Understanding the Ukrainian Crises in 5 paragraphs

In between the NFL playoffs and the Olympics, the European continent is once again the epicenter of a geopolitical thriller similar to a Tom Clancy novel. Russia/Putin has once again created a manufactured crisis by aggressively building up over 150k Russian forces on the Ukrainian western, southern, and northern border with Belarus.??I have spent a considerable amount of time in Ukraine for multiple different reasons over the last 5 years.??I would like to provide a quick introduction, to the casual news goers on why Ukraine is so important to the West and what to expect in the next couple of weeks.

How We Got Here – Modern Day

The historical relationship between Russia / Soviet Union goes back for centuries. For the sake of brevity let’s start with what happened in the last eight years. In 2014, after the Ukrainian people ousted the pro-Russian Ukrainian President. Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked through its southern island of Crimea. In 2015 Russia, conducted a cyber-attack that turned off the electricity during Christmas for a third of Ukraine. These actions, coupled with Russia’s invasion of the sovereign nation of Georgia in 2008 was a test of Western will and most importantly NATO’s resolve as a congregation of unified countries. Although not a NATO member, the U.S and most NATO member of countries treat Ukraine as a NATO member.??In response to the 2014 invasion, the U.S. began training and equipping the Ukrainian armed forces.??The training and equipping increased substantially with the conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian armed forces in the Donbas region.?

What Putin Wants

Put simply, Putin and Russia want to rewrite the post-cold European security architecture.??As Putin stated years ago, he feels that the greatest failure of the 20th?century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1999, NATO began to accept former Soviet republics into membership.??Former Soviet republics such as Estonia, Latvia, and Poland all share borders with Russia. Ukraine shares the largest of all borders in eastern Europe with Russia. Putin feels that a “red-line” is for Ukraine to accept a formal membership.??A secondary effort of Putin is to drive a wedge within NATO.??During the Trump presidency, NATO was weakened.??Trump openly questioned its relevancy and openly “called out” members of NATO for not meeting the 2% threshold of their GDP to go towards their defense budgets.??Now, the second most important member of NATO, Germany, has become increasingly become dependent upon Russian energy and has a new Chancellor for the first time in 16 years. In fact, over a third of Germany’s energy comes from Russia.??Putin knows he has Germany where he wants them. This has been most evident in Germany not giving the Ukrainians offensive weapons and only supplying them with helmets and some medical equipment. This is in sharp contrast to most of the other NATO countries providing Ukraine with offensive weapons within the last 30 days. The third element of what Putin wants is to unite Russian-speaking people.??Much like Hitlers pretext of war in the?Sudetenland?in the late 1930’s. Putin has used this as a justification in its backing of separatists fighting against Ukraine in the Donbas region. He will likely use this on more of a macro level in his aggression into the greater Ukraine.

Will the Ukrainians Fight

Absolutely.??Ukrainians have sought a sovereign Ukraine for centuries. Now that they have it, they are not going to relinquish it without a fight.??I have visited and spent time with Ukrainians Soldiers in the training area near Lviv and the Donbas region of Ukraine.??Their morale is high and their feelings towards their country’s sovereignty are without reproach.??Not only are Soldiers highly motivated, but so are the civilian population. In preparations for this conflict, Ukrainian citizens have banded together to form territorial defense forces across Ukraine.??Similar to WW2 partisans of Southern Europe.

What Will War Look Like

The opening salvo of Russian aggression will be similar to any modern conventional force’s initial actions.??There will be a Cyber Attack, infiltration of Russian Spetnaz (Special Forces) and FSB (Their CIA) followed by aircraft and long-range missiles bombing key Ukrainian military nodes, and ultimately a ground invasion. Depending on the Russian Army’s territorial goals, they could be on the outskirts of Kyiv within two weeks.?The Ukrainians will fight through their conventional forces and put up a sturdy defense but will be overwhelmed by the superior capabilities of the Russian forces.??Where it will become interesting, and where the Russians will get bloodied will be in the larger cities.??Similar to our invasion of Iraq, we moved quickly and within 3 weeks we were in Baghdad.??That’s when we were met with the asymmetrical spoiling attacks.??In the cities is where conventional armed forces like the Russians are mitigated to their smallest form.??If the Russians choose to go into the larger cities, this war could become much like the stalemate we ended as a country in Iraq.??

Let’s hope diplomacy wins in the end. In the meantime, I will continue to pray for many of my Ukrainian friend’s safety.