RUSSIA-UKRAINE CRISIS.

The following note was written by me way back when Russia had not yet invaded Ukraine. Of course now it is already 2 years since the time that happened. 

 Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union and when it broke up in 1991 due to the perestroika of Gorbachev, and partly also due to the prohibitive costs of the Russia-Afghan war, Ukraine became independent. Ukraine has a population of 4.4 crores.

In 2014, the then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych who was pro-Russia favoured closer ties with Russia and rejected an association agreement with NATO. This led to mass protests and he was removed as a leader in 2014. Currently, the President is Volodimir Zelensky.

Russia responded by annexing the Crimean peninsula which had about 2.4 million population of which 65% are Russian, and also gave support to a rebellion that broke out in the Eastern part of Ukraine known as Donbas(Donets basin which has big reserves of coal) North of the sea of Azov. Donbas is an industrial region with a population of 2.3 million people and Russians are the largest minority there consisting of 39% of its population while the Ukrainians are in the majority.

Russia has severely criticized US and NATO for providing Ukraine with weapons and holding joint army drills. Russia also opposed the plans by some NATO members to set up military training centres in Ukraine.  

Russia asked the West that Ukraine’s demand to join NATO be permanently turned down. Anyway, it is not easy for Ukraine to join NATO as it has to have the approval of all the 30 member countries of NATO.

Joe Biden had not been ambiguous about the entry of Ukraine into NATO and the US is actually wary of getting military into that region and spoiling its relations with Russia.  Nevertheless, currently it was forced to make ready 8500 of its troops to be deployed in Eastern Europe.

Russia has currently massed about 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border but it denies any plans to invade Ukraine and accuses the West of aggravating the tension in the area.

If Russia invades Ukraine, the entire West would support Ukraine and things can get tough for Russia although only the US and UK have promised to actually send troops so far into the region. Germany merely wants to send a medical team.

If Russia indeed invades Ukraine, then it appears as though one of the measures being contemplated by the West is to bar Russia from SWIFT, which would cut all their international transactions and would damage them badly because the profits from oil & gas production account for 40% of Russia’s revenue. The US can also block Russia from accessing the US Dollar. The US is also contemplating imposing export controls on Russia for high-tech equipment.

Things do not look good for Russia if it invades Ukraine and one only hopes that they would not be irrational enough to do that and inflict self damage. Russia would get bogged down and the war would become too expensive for it to handle. Perhaps the West is seriously underestimating Russia’s rationality to launch such a stupid offensive.

Fighting in another hostile country is no mean business as initially Russia and then the US both have learned in Afghanistan. In the Afghan war Russia lost 26,000 soldiers including 3000 officers, it lost 118 aircraft and 333 helicopters, 147 tanks, and 1314 armoured personnel carriers. Its troop deployment then was 620,000. Its troops stayed in Afghanistan for 10 long years and this placed a huge economic burden on the Soviet Union which hastened its breakup.

A modern war is immensely expensive and the Soviet Union was much stronger than the Russia of today. If the Soviet Union had to eat humble pie in that battle, today’s Russia does not stand a chance at all, and that too fighting the economically much more powerful West. If it attempts anything like that, then it would only be asking for very serious trouble.  One can only hope that Russia would not attempt such a desperate move, because that would have international ramifications as Russia is a big nuclear country possessing 3500 nuclear missiles.