As the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, many are surprised as to what pundits predicted would never happen has escalated to full-scale aggression by Russia.
There were sufficient warning signs from the global intelligence community. These days even TV channels have access to private satellite images which clearly showed a troop build-up on the Russian side. Even a layman was expecting a war but somehow everyone involved in preventing the war refused to believe that Putin would actually launch an offensive.
From Putin’s perspective, Ukraine or at least parts of it belong to his motherland. Given his clout in Russia and pseudo dictatorship regime, this will be celebrated in Russia as a nationalistic move. They have sufficient natural resources and a domestic economy, however, fragile to survive a few sanctions by the west. If the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, the most sanctioned dictatorship in the world, can project prosperity, Russia should not have any issues dealing with the fallout of this aggression in the short to medium term.
The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is being hailed as a great wartime frontrunner, some even going to the extent of comparing him to one of history’s best wartime leaders Winston Churchill. I am skeptical of this opinion as I see the response of Ukraine more scripted for world consumption than demonstrating the true grit of the response of their defense forces. Approaching the UN Security Council and now the UN General assembly, filing a petition at the International Court of Justice at the Hague are all great diplomatic options, but diplomatic channels take time and don’t help the people on the ground facing the brunt of the situation. If anything, these should have been done weeks ago when it was clear that the attack was imminent. They now have even applied for an emergency EU membership which as everyone is familiar with the BREXIT fiasco takes years of negotiation and hence is nothing more than a hollow gesture.
Putin has since double-downed on his stance by putting his nuclear arsenal on high alert. This clearly is an empty threat as nuclear options since World War 2 only serve as a deterrent. China, a large trading partner of Russia, was the first nation to propose a ‘No First Use Policy’ in 1964. India also adopted this policy in 1998 after the Pokhran-II test. It would be diplomatic suicide for Putin to even consider a nuclear option as all the nations currently abstaining from voting in the UN will decidedly go against Russia if this were to happen.
Zelenskyy is currently bunkered in a heavily fortified location while citizens of Kyiv and other frontline towns are left to fend for themselves by taking refuge in subway stations, moving away from expected conflict zones or altogether trying to leave the country. Based on current news reports, there isn’t much evidence of any planned systematic evacuation of such frontline locations by Ukrainian defense forces. The president needs to focus internally and work with his defense forces on protecting his citizens while delegating international pressure options to a seasoned diplomat.
It is a sad moment as several world leaders projected confidence of no-war right up to the moment it happened; geopolitical strategists and think tanks who pride themselves on modeling threat assessment based on the ground sources, both in the intelligence community and otherwise, certain sections of the media’s “collective wisdom”, have failed the average citizens of Ukraine turned refugees in their own country, and the international citizens stranded, awaiting rescue missions by their respective home countries.
It is not the failure of intelligence agencies but the intelligence of the global intelligentsia which has failed us.