Almost every article on Russian foreign policy this week begins with questions about Vladimir Putin’s aggressive military moves near Ukraine this month. Perhaps there is a more significant question to be posed and analyzed by military planners? Where and when does it all end? In the first war of the 21st century in August 2008 the Georgian government formally declared the strategically important Abkhazia and South Ossetia areas “Russian occupied territories.” The regions are located inside the sovereign nation-state of Georgia. Today Russia has five permanent bases and 5,000 soldiers of its occupying force still stationed there. In 2014, again under Putin’s command, Russia annexed Crimea and supported Ukrainian separatists in the Donbas and Luhansk regions in the eastern part of the country. This week, after months of threatening military behavior near Ukraine, Putin formally recognized the two occupied areas as independent states, thus providing him the pretext needed to support future moves against the Ukrainian government. This probably is not Putin’s last conquest but only one operation in a grander plan.
In an unusual Twitter video message first posted February 17, the British Ministry of Defense also warned in the social media report that at least half of the Russian military’s ground combat units have now encircled much of Ukraine. It goes on to describes this as “the largest gathering of Russian troops” anywhere in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a similar move in Washington, IntelNews reports that American intelligence agencies were instructed by the White House to release raw intelligence on Russian military activities directly to the public. Pavel Beav, of the Jamestown Foundation, says that “The poor organization of the Donbas evacuation shows that the war-planners in Moscow added this feint at the last moment, probably in response to the preventive exposure of their ‘false flag operations’ by the United States’ intelligence services.” The effort appears to have been a temporary inconvenience.
According to the British paper, The Guardian, Western spy agencies are attempting to use their intelligence information to shape the narrative about the crisis in Ukraine, before Moscow is able to use its formidable disinformation capabilities to set the agenda. Although Moscow is denying its existence, Washington is pointing out this week that Putin has developed a so-called “Kill/Capture List” not only for Ukrainian government officials, journalists, and anti-Russian activists, but also a similar list for Belarusians.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) includes a little-known intelligence unit, known as the Service for Operational Information and International Communications—or the Fifth Service. It was created in 1992, according to Baev, to “fill the vacuum left by a host of no-spy agreements, which were signed between Moscow and the governments of former Soviet Republics.” It has dramatically expanded Russia’s foreign spying operations since then and today includes over 200 officers assigned to work solely on Ukraine. It is headed by a close Putin ally, Sergei Beseda, who is a colonel general in the FSB. Putin’s Fifth Service is capable of creating mini-coups inside Ukraine’s major cities and long-term planning.
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This analyst believes that Georgia, Crimea, and now Ukraine, are only the opening moves on a much larger gameboard than Ukraine. Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met over 30 times for “important” discussions. Although they share some historical mistrust of each other and the relationship today is based on convenience, it should be noted that Chinese intelligence agents are collaborating closely with Russian agents inside Ukraine.
Last year in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, a Chinese spy was apprehended for attempting to steal military technology. Among other items, this city produces tank engines and military hardware, including the Ukrainian T-80UD tank engine that China buys to supply to Pakistan for use in that country’s Al-Khalid tanks. Putin knows China is very interested in what else Ukraine’s military-industrial complex can offer. The Russian president needs to remain relevant to the rising Chinese state over the coming decade. That will require collaboration between the two. Ukraine is not only about creating a buffer zone for Russia. It is part of a more complex and darker plan conceived in the halls of the Kremlin and designed to move Putin closer to his end goal. I ask again: Where and when does it all end?
Daria Novak previously served in the U.S. State Department