it was a classic preventive war. If so, he was too late. Ukraine’s army was already too strong for the Russians to crush.

But what were the Americans thinking? The administration — filled with traditional Blob hawks like Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland — probably saw it as a golden opportunity to bleed Russia. As I wrote on Twitter, “Washington must've been certain of a Russian invasion of Ukraine already in the late summer of 2021 [when the decision to escalate US commitments to Ukraine was made]. The most reasonable interpretation is that they deliberately crossed the reddest of red lines to force Russia to bleed in Ukraine.” The objective of the new, hawkish US policy was to force Russia into a costly war, one that would likely undermine Russian military prestige. And if the economic weapon, together with the proxy war, was damaging enough, it would, as Mearsheimer put it, finally kick Russia off the ranks of the great powers.

The basic idea was that, with an economy smaller than South Korea’s, Russia had no business pretending to be a great power; it must submit to Washington’s authority like other medium-sized countries. Given the balance of forces, this was not an entirely unreasonable picture. However, the administration should’ve consulted with Zoltan Pozsar. Russia’s GDP may be small. But given Russia’s position in the commodities markets, it is Russia that may have the upper hand in the Russo-Western competition in pain tolerance. Putin has already deployed his gas weapon to tremendous effect — we’ll see whether Europe can stand the pain this winter. He is also holding a number of other weapons in reserve.

Given that Russia’s entire geopolitical position is on the line in this struggle, it would be folly to expect that the Russians would not fight with all they’ve got — perhaps all the way up the escalation ladder. Well before we get to “escalate-to-deescalate,” however, Russia has plenty of other, non-nuclear, options to escalate. For one, Russia could simply stop exporting the millions barrels of oil that it currently does, in order to deliver pain to the West. That would almost certainly push the price of crude above $200 per barrel, and thereby deliver the mother of all inflationary shocks. Beyond oil and gas, Russia can also halt the flow of wheat, fertilizer, and neon (crucial to chip production).

Those who think he wouldn’t use the oil weapon, or other weapons at his disposal, simply do not understand the stakes in this conflict. The correct model for this war may be less the Winter war of 1939-1940 than the Pacific war of 1941-1945, when the United States cornered Imperial Japan into launching a desperate war. If Japanese policymakers could prosecute an impossible war against the United States for four long years, Russia too can be expected to stay in the fight — precisely because it is now fighting for its very survival as a great power.

Xi probably wanted to know why Putin hasn’t ordered a general mobilization. Indeed, Russia can probably generate a lot more military power than it has so far deployed in the struggle. We simply do not have the luxury of assuming that Russia is either incapable of fielding more armies or unwilling to do so. Simply because Russia’s entire world position is at stake in this struggle, Putin will almost certainly order a general mobilization if that becomes necessary. Ukraine and the West could still defeat Putin after Russia has committed its entire strength. But that will push him into a position where nuclear escalation will become more attractive than capitulation. Do we really want to test that hypothesis?