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Will NATO have to get involved in a conflict?
Going into the winter of 2022-2023, Russian forces in Ukraine have lost the initiative against Ukrainian counterattacks. Warmer weather forecasts and stockpiling of natural gas by European governments has blunted Russia’s most potent diplomatic weapon, energy prices.
Source: Reuters
Russia has now lost control of almost half of the territory it seized since the invasion began in February. Ukraine is continuing to advance east toward the Donbas region and begun massing forces for a possible third major counter-offensive, which would threaten Russian-annexed Crimea.
Source: AP News
In turn, Russia has begun an aerial campaign to destroy Ukrainian heating and electrical facilities as temperatures fall. Despite bombastic Russian threats against NATO members, Russia has removed significant forces from the borders of Finland, Poland and Lithuania, up to 80 percent in some frontier areas, to redeploy inside Ukraine, demonstrating that for all its bluster, Russian decision-makers do not see NATO as an immediate threat.
A NATO deployment in Ukraine is only likely in the event of Russia utilising weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against Ukrainian population centres. This would be met with a massive conventional response from air, land and sea-borne assets to destroy Russian military concentrations with precision missile strikes inside Ukraine.
Source: Research Briefings
In such a scenario, deployment of NATO personnel into Ukraine is unlikely. NATO will not confront Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine or move into territory that is internationally recognised as being Russian soil.
Even cross-border firing incidents are unlikely to prompt direct intervention, due to the fog of war obscuring Russia’s intentions and the distinction between accidents and provocations.
Continued NATO material and financial support will continue to flow to Ukraine. Russian military weakness and greater intra-NATO cooperation means that Russian military action elsewhere in its near-abroad, including the Caucasus and Central Asia, is unlikely, as are clashes between NATO members over their own outstanding territorial disputes, such as between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea.
By Paul Mutter
