We don't want a war, says Russia. Ok so well then...

It's difficult to believe someone who says he doesn't want a war but still takes all the appropriate steps to launch one at short notice. Vladimir Putin has been pretty quiet on the subject for some weeks now but a lot of Russian officials have gone round saying Russia isn't about to invade Ukraine and doesn't want a war.The lugubrious Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said it many times that Russia is not in an invasion mood. But then he has warned that the West/Nato hasn't offered any concessions vis a vis Moscow's demands for a change in the security architecture in Europe - no Nato troops in Eastern Europe and no offer of alliance membership to Ukraine. This is diplomaticspeak for, if there is an invasion it won't be Russia's fault it will be Nato's fault. So he's kind of playing both sides of the argument. But the message from Moscow is, there will be no invasion. Yet absolutely no one in authority in the West believes this Moscow mantra because of what is going on right now along the Russian/Ukrainian border and on the Belarus/Ukrainian border. If Putin has decided to invade whatever happens in the next few days, he's not going to preannounce it. We will wake up one morning to find that 100,000 Russian troops are going hell for leather for Kyiv. It might even surprise Sergey Lavrov. Only those really close to Putin will get the nod about when the invasion is on. They include his defence minister, Sergey Shoigu, and his national security adviser, Nicolae Patrushev. They are both hardliners who would like the same thing as their boss, a revival of the Soviet empire and that's not possible in their eyes without absorbing Ukraine into the family of Russian-dominated nations. So both Shoigu and Patrushev I'm sure will be bending Putin's ears about the importance of acting now before it's too late. Lavrov is probably not part of these inner discussions. So as the United Nations Security Council meets to warn Russia of the perils of bringing large-scale war back to Europe after the prolonged peace since the end of the Second World War, Putin is holding his cards so close to his chest that all these Russian officials going around saying the last thing they want is war actually haven't a clue what the Kremlin boss is thinking.

Is Putin listening to western leaders or just pretending?

As the world waits for catastrophe in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is at least agreeing to see or speak on the phone to all manner of political VIPs from the West to talk to him about not invading. Does it mean he is actually hearing what they are all saying - including this coming week from Boris Johnson who is due to ring him - or is he just playing a game and chuckling to himself? I doubt he needs advice or appeals from anyone. He knows what he is going to do, invade or not, probably the former in one form or another. So what is the point of all this telephone and shuttle diplomacy? Putin has surely got the message by now that if he invades Russia, his closest mates and possibly him too and the whole Russian economy are going to take a massive sanctions blow and thousands of Nato troops and fancy equipment are going to start arriving in Eastern Europe as a deterrent, likely to stay for the foreseeable future if not for ever. So what it's really about is Western leaders and key ministers getting involved to demonstrate at some point in the future that they did all they could to persuade the Russian leader to stop being an aggressive hoodlum and pull back his troops from the border with Ukraine. What they don't want is for some nasty newspaper columnist to point out that while Putin was arranging his troops in invasion order along the border, Boris was having another party in Number 10, Liz Truss, Foreign Secretary, was having her hair done, President Joe Biden was rowing with Senator Joe Manchin again about his $2 trillion domestic legislation, President Macron was looking across the English Channel with irritation and the new German chancellor was holidaying in Baden-Baden. So it's all go go go. Desperate to leave all his troubles behind him, Boris is hawking off to Eastern Europe to strengthen deterrence (?), Macron is on the phone to Putin talking about a new security architecture in Europe, whatever that means, Biden appears resigned to a Russian invasion and Chancellor Olaf Scholz is trying on new helmet headgear to send to Ukraine, bless. Non-stop activity. But Putin calmly picks up the phone when it rings or ushers the latest Western visitor into his Kremlin boudoir. But really it's all an act. He KNOWS what he is going to do. He has now decided. Of that I am sure.

Before another war breaks out, just remember Afghanistan and how it is today

My Sunday Times colleague Christina Lamb has written a devastating piece about life for families in Afghanistan today. It is a country in a spiral of desperation, hunger, depression and hopelessness. Just five months after the let's-get-the-hell-out-of-here evacuation of all international troops and thousands of lucky Afghans, Afghanistan under Taliban rule has fallen into a giant black hole of despair. The UN World Food Programme is trying against all odds to provide enough food to stop children dying of malnutrition but it's a Herculean challenge. One thing that seems clear from Christina's article is that the Taliban don't care. One so-called spokesman said the problems facing the country weren't affecting his lot, they were fine thank you. Presumably they have their own ways of getting plenty of food to fill their bellies. Recently there was a meeting between western nations and the Taliban to talk abut the dire situation in Afghanistan but, I guess understandably, the West wanted assurances about the treatment of women, education for children and all the other things which the Taliban appears to be rigidly opposed to. Since none of this is going to happen there is no likelihood that the West will unfreeze the billions of dollars of aid which not that long ago was pouring into the country, sometimes in suitcases packed with dollar bills. So doom, gloom and disaster for the Afghan people. No western leaders seem to be bothered. The only thing I have heard Boris Johnson talk about is how proud he is about the way the British military evacuated so many people in such a short period. For God's sake! Now Putin wants to add to the world's woes by considering causing death and destruction in Ukraine. Despite his denials. Another war, more misery and terror and death and life-changing injuries. And for what? So that Putin can live his dream of being the leader of a revived Soviet empire.

Is the Russian army ready for a bloody war?

Tank for tank, missile for missile, Russia is so far ahead of neighbour Ukraine in terms of long-range firepower and combat manoeuvrability that a Kremlin-ordered invasion could end up being a mad dash to Kiev. Not unlike the rapid advance by the US 3rd Infantry Division and the Marine Corps’ 1st Marine Division, equipped with M1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles which stormed through southern Iraq to reach Baghdad in April 2003. The Russian army today is far better organised and equipped for a combat operation than it has been for a decade, with a motivated and more disciplined officer class and a high-readiness structure based around multiple battalion tactical groups (BTGs). However, is this new army waiting on Ukraine’s borders for the go ahead from President Putin ready for a long bloody war with a neighbour now also better armed, Nato-trained and combat-experienced from nearly eight years of fighting Russians and separatists in the east of the country? “After the end of the Cold War, Russia saw the embarrassing operations in Chechnya [1994-1996 and 1999 to 2009] . Things began improving when the military showed its ability to employ cyber weapons against Estonia in 2007, and again against Georgia along with some conventional forces a year later [when Russia sent troops to back two self-proclaimed republics],” said Andrew Krepinevich, 20 years in the US Army and a former senior Pentagon official. “But both were small operations. More impressive were the operations of the so-called Ukrainian separatists in the past few years aided by the Russian military,” he said. “However I do not think today’s Russian military is highly capable of dealing effectively with a broad spectrum insurgency which could spring up if Putin attempted to conquer the country,” he said. He also cast doubt on whether the Russian army was capable of conducting large, sustained conventional operations if Ukrainian resistance proved resilient. “Its logistics are not that good,” he said. Twenty years ago, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia’ s military had become a hollowed-out shell. No greater evidence of the transformation from superpower status to crumpled third rateness was the graveyard of rusty submarines abandoned in polluted bays along the Kola Peninsula. When Putin came to power as Russian president on May 7, 2000, his first ambition was to revive and rebuild the military. He made it clear he wanted Russia once again to be a force to be reckoned with. While the United States gained all-arms combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan and became engrossed in counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency, Putin launched a military modernisation programme. He converted the Russian army from an organisation that was reliant on underpaid, badly equipped and often bullied conscripts into a largely professional volunteer force of 400,000 soldiers, on much-improved wages. Absenteeism , the bane of the old conscript Russian army, was eliminated. The average Russian army lieutenant now gets the equivalent of $1,000 a month, better than their civilian counterparts. All Russian ground troop commanders also now have combat experience, according to Sergei Shoigu, defence minister. Putin had a dream of resuscitating even a small part of what used to be the mighty Soviet empire, and to achieve that he needed a military behind him which his perceived adversaries would be forced to respect. Today, Pentagon chiefs and US combat commanders who have seen the way the Russian military have made their presence felt in different parts of the world, especially in Syria, openly acknowledge that Russia is back. “The compliment that we have to pay to Russia is that they are a learning and adaptive force,” General Philip Breedlove, former supreme allied commander Europe (Saceur from 2013-2016), told The New York Times. “Every time we see them in conflict, they get a little better and a little better,” he said. Putin’s boasting in 2018 of Russia’s new exotic weapons, notably a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide-vehicle missile with unlimited range and a nuclear cruise missile was in some ways a side issue. It was a demonstration of his increasing confidence that Russia was seemingly taking the lead in developing and deploying the next generation of weapons. However, the improved status of Russia’s conventional forces is now the real focus. The putative invasion force on Ukraine’s borders is equipped, for example, with at least three dozen Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles which could hit Kiev and other critical military targets without even crossing the frontier. Russian forces deployed in Syria to support the regime of President Bashar al-Assad proved beyond question that they could carry out multi-faceted operations, launching precision-guided missiles both from land and from the sea. In 2017 a Russian frigate fired three Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea and hit Isis targets in eastern Syria. US commanders in Syria were taken by surprise. It turned out they didn’t even know the Russian navy had such weapons operating in the region.

Fighter jet overboard!

The US Navy is to begin an urgent recovery operation to find an $83million F-35C stealth fighter which toppled off an aircraft carrier into the South China Sea. The pilot of the joint strike fighter was safely rescued after he ejected when the aircraft crash-landed on the deck of the carrier, USS Carl Vinson, during naval exercises in the region. However, as the drama unfolded, the aircraft slipped off the edge of the deck and fell into the water. The F-35C Lightning II contains the most advanced electronic and communications technology and were it to fall into the hands of the Chinese navy it would provide a goldmine of US naval secrets. The US 7th Fleet, responsible for naval missions in the region, said “recovery operations arrangements” were being made to locate the aircraft on the seabed and bring it back to the surface. The average depth of the South China Sea which covers more than 1,400 square miles is less than 4,000ft, making the recovery operation not too challenging, according to experts. It is the second time one of these latest carrier-borne fighter jets has had to be hauled up to the surface from an ocean seabed. Last year the Royal Navy lost an F-35B jump-jet version of the strike fighter in the Mediterranean after a failed take-off from the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. Concerned that the Russian Navy might attempt to hunt for the aircraft, the F-35B was successfully salvaged from the seabed on December 7 from where the wreckage rested one mile below, with the help of the Americans and Italians after a two-week search. In the latest incident the USS Carl Vinson had been involved in a training mission with a second US carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln . A US 7th Fleet spokesman would not divulge the precise location of the Carl Vinson in the South China Sea. Following the statements from the 7th Fleet, China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (Plan) is expected to send ships to watch the salvage process. The F-35C could be intact at the bottom of the sea because of the way it tumbled slowly off the deck. Seven sailors were injured in the incident, including the pilot. All are now recovered or in stable condition, the navy said. “Impact to the flight deck was superficial and all equipment for flight operations is operational,” Lieutenant Mark Langford, spokesman for the 7th Fleet, said.

Will Biden dare to freeze Putin's assets?

Freezing the substantial assets of a leader of a country is a big deal. Freezing the hugely substantial assets of one Vladimir Putin would be a mega-move which could have unpredictable consequences. Joe Biden put forward this idea yesterday. He mused to reporters that he could sanction Putin personally if he authorised the invasion of Ukraine. There are some commentators who have warned in the past that any action taken by the West to freeze Putin's bank accounts could be seen in the Kremlin as an act of war. Putin's wealth is a mystery but there have been rumours over the years that, allegedly, he has bank accounts in Geneva, although not, clearly, under his own name. I don't have any evidence to prove tbis one way or the other. But I suspect that those clever chaps and ladies who work in the US Treasury's terrorism and financial intelligence branch will have a pretty good idea where Putin has hidden his money. The Kremlin just talks about Putin having his salary cheques sent to a bank in Moscow. That may well be true but there is little doubt he has other financial assets outside the homeland of Russia and if Biden can get his hands on such assets and block them, Putin would be furious to the point of apoplexy. It's a high-risk suggestion by Biden. For years when Russia was having sanctions imposed on numerous individuals and companies for all kinds of malevolent deeds, notably the invasion and annexing of Crimea, the alleged involvement in the fatal poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in a London hotel and the claimed GRU role in the near-fatal poisoning of ex-Russian intelligence officer turned MI6 doube agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, questions were raised then about why Putin's personal assets had not been frozen. Basically no one dared do it. Now Biden has it in his mind. I wonder whether this sanction, this personal attack on Putin's personal wealth, might be the best deterrent of all. We will see.

Is Western intelligence right to be warning of an imminent invasion

Certainly all the signs from the Ukraine/Russia border are that Vladimir Putin is just moments away from ordering an invasion of Ukraine. Judging by remarks from Boris Johnson and others the latest secret intelligence landing on their desks is scary stuff. That may well be based on sound analysis of satellite images but does it take into account Putin himself? The Russian leader is thinking long term. What will he achieve if he invades, what will he achieve if he doesn't invade? He hasn't made up his mind yet which way to go but in the meantime he lets his soldiers prepare the ground for a lightning raid as Boris put it. Does the Western intel include top secret communications between the Kremlin and the Russian ministry of defence, is there an insider agent spilling the beans? This is all James Bond stuff but even if this is actually happening right now can the intelligence really be trusted? One thing Putin is good at is spreading false information and propaganda. So whatever Boris and Biden and co have been reading in the last few days from reports marked For Their Eyes Only, how much of it is absolutely 100 per cent accurate and how much is based on Putinised clever tricks? Putin now knows that if he orders an invasion, the 40,000-strong Nato Response Force will be deployed to Eastern Europe and the Baltics and, who knows, eventually a shipload of tanks and armoured vehicles setting up shop in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland which surely is the one thing the Russian president is trying to stop. So it might make him think twice or it might make him even more determined to invade, as I blogged recently on the question of Nato arming Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. On the face of it, Putin wants Ukraine to be under Russia's wing, controllable and loyal to Moscow, like the good old days. But will an invasion, involving potentially having a Moscow puppet leader in Kyiv, give him what he wants or will it lead to decades of insurgency, instability and increasing trouble back home? Long term that could be disastrous for him and for the well-being of Russia. These are the questions that must be filling his mind right now. I wonder how much of this deliberation is included in the Western intelligence reports that appear to be suggesting Putin is dead set on military action, and soon.