A fearful new world, imperiled by Russia’s subterfuge

By Anne Applebaum,  

Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column and contributes to the Post Partisan blog.

In the Western imagination, the words “war” and “invasion” carry clear connotations. From books, movies and television, we know that such events involve tanks, airplanes and artillery, as well as soldiers in uniform, advanced weaponry, sophisticated communications. They look like the invasion of Iraq or, to go back in time, D-Day.

So far, the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine looks nothing like these battles. This war involves not soldiers but local thugs and volunteers, some linked to the ex-president, Viktor Yanukovych , some from criminal gangs and some who mistakenly think they are fighting for some form of benign local autonomy.

They are being led not by officers in uniform but by men from Russian military intelligence and special forces, some wearing camouflage without insignia, some communicating with “activists” by telephone. They are supplied with Russian logistics and a few Russian automatic weapons, but for the most part not tanks or planes. There is no “shock and awe” bombing campaign, just systematic, organized attacks on police stations, city councils, airports.

Unlike the planners of D-Day or Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Russians organizing the invasion of Ukraine don’t need an immediate victory. They have flexible goals, and they are prepared to adjust their strategy depending on how much resistance they encounter. In the long term, Russia clearly hopes to annex eastern and southern Ukraine; maps to that effect have begun to circulate.

But in the meantime, the Kremlin may settle for disrupting Ukraine’s presidential elections, scheduled for May 25, or for destabilizing Ukraine’s shaky provisional government, perhaps forcing an economic crash. The Russians may hope to provoke a civil war, or something that appears to be a civil war, which would then require a Russian “peacekeeping mission.”

Many of these tactics are familiar, though we haven’t seen them for a long time. In 1945, Soviet secret policemen, given the task of transforming disparate Eastern European nations into communist puppet states, also began by organizing local thugs and volunteers — criminals and war-damaged sociopaths as well as people who mistakenly believed they were fighting for a form of benign socialism — into paramilitary and secret police forces, exactly like the ones operating in eastern Ukraine. Then as now, they led from the shadows. Then as now, they adjusted their strategy depending on how much resistance they encountered and how much support they received.

But the 21st century is not the 20th century. When Polish communists, backed by Soviet communists, falsified the results of a national referendum in 1946, there weren’t many international observers around to complain. In the past few days, by contrast, the Internet has lit up with photographs of “pro-Russian activists” carrying Russian-made RPGs, as well as audio clips of Russians barking orders. The effect of these revelations, however, has been to encourage the Russians to lie more brazenly and aggressively. The Russian foreign minister continues to insist that “Moscow is not interested in destabilizing Ukraine,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on the United Nations to condemn Ukraine’s weak and confused attempts to defend itself. Russian television — watched by many in eastern Ukraine — continues to denounce nonexistent violence coming from “fascist Kiev” and is even showing politicized weather reports: Dark clouds are gathering over Donetsk while there is sun in Crimea. These language games and disinformation campaigns are now far more sophisticated than anything the Soviet Union ever produced.

This combination — old-fashioned Sovietization plus slick modern media — is genuinely new, so much so that it’s fair to say we are witnessing a new kind of war, and a new kind of invasion. Thirteen years ago, in the wake of 9/11, the United States suddenly had to readjust its thinking to asymmetric warfare, the kinds of battles that tiny groups of terrorists can fight against superior military powers. Later, we relearned the tactics of counterinsurgency in Iraq.

But now Europe, the United States and above all the Ukrainians need to learn to cope with masked warfare — the Russian term is maskirovka — which is designed to confuse not just opponents but also the opponents’ potential allies. As I’ve written, the West urgently needs to rethink its military, energy and financial strategies toward Russia. But more specific new policies will also be needed to fight the masked invasions that may follow in Moldova or, in time, the Baltic States if this one succeeds.

Americans and Europeans should begin to rethink the funding and governance of our international broadcasters in order to counter the new war of words. We should also begin to reinforce the local police forces of the states that border the new Russian empire; NATO’s F-16s cannot fight thugs who are storming the town hall. This isn’t just about spending money: We need more special forces, more “human” intelligence, not just more ships and planes. Above all, we need to be prepared, in advance, for what may come. It’s a new world we are now entering, and we need new tools to cope with it.

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Has the Ukraine crisis been defused?

David Ignatius

Has the Obama administration really found the famous “exit ramp” in Ukraine that will provide an eventual diplomatic resolution of the crisis? It’s too early to know, but there were certainly signs of progress Thursday in Geneva, where seven hours of negotiations produced what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called “a compromise, of sorts.”

President Obama doubtless will get brickbats from congressional Republicans if he’s seen to be making concessions they’ll claim ratify Moscow’s bullying in Ukraine. But this has always been a fight that mattered more to Russia than to the West. President Vladimir Putin showed in recent days that he was prepared to take Ukraine to the brink of civil war to get his way. Even if Obama had been ready for that confrontation, Europe wasn’t.

If the deal holds, it’s likely to open the way for what many U.S. strategists have seen as the most stable path for Ukraine — a country that looks east and west at the same time. The Euromaidan protests last winter showed that western Ukrainians want passionately to be part of Europe. The Russian-speaking protesters who massed in eastern Ukraine may have been orchestrated by Moscow, but they feel deep ties with Russia. What Thursday’s initial deal says is: Stand down.

Compromise is always hard to swallow. President John Kennedy was so worried about public reaction to the secret deal he made with Moscow to avert the Cuban missile crisis that details were suppressed until long after his death. Yet that negotiation is remembered now as Kennedy’s finest moment. Obama will be lucky if Ukraine is remembered similarly, as a dangerous confrontation that was defused.

The consequences of the alternative path, of an ever-escalating crisis, were highlighted this week by Australian historian Christopher Clark, author of “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.” In a lecture at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Clark compared the Ukraine crisis with the 1914 catastrophe.

Clark noted the similarities between 100 years ago and today. There was a “weary titan” then in Britain, just as some see in today’s United States. And in both cases, there was the shock of an unanticipated crisis in a fragile Eastern European country, which propelled nations toward the brink. The big difference is that despite Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine, Western nations responded with what Clark called “caution and circumspection” rather than lockstep escalation.

Clark was asked about one of his book’s most interesting sub-themes, which is that the conflict a century ago was in part a “crisis of masculinity.” European leaders were so determined to be “firm” and “upright” about commitments that they drove straight into a wall.

This got me to thinking about the central personalities in this drama, Putin and Obama. There is something of the summer of 1914 about Putin. It’s not clear whether he sees himself as the tsar or the gamekeeper when he’s photographed hunting tigers, or shooting whales with a crossbow, or going bare-chested when fishing or riding horses. But he’s evidently a man with something to prove, confident and insecure at the same time.

Putin wants to be the bad boy. As Obama said memorably of him: “He’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom.”

Obama, in contrast, has shown himself once more to be the opposite of a macho politician. He is reserved and analytical, occasionally caught shirtless on vacation but rarely photographed with the top buttons of his shirt undone. He’s the good boy in the class, sometimes to a fault.

Far from marching off the cliff, Obama stayed safely on the sidewalk. If he’d been guiding one of the major European nations in that summer of 1914, one senses that he might have avoided the reflexive mobilization for war that proved so disastrous. That sense of caution would have been derided as “weak” in 1914, as Obama is now. As Clark observes, hawkish arguments always tend to resonate better in crises than dovish ones.

“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing . . . blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world,” Clark writes in the book’s concluding passage.

Whatever his faults, Obama is no sleepwalker. He has been acutely aware of the dangers in Ukraine. He appealed for, and finally demanded, de-escalation by Putin. The macho bully seized Crimea and may well gain effective control of eastern Ukraine. The wary diplomat appears, for now, to have averted war. Each side can reasonably claim success.

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Ignatius writes a twice-a-week foreign affairs column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

By David Ignatius, 

Published: April 18 

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