The United States has no idea when or if Russia will invade ( From Aftonbladet )

 Wolfgang Hansson

The United States has no idea when or if Russia will invade

PUBLISHED: LESS THAN 30 MIN THEN

UPDATED: ABSOLUTELY NEW

COLUMNISTS

How little the United States knows about a possible Russian attack on Ukraine became very clear yesterday.

Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken listed virtually every attack technique from the war manual when he warned of what Russia would do.

It sounded detailed but was rather a fog curtain to hide the US ignorance.

When Blinken warned the UN Security Council that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent, many were amazed at how specific the information was.

But if you listen a little more closely, it is about very general information about how a war can start.

The United States believes that Russia will create a false pretext to launch an attack. Blinken explained that it could be a fake terrorist bombing inside Russia, a staged drone attack, a fabricated mass grave or even a fake or genuine chemical weapons attack.

He described how it could be followed by Russian tanks rolling in across the border at the same time as heavy gunfire. They can also be accompanied by cyberattacks that paralyze banks and government agencies.

He listed pretty much every single weapon in the war manual. Without presenting any concrete evidence.

From this I conclude that the United States has no reliable specific information on how or when Russia will launch a possible attack on Ukraine.

The warnings are instead part of the American tactic of publicly trying to expose Putin's next step and thereby disrupt his plans so much that he chooses to refrain from pure acts of war.

False information

This conclusion is underlined by the fact that Blinken himself raised the criticism that the United States had for a long time warned of a Russian attack that had not yet ended.

- If Russia does not invade Ukraine, it will be a great relief, Blinken says. Then we gladly accept the criticism that we have warned.

The United States has access to extensive signal reconnaissance over Russia, it has satellite images that show details at the meter level. There are probably spies high up in both the Russian political and military leadership.

But the flow of information right now is overwhelming. From this it is important to identify what is misinformation and what may possibly be correct.

The Russians know what capabilities the United States has and can deliberately plant false information, which makes it even more difficult to predict what will happen. The date of a possible invasion by the United States, February 16, may have been one such example.

In his speech, Blinken also dangled a decoy in front of Putin. He proposed a "summit of key leaders" to resolve the crisis. As a reward for not starting a war, Putin would be invited to meet, among others, President Biden.

Russian soldiers are seen in the previous exercise in Belarus.

Russian soldiers are seen in the previous exercise in Belarus.

Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service / AP

Increased grenade attacks

Putin wants Russia to be accepted as an equal to the United States. Therefore, such a meeting could attract if the Russian president is still prepared to accept a diplomatic solution.

Signs of how likely it is go up and down like the worst roller coaster.

Russia continues to claim that it has no plans to attack Ukraine, but warns in the same breath of military action if the United States does not comply with Russia's demand to stop NATO enlargement.

What is happening right now in eastern Ukraine, the Donbass region, may be the pretext included in Blinken's war catalog.

In recent days, the number of grenade attacks and other incidents along the ceasefire line in the war that has been going on in the Donbass since 2014 has intensified. The other day, Putin claimed that Ukraine was carrying out genocide in the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Alternative facts

Which is fake news in high school.

Russia started the war and supports Ukrainian separatists. Now Putin is trying to make the world believe that Ukraine is in fact the aggressor. There you can talk about alternative facts.

Because Russia has provided a large portion of the people living in the breakaway republics with Russian passports, Putin can argue that he must step in to protect Russian citizens.

But eastern Ukraine could just as easily be a diversionary maneuver. After all, it is the kind of excuse to invade that has been discussed most in advance. The real invasion may come somewhere else along the very long border between Russia and Belarus that is now under Putin's thumb.

If it comes at all.

To keep the West, and not least Ukraine, in constant uncertainty about where, when or if is part of President Putin's psychological warfare.

The Western world does not even know if he has already made a decision. Europe's future is in Putin's hands and it is not a pleasant experience. But that is the brutal truth.

Of:

Wolfgang Hansson