A New Invasion and its Repurcussions

A NEW INVASION AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS

Russia foreshadowed its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine in March and April of 2021. At that time, it beefed up forces in Crimea and near Ukraine, ostensibly in preparation for exercises, with total numbers reaching over 100,000 personnel.45 While many subsequently returned to their bases, the infrastructure remained.

This infrastructure provided groundwork for a second build-up of forces and equipment in the fall. Western and Russian experts debated whether or not Moscow was preparing a significant military action, signaling, exercising, or doing something else.46 Meanwhile, Russian forces kept coming. By mid-February 2022, Russia had roughly 200,000 troops in Belarus and Russia, massed around Ukraine.47 This was the force that invaded Russia’s neighbor from the north, east, and south starting on February 24.

Russia calls its invasion and continuing war against Ukraine a “special military operation.” Moscow says that its goals are the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. Although it has never specified what either term means, it initially likely hoped to see Ukraine’s government shift to one more in line with Moscow’s wishes and to impose limits on Ukraine’s military capacity and relationships with NATO member states. There is no reason to think that these goals have changed.

Russia’s military aims, however, have shifted since February 24. Its multi-axis attack was soon flummoxed, as much by its own poor tactics and planning as by brave Ukrainian resistance. The plan, such as it was, relied on a fairly warm welcome from Ukraine’s population. Once it was clear that this was not forthcoming, that Russia’s initial approach had failed, and that Kyiv was not going to fall easily, Russia’s Defence Ministry pulled forces out of Ukraine’s northern and central regions and declared it would focus its military efforts on securing the Donbas and Ukraine’s south. Since late March, fighting has been concentrated in these areas. Russia has been successful in holding much of the southern territory it took in the war’s early days over the summer made incremental progress in Donbas, where it took full control of Luhansk region in early July. But a Ukrainian counteroffensive from late August into October regained most of Kharkiv region and made inroads on all other fronts. Russia responded by announcing both a substantial mobilization and the annexation of unspecified portions of Ukrainian territory. It has also attacked Ukrainian infrastructure and, intentionally or not, civilian areas and made new nuclear threats.

Russia’s multi-axis attack was soon flummoxed, as much by its own poor tactics and planning as by brave Ukrainian resistance.

The war has meanwhile galvanized NATO. Member states have sanctioned Russia and are sending a variety of weapons, humanitarian aid, and other supplies to Ukraine, as well as training Ukrainian forces on Western equipment.48 But they are also bolstering their own posture. In 2020, a NATO official told the authors that the alliance intended to further increase its troop presence in both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea regions.49 Now, this is coming to pass, multifold. With Sweden and Finland joining the alliance, numerous European nations increasing their defense expenditures, and Eastern Europeans upgrading from Soviet-era equipment as they donate the latter to Ukraine, a larger, more modernized NATO Eastern front is taking shape.

Ukrainian servicemen raise the Ukrainian flag in Vysokopillia, the Kherson region, after the village was liberated from Russian occupation. September 4, 2022. (Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine)

NATO members have already substantially increased the number of fighter jets they have on alert across Eastern Europe. Since February 24, the alliance has doubled the number of multinational rotational battle groups, from four to eight, in Black Sea region member states Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Slovakia. During early February 2022, the battle groups in the Baltic Sea region totaled to up to approximately 5,000 troops.50

At the Madrid summit, the alliance’s SecretaryGeneral, Jens Stoltenberg, promised to beef up eastern battle groups to a brigade, and to increase the size of NATO’s joint action task force from 40,000 personnel to “well over” 300,000, assigned to specific locations. 51 Currently, there are about 40,000 troops under direct NATO command as part of the NATO Response Force, a multinational rapid reaction land, sea, and special operations force. US deployments consist of approximately100,000 troops under Operation Atlantic Resolve. 52 This means, according to the Congressional Research Service, that the United States deployed an additional 15,000 troops since February 2022.53 NATO members also increased their naval and air presence in Eastern Europe with over 130 allied fighter jets on high alert and more than 200 allied ships in the seas. 54 Once Sweden and Finland join, their ground and air capabilities will boost NATO’s Nordic and Baltic posture substantially.

Back in March, the US Defense Department assessed that Russia had committed about 75 percent of its military “to the fight in Ukraine” and it continues to concentrate a substantial amount of its fighting capacity there.55 This has meant reduced presence elsewhere: For example, since mid-May, about 100 vehicles, including dozens of personnel carriers, were spotted leaving the Alakutrtti military base near the Finnish border.56 By fall 2022, Russia had diverted as many as 80 percent of its estimated 30,000 ground forces in the Baltic Sea to Ukraine, although, notably, its northern air and naval posture remained largely untouched.57 Russia has, however, removed some S-300 air-defense systems that had been protecting St. Petersburg while satellite imagery suggested that four anti-aircraft bases had been emptied out of military equipment. 58

Yet Russia has also made some notably public promises of new deployments, such as

A UK Army M720 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) fires a training rocket on July 18, 2022 in Grafenwhöhr, Germany during Exercise Dynamic Front 22. (NATO)

suggesting that it might transfer the Iskander-M tactical missile system, which is capable of firing both conventional and nuclear ordnance, to Belarus.59 But although Belarus removed a nuclear neutrality clause from its constitution in 2021, basing nuclear weapons there would require new infrastructure and security measures.60

Moreover, Russian troops in the Baltic Sea region have remained fairly active. In April, Russian bombers practiced surgical strikes and its Baltic fleet conducted live fire exercises with air support, tested the air defense capabilities of Kinzhal surface to air missiles, and conducted anti-terror drills.61 In May, Russia rehearsed Baltic fleet long-range artillery fire against surface targets during naval maneuvers, and test-launched a Tsirkon cruise missile from the Admiral Groshkov frigate in the Barents Sea (the White Sea) at a target 1,000 km distant.62 Russia’s ally Belarus, meanwhile, carried out a sudden check of troop readiness and command training task performance on May 4, 2022, against the backdrop of US-led military exercises in Poland. The Belarus Ministry of Defence noted that its exercises would not pose a threat to Belarus’ neighbors.63

NATO has maintained its previously planned exercise schedule. This included the 18,000 personnel Defender 2022 and Swift Response in the Baltic Sea region and Poland in May (referenced above) and BALTOPS 2022 in June, with Swedish and Finnish participation. NATO spokesperson Oana Langeascu underlined that regularly scheduled exercises are not a response to Russia’s invasion but are meant to “help to remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding about our resolve to protect and defend every inch of Allied territory.”64 Russia, for its part, launched its own Baltic fleet exercises contemporaneous with BALTOPS 2022.65