Direct military confrontation with Russia gets closer for NATO

NATO’s nightmare of directly facing Russian forces could be just days away, if Ukraine is over-run by its invaders. NATO declined to expand closer to Russia by Ukraine a member, so now Russia is establishing a new line of confrontation with NATO, writes Political Editor Nick Powell.

As the first images of what is actually happening on the ground in Ukraine were verified, footage of a rocket hitting a Ukrainian airbase and exploding appeared. It was a place I know well, as it also serves as Ivano-Frankivsk’s civilian airport.

Since making a documentary in western Ukraine 20 years ago, I have occasionally passed through the airport’s modest terminal, to see old friends before or after a trip to Kyiv. But the shock of seeing somewhere I’ve visited attacked by an explosion was short-lived. After all, it’s happened before, with Northern Irish town squares and even Brussels metro stations that I know well.

The more important message was that this is an attack on the whole of Ukraine and even if Vladimir Putin has any intention of stopping short of occupying the entire country, the conflict will reach all parts of it. From a military perspective, it’s not enough to degrade airfields further east if your enemy still has other facilities to receive western military aid and potentially to launch air attacks of its own.

Soon enough, Russian forces could be stood within metres of the Polish border with Ukraine, which is mostly a line that Stalin drew on the map from the River San to the River Bug. Even if a full military advance is halted further east, perhaps as a result of Ukrainian resistance, a near-permanent conflict zone would be created. Russian aircraft and special forces will combat Ukrainian guerrillas, who in turn will take the war to occupied territory.

If NATO and many of its member states are as good as their word, those guerrillas will be supplied and sustained. Those supplies will have to cross the land border, especially if the airfields in places such as Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod and L’viv are permanently out of action.

Of course, NATO already directly borders Russia, notably in the Baltic states and along another of Stalin’s straight lines, which separates Poland from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Those are not borders with war zones but NATO and its members must surely realise that if they abandon Ukraine and allow it to become another of Russia’s frozen conflicts, Putin will soon move on to fresh demands.

Little guesswork is required as to what these might be, as he has previously claimed the right to protect Russian speaking minorities in the Baltic states. He has also demanded unrestricted free passage to and from Kaliningrad; Belarus is unlikely to object, so the pressure would be on Lithuania and Poland.

There could be a line of confrontation from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Not simply a return to the Cold War but an actual war, although with some hope of keeping it at a low level, with Ukrainians doing most of the fighting and dying on NATO’s behalf.

This could go on for years. Economic sanctions will take a long time to bite and could simply deepen Russia’s alignment with China, rather than force it to seek a rapprochement with the EU, US and UK. Really serious sanctions will also take a long time to implement, abandoning Nord Stream 2 is a tough enough call for Germany, it’s going to be a lot harder to stop buying Russian gas pumped through Nord Stream 1.

Leaders of western nations remain adamant that they will not commit their own armed forces in Ukraine (though of course they never comment on what their special forces might be doing). But a policy of declining to directly confront Russia has run out of road. If not in Donbas or Crimea, if not on the Dnipro River, then sooner rather than later in the Carpathian Mountains, on the rivers San and Bug and along those straight-line borders.

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