For weeks, Russia rallied forces close to Ukraine in a military buildup on a scale not seen since the 2014 invasion.
Analysts, as well as Ukrainian and Western officials, are struggling to understand what the Russian build-up means: it is simply meant to send a message to Ukraine and the Biden government, or is it real preparations for Russian military action or even a full scale invasion of Ukraine?
At the moment, only the Kremlin knows the answer. But most observers have so far concluded that the highly visible build-up is most likely saber rattling, although the threat of escalation still cannot be ruled out.
“Overall, the situation is better now than a week before,” Oleksiy Semenov, a former adviser to the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, said in an interview on Friday.
“I would say the percentage of some real war or even a medium-sized military conflict – whether on the line or on the border – is low,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the situation can’t change.”
The conflict in Eastern Ukraine has been of low intensity since 2015, when a peace agreement ended major fighting. That peace process has been more or less stalled ever since, putting parts of eastern Ukraine under the rule of Russia-controlled separatists who are on the front lines with Ukrainian government forces. The separatist areas are nominally self-declared republics, but in practice they are effectively controlled by Moscow, which so far no longer recognizes them.
Russian social media has been full since the end of March videos with trainloads of armored vehicles and heavy artillery that invaded Crimea and close to eastern Ukraine. This was accompanied by a barrage of belligerent rhetoric on the Russian state media. At the same time, a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine between Russian-controlled rebels there and the Kiev government has collapsed, with an increase in shelling.
Estimates of the number of Russian troops deployed near Ukraine now range from about 60,000 to over 100,000, although many are permanently stationed there. Russia’s Defense Minister has said it has moved two armies and three airborne units to the southwest border, saying the buildup is part of a “readiness check” in response to alleged increased activity by the United States and NATO forces.
Russia has set up a large new field base for hundreds of vehicles, visible on commercially available satellite images, and foreign journalists have been allowed to get close.
Most observers say they believe the highly visible nature of the Russian build-up means it is meant to be seen, suggesting that it is a message, not a prelude to invasion.
“We were and are spectators of a show that many have taken – and still assume – for reality,” said Dmitry Trenin, the director of Carnegie Moscow Center, in an interview with Russian website 47News.
Many observers believe that this show is intended to send signals to both Ukraine and the Biden government.
Against Ukraine, Trenin said, it is a warning against any attempt to use military force to recapture its occupied territories, as well as expressing his displeasure at a recent shift by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky towards a more assertive stance on pro Russian groups in the country.
To the US, Trenin said the message was also a warning to keep control of Kiev, which the Kremlin says is dominated by the US.
Other analysts say they believe it was meant to be an early test for the Biden government and a message from the Kremlin that it could rekindle the conflict at will if its interests are ignored.
The movements have managed to attract the attention of the West. President Joe Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin and offered him a summit meeting in the coming months, something that analysts say Putin is eagerly looking for.
Some analysts said they believed the Kremlin had recently taken more assertive measures from Kiev to make its points clear. The escalation began when Zelensky banned three pro-Russian media outlets and sanctioned a powerful oligarch often described as Putin’s point man in Ukraine. Zelensky also conducted military exercises close to the front.
“While the Kiev movements at the time were not preparations for a military offensive,” Trenin wrote in a recent article, “the Kremlin decided to seize them to increase the stakes.”
Trenin and other analysts have suggested that Russia is genuinely concerned that Kiev leaders could confuse US statements of support with an attempt to forcibly take back occupied regions.
Such a view is troubling, some observers said, and suggests a dangerous division between the Kremlin’s perspective on the conflict and how it is perceived by Ukraine and Western countries.
“There was no Ukrainian military effort underway that could justify the operations Russia is now conducting on Ukraine’s borders,” Gustav Gressel, a senior policy officer at the European Council for External Relations, wrote in a recent article.
“While the Kremlin’s fears are based on illusions, it believes these illusions entitle them to truly offensive actions.”