Western intelligence estimates that Russia already has up to 100,000 troops positioned near to the border with Ukraine, along with tanks and artillery. Washington has suggested that force could rise to 175,000 by the end of January. The problem, however, is an awful lot of countries don’t want to see Putin lose either, because they want Putin and Russia as a counterweight. Some countries, ironically, want to see Russia as a counterweight against China. That’s where Japan and India and others in the Indo-Pacific come in. Others want to see Russia as a counterweight against the United States. This would be good for NATO, and it would also open up greater possibilities for a U.S.-Turkish partnership in the Middle East. Rather than a nuisance, Turkey could turn into the ally it is supposed to be. NATO is the logical means by which the United States can provide security reassurance to Europe and deter Russia. A war in Ukraine would revive NATO not as a democracy-building enterprise or as a tool for out-of-area expeditions like the war in Afghanistan but as the unsurpassed defensive military alliance that it was designed to be. Although Europeans will be demanding a greater military commitment to Europe from the United States, a broader Russian invasion of Ukraine should drive every NATO member to increase its defense spending. For Europeans, this would be the final call to improve Europe’s defensive capabilities—in tandem with the United States—in order to help the United States manage the Russian-Chinese dilemma. The territory Russia has gained In a Politico essay, Graham and scholar Rajan Menon proposed a framework for a negotiated outcome that begins with confidence-building measures between the US and Russia, rebuilding arms control treaties. The US and NATO would pledge that neither Ukraine nor Georgia will join NATO in the next several years or decades, though the possibility may be open someday. This would culminate in a “new security order for Russia,” they write. Russian academic Alexander Dynkin circulated a similar idea in the lead-up to the war. Biden, in his State of the Union address, framed this conflict as a battle between democracy and tyranny. He thinks he’s got clear sailing to be president in Russia from here to eternity, at least his eternity. He’s got two more six-year terms that can take him up to 2036 when he’ll be in his 80s. He will have been in power longer than any other Russian ruler in history. Russia-Ukraine War The United Nations has confirmed at least 2,149 civilian casualties, including 816 killed as of March 17, though these numbers are likely undercounts, as intense fighting in some areas has made it difficult to verify statistics. The US and its European allies have responded to Putin’s aggression with unprecedented sanctions, but have no plans to send troops to Ukraine, for good reason. On 27 May, Finance Minister Siluanov admitted that “money, huge resources are needed for the special operation”. He also confirmed that 8 trillion roubles (USD $120b) were required for the stimulus budget. We have to think about where we would have been in February of 2022. So the best case scenario is, of course, one in which Ukraine continues to be able to hold its own and if we helped build it up militarily, where it can make another push or another series of pushes. Following Ukrainian successes early on in the war, Russia has turned its attention towards Ukraine’s easternmost Donbas border region—and the more recent phase of the war has been going more in Moscow’s favor. If the Kremlin rapidly moved armored units to the west of the front line, it could cut off and trap much of Ukraine's ground troops without having to occupy major cities, experts said. Those effects may be most visceral for stomachs in the Middle East; Egypt and Yemen depend on Russian and Ukrainian wheat. The US has targeted numerous Russian banks, including two of Russia’s biggest, Sberbank and VTB. The US, along with other partners, have put bans on technology and other exports to Russia, and they’ve placed financial sanctions on oligarchs and other Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself. There’s a lot of sanctions, and the US and its partners have only increased the pressure since. President Joe Biden announced on March 8 that the US would place extreme limits on energy imports from Russia — the kind of last-resort option that few experts thought might happen because of the shock to energy prices and the global economy. Russia is committing possible war crimes in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are responding with their full military force. As the crisis in Ukraine unfolds, the West must not underestimate Russia. This would put the largest and most combat-effective friendly military on the European continent at the forefront of NATO's defence, according to the thinktank. Best of all, the ISW says, would be supporting Ukraine to victory and then helping it rebuild. Massive cyber-attacks sweep across Ukraine, targeting key national infrastructure. President Putin has clearly spent months closeted in isolation, studying his defence chiefs' plans to take over his West-leaning Slavic neighbour and bring it back into Moscow's orbit. We can see how effective our ATACMS were, for example, our Patriot batteries. Everybody else in the rest of the world would be wondering, not just, “Where is America? ” And if President Trump thinks that he’s going to be the leader of the free world when he comes back into office — well, think again. This is the best possible position that Vladimir Putin could possibly have. Is there seriously going to be any kind of opposition to him? “You put that in a city like Kharkiv, and if it’s a populated area, no matter what you were aiming at, no matter what the target, it’s going to hurt civilians,” she said. https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-isnt-nato-sending-troops-to-ukraine.html and 29 of the new Strategic Concept leave no ambiguity on the continued role played by nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantee of Allied security. But to disable the corrosive effect of Moscow’s nuclear blackmail against Allies, a more robust declaratory nuclear policy by NATO is in order. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Ukraine – however improbable - cannot be ruled out. Russia could seize much of the east and demand a new political arrangement from Kyiv or simply annex the area, as it did with Crimea, experts said. Maybe Russia cannot provide enough troops to cover such a vast country. In sum, the United States, its NATO allies, and Ukraine could impose immediate and painful costs on any Russian invaders. Kusti Salm, the permanent secretary at Estonia's Ministry of Defence, is one of those pushing for more military assistance to Ukraine.
https://euronewstop.co.uk/why-isnt-nato-sending-troops-to-ukraine.html
