Last month, Russia’s three-way army pressed the border between Russia and Ukraine. On the 10th of this month, Russia and Belarus conducted a 10-day large-scale joint military exercise in an area less than 200 kilometers away from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
According to NATO estimates, in this joint military exercise code-named “Allied Determination 2022” (Allied Determination 2022), Russia sent Russia’s largest military deployment in Belarus since the end of the Cold War. S-400 surface-to-air missiles, armored air defense systems and Su-35 fighter jets.
The Russian Defense Ministry said six warships had arrived at the Sevastopol military port in Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
Although officials in both Moscow and Minsk have said that the Russian military will withdraw after the military exercise on February 20. But Western officials remain concerned that the troops could invade Ukraine along with the 100,000 Russian troops that Chen Bing previously had on Ukraine’s eastern border. NBC News quoted U.S. defense and intelligence agencies as assessing that the Russian army may launch a full-scale invasion, with tanks arriving in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, within 48 hours.
Despite the pressure of the Russian army, Ukrainian society is “stable as usual” and there is no obvious social panic. But in the face of Russia’s naval blockade, the Ukrainian government, which had previously believed that “the probability of Russia’s total attack is very low”, accused the exercise of being a “destructive act that severely damaged the security situation.” Kiev strongly criticized Russia for violating international law by setting large open waters as a restricted area on the grounds of conducting missile and artillery shooting training. At the same time, the “Washington Post” reported that Ukraine will also hold a defense exercise on the 20th, deploying armed drones and anti-tank weapon systems.
“These actions constitute a new threat to the sovereignty of Ukraine’s territorial waters and the sovereignty of the exclusive maritime economic zone, which the Russian Federation uses to block the commonly used sea lanes have rendered these waters directly unnavigable and prevented ships from entering Ukrainian seaports, especially in the Sea of Azov.”
In a phone call with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that the drills would affect commerce at sea.
Western countries in Europe and the United States are worried that the Russian military exercise will add a new breakthrough for the invasion of Ukraine, so that in addition to attacking from Crimea or the eastern region of Ukraine, the Russian army can also go south through Belarus; even if it does not become a prelude to the invasion, It is also possible that Russia will keep its armaments in Belarus, with the arrow on the line and ready to go.
Countries such as the United States, the Netherlands and South Korea have all warned their citizens to leave Ukraine immediately.
1,700 U.S. troops belonging to the 82nd Airborne Division have arrived in Poland. The Wall Street Journal quoted anonymous U.S. officials as saying that the White House has approved the Ministry of Defense’s plan and will set up emergency shelters such as checkpoints and tents in Poland in the near future. Invasion, will be responsible for the resettlement of 30,000 U.S. citizens evacuated from Ukraine. The United States also emphasized that there was no U.S. military assistance during the journey of citizens leaving Ukraine.
In an interview with NBC on February 10, President Biden warned U.S. citizens in Ukraine to leave the country immediately and that he would not send troops into Ukraine to assist in the evacuation. Because once troops are dispatched, it may trigger a confrontation between the United States and Russia, trigger a full-scale conflict, and lead to a “world war”.
Biden made it clear in the interview: “This is not like confronting a terrorist organization – we are facing the largest regular army in the world – the situation at hand (compared to the fall of Kabul) is completely different … a different Be careful, the situation could spiral out of control in a split second.”
The U.S. government last month called on U.S. citizens to leave Ukraine voluntarily, and the State Department also evacuated librarians and non-essential staff.
The Dutch government also asked Dutch citizens still in Ukraine to evacuate as soon as possible on the same day, and has moved the station of diplomatic representatives from Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, to Lviv in western Ukraine, the Dutch BNR radio station reported.
According to the “Yonhap News Agency” report, South Korea’s foreign ministry announced today that it has raised the travel warning for the entire Ukraine to the highest level 4, and it is expected that from the 13th, Chinese people will be banned from traveling. At the same time, he also called on the local Koreans to evacuate urgently. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed out that, including diplomats, there are still 341 South Koreans in Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Blinken also said today (11) that Russia may invade Ukraine before the closing of the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 20.
“We’re in a window of time where aggression can happen at any time, and that includes, to be clear, during the Winter Olympics,” he said.
Threatened by tensions between Russia and Ukraine, NATO members Lithuania and Denmark, which occupy the Baltic gateway and strategic location, have been discussing the introduction of US troops for the past two days. Russia has military bases in the Baltic Sea.
At present, the diplomatic dialogue between Russia and Western officials has stalled. Russia has asked the United States and its allies to reject Ukraine’s bid to join NATO. Scholars believe that to resolve the conflict, NATO’s strategic repositioning is imminent.
The West insisted there was no room for negotiation, but said it was willing to negotiate with Moscow over missile deployments and military exercises in the eastern European countries closest to Russia.
Ukraine and Russia held a day of talks on Thursday with no progress. The talks sought to end an eight-year conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Not only did the British-Russian Foreign Ministers’ Summit break up, the “Normandy Mechanism Four-Power Talks: The Second Round in Berlin” and the marathon negotiations on Thursday night were also unsuccessful.
British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday. He was publicly mocked by Lavrov as: “There is no diplomatic preparation at all… The interaction between the two sides, Russia is like talking to the deaf, it is a complete waste of time!”
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclosed to the Kommersant newspaper that the routine exercises of the Russian army on Russian soil are all reasonable, and the current crisis atmosphere is just an outbreak of hysterical “Russophobia” in Western countries themselves.
To make matters worse, the European-continental shuttle diplomacy mainly promoted by France and Germany suffered a major setback in the “Normandy Mechanism Four-Country Secret Talk” held in Berlin on the 10th. After 10 hours of intense negotiations in Berlin, the representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France not only made no breakthrough in negotiation, but also the “Putin KGB old friend and confidant” and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Kozak who appeared on behalf of the Kremlin. (Dmitry Kozak), who also left the stage at the end of the negotiation, led a delegation back to Moscow on his own at the ninth hour of the negotiation.
Before leaving, Kozak said that the four-nation interaction in Berlin was basically “no achievement and zero progress”. At the negotiating table, Russia and Ukraine are still in a great and irreconcilable way over the interpretive perspective and actual content of the Minsk Agreement – especially constitutional privileges for separatists in eastern Ukraine, recognition of self-government and comprehensive amnesty – differences.
The German “Der Spiegel” analysis believes that the current situation in Ukraine has entered the “highest risk stage”, and any misjudgment may lead to an out-of-control situation on the European continent. February 20 is not only “the scheduled end date of the military exercise in western Russia”, but also the closing day of the “2022 Munich Security Conference” held by European and American countries. On this day, no matter whether the Russian army does anything or not, as long as the troops do not withdraw on the 20th, they will It is an unpredictable situation.
Dr. Xie Tian, Chair Professor of Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, proposed that it is time for NATO to adjust its strategic positioning.
In an interview with China on the 10th, Xie Tian said that the original purpose of NATO was to fight against the communist forces in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Today, when the Soviet Communist Party collapsed and the communist regime in Eastern Europe does not exist, NATO has no clear positioning.
Xie Tian said that it can be seen that Putin is cracking down on the Communist Party at home, and Russia is indeed no longer a communist country. “So one of Putin’s accusations is actually justified, leaving NATO speechless. Putin’s accusation is, why is NATO now? Is it necessary to exist?”
Xie Tian believes that NATO should be more clearly positioned to “continue to fight against the forces of global communism, which is now the Chinese Communist Party.”
Xie Tian pointed out, “The CCP is actually the last communist regime, and it is trying to win over the former communist regime in Russia to fight against the entire free society. Now the CCP has begun to clearly oppose the eastward expansion of NATO, but we see that NATO has not launched one yet. Clear strategy for counterattack.”
Blinken (Antony Blinken) emphasized the ability of the United States to balance the Ukrainian crisis in Europe and the Indo-Pacific situation at the foreign ministerial meeting of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia in Australia.
Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University and director of the Center for Taiwan Studies, interpreted and analyzed in an interview with the Global Times, Blinken’s trip to the Indo-Pacific reconfirmed that the focus of the United States has always been China (the Communist Party), and it also proved that the situation in Ukraine is not Not as grim as the American media renders.
At a time when diplomatic negotiations and strategic layout were at a stalemate, Russia’s military propaganda machine released a video on the social network on the 10th. A large number of armed fighters belonging to the “Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” (SSO) are in the ice and snow. A rare Hilux pickup from Toyota, the “militia chariot”, was heading towards the border between Belarus and eastern Ukraine.
The high-profile appearance of the SSO has aroused the attention of all parties. The reason is that in the Crimea crisis in 2014, the “little green men” who took down the central government of Ke Island with a small number of troops, that is, are believed to be the “little green men” disguised by the SSO disguised as pro-Russian Ukrainian militias. Beheading the infiltrating troops”.