“So if I set up my headquarters here they’ll blow me up, but if I set up shop a kilometer away, I’m fine? Really? Amazing!”

For very long months, Ukraine had long-range US missiles that it could use to attack Russians on Ukrainian territory but not Russians on Russian territory. Experts interviewed by CNN are astonished – and even ironic, albeit sadly – at the message this sent to the Russian generals (it is from this irony that the phrase in the title comes from, in which one of the experts imagines himself inside the head of a chief Kremlin military). And experts say something else: Russia is very good at manipulating the minds of Western leaders. And Ukraine pays

What the term “escalation” doesn’t say about Ukraine’s attacks on Russia

_{by Christian EdwardsCNN}

Over more than a thousand days of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned Kiev’s Western allies of dire consequences – potentially nuclear – if they “escalate” the war by giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself.

Putin’s threats became even more ferocious this month after the Biden administration finally gave Kiev authorization to launch long-range American weapons against targets deep inside Russia. In response, Putin updated Russia’s nuclear doctrine and fired a new nuclear-capable ballistic missile at Ukraine. The message was understood as a clear threat to Ukraine’s supporters: don’t put us to the test.

But almost three years into the war, these developments have taken on a familiar rhythm. Each time Ukraine made a request – first for tanks, then for fighters, then for cluster munitions, then for long-range weapons – its allies agonized over whether to grant it, fearing an escalation of the conflict and a backlash. Russian.

Every time the West has accepted Ukraine’s requests, Russia’s most catastrophic threats have not materialized.

Despite Putin’s growing threats, there is little reason to believe this time will be any different, analysts tell CNN.

Instead, they say the anxious reaction to Ukraine’s newly granted powers is another example of the Kremlin’s successful strategy of forcing the West to view the conflict on Russia’s terms, mistaking Ukraine’s every new attempt to resist Russian aggression as a big “climb”.

Parallel to the battlefields, the Kremlin has been engaged in a struggle to force the West to argue from Russian premises rather than its own, and to “make decisions in this alternative Kremlin reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world.” , said the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think tank, in a March report.

Kateryna Stepanenko, co-author of that report, tells CNN that the strategy was a revival of the Soviet concept called “reflexive control,” whereby a state imposes a false set of choices on its adversary, forcing it to make decisions against its own. interests.

“The persistent Western debates and the delays in Western military aid to Ukraine are a clear example of the success of the Kremlin’s strategy of reflexive control, which compromised the West,” says Stepanenko.

This strategy could be seen in action this Thursday, after Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s power grid.

Although Putin said the attack was “a response on our part” to the Biden administration’s decision on longer-range weapons, Russia has not needed a pretext for such attacks in the past.

The recent policy changes by Ukraine’s Western allies – which came after Russia involved some 11,000 North Korean troops in its war effort – “is not an escalation like the Kremlin is trying to present,” says Stepanenko. “Russia launched a full-scale, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and has regularly escalated the war to maintain its initiative on the battlefield. The approval of Ukraine’s use of long-range strike systems against Russia is finally allowing Ukraine to level up its capabilities.”

“Absurd” policies

The Biden administration sent U.S.-made Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, to Ukraine earlier this year, but imposed strict conditions on how they could be used: They could be fired at Russian targets in occupied Ukraine, but not in territory of Russia.

William Alberque, former director of NATO’s Center for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, considers that this policy made little sense – and that it greatly benefited Russia.

By providing Ukraine with ATACMS but allowing it to target only Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, “we send Russia the message ‘you know what? if they move just a few meters across the border, they’re safe,’” Alberque tells CNN.

“I’m sure the Russian commanders couldn’t believe their luck: ‘So if I set up my headquarters here they’ll blow me up, but if I set up a kilometer away, am I OK? seriously? spectacular!'”.

In effect, this policy has led “to the idea that Russia can kill anyone anywhere in Ukraine, but Ukraine cannot kill the troops that are attacking it if they are on the other side of the border (in Russia)”. This idea is “absurd”, highlights Alberque.

Ukraine’s actions remain within the laws of armed conflict. As Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told CNN in September, “the victim of aggression has the right to defend himself also on the territory of the aggressor.”

Changing red lines

Amid the anxious reactions to last week’s developments, it’s easy to forget that Ukraine has long launched domestically-made drones against targets extremely deep in Russia — and Ukraine has previously fired Western weapons into territory the Kremlin considers its own. The decision to fire slightly longer-range Western weapons is a difference of degree, not gender.

For more than a year, Kiev used British Storm Shadows to attack Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014. For months, Kiev was authorized to fire ATACMS at Russian targets in occupied Ukraine. By law, Russia considers these territories its own and has warned that there would be dire consequences if Ukraine attacked them with Western weaponry.

Since May, Washington has also authorized Kiev to use shorter-range American rockets to hit targets in Russia, across the border, from the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine. Before President Joe Biden gave the green light to this decision, Putin made nuclear threats, warning that the measure could have “serious consequences” for “small and densely populated countries”. That’s not what happened.

“Time and time again, it has been proven that nothing really happens when you cross a false red line.” Still, Alberque says the threats were enough to prevent the West from giving Ukraine what it needed to defend itself.

Although threats have intensified again in the wake of last week’s developments, Alberque says there is little reason to suspect that this time will actually be different. The prospect of a new Donald Trump administration – long assumed to be Putin’s desired outcome – means Russia is even less likely than usual to carry out its threats.

“The risk that Russia will do something that would jeopardize real intervention by the United States or NATO allies, or that would fundamentally change global attitudes toward the conflict, is relatively low,” concludes Alberque.