'Things have changed' Calling Putin's bluff is a deeply perilous game

Early on, Russia warned of Nato expansionism, then the West warned Russia from attacking a Nato ally. There were warnings on the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine, missile systems, tanks, F-16 fighter aircraft. Red lines on energy supplies, then those too on any Ukrainian invasion of Russian territory as has recently happened in Kursk.

And now there are red-line warnings from Moscow and president Vladimir Putin that his country would be “at war” with the United States and its allies if they lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons enabling it to strike targets deep inside Russia. And so the list goes on.

When the war began with Russia’s invasion two-and-a-half years ago, few could scarcely have imagined the degree to which those so-called red lines would be breached with – at times – near reckless abandon, risking that ultimate and most catastrophic of global consequences.

And as the number of those breaches continues to grow, so, too, it seems does the capacity for all those involved to go just that one step further to the point of making the new high risk normal.

Political leaders and strategists call it “escalation management” but the problem with this is that there are different kinds of management and appetites for risk among the myriad players in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre right) and Foreign Secretary David Lammy during a meeting with US President Joe Biden (centre left) in the Blue Room at the White House on September 13, 2024 in Washington DC

Shifting position

That much was evident these past few days when Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Washington for talks with US President Joe Biden, at which the British leader was said to have hoped to persuade the Americans to shift their position on the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine.

Before the meeting, the US remained adamant that there would be no change to their position, doubling down on their policy of “escalation management”.

“There is no change to our view on the provision of long-range strike capabilities for Ukraine to use inside Russia, and I wouldn’t expect any sort of major announcement in that regard coming out of the discussions,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said before Friday’s summit.

But as the meeting broke up and Starmer prepared to head back to the UK, there were signs that Biden might be willing to let the UK and France allow Ukraine to use their

Storm Shadow missiles, which rely on American navigational data and other technology.

There were also indications from the PM that the issue was not closed and will likely be “picked up” again at the coming UN General Assembly later this month with a wider group of individuals.

Western officials insist the decision, if agreed, will not in itself change the course of the war, but are increasingly open to Ukraine’s entreaties that it will help them stem the flow of Russian gains on the eastern front over recent months, particularly around the key military hub city of Pokrovsk.

Britain’s position on the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine was previously revealed under the previous Conservative government when David Cameron, then the foreign secretary, said Ukraine “has that right” to strike targets inside Russia.

One current UK Government official who agreed to talk to Politico magazine on condition of anonymity said revelations this month that Iran has started providing ballistic missiles to Russia had changed Western thinking.

“Things have changed in light of the Russians’ acquiring of ballistic missiles from Iran,” they said. “The fact that Blinken came over to the UK and chose to put on the record confirmation that Iranians are supplying Russia was a significant moment,” the official told Politico.

According to the magazine’s report, other officials around Europe had come to the same conclusion and it cited one defence aide to a prime minister in the Baltic region saying: “The dial shifted in Washington because of the Iranian missiles. The wrangle now is over what targets Ukraine will be permitted to strike inside Russia, and how far inside – and there are worries still in Washington that filtering what can and can’t be targeted drags the US into war-planning, something they are keen to avoid being seen as involved in,” the aide confirmed.

Back in Moscow, meanwhile, the prevailing view is that the outcome of last Friday’s meeting in Washington between Starmer and Biden was a foregone conclusion and that a deal between the two leaders had already been done.

Such a view prompted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to vow that Russia’s response “will be appropriate”, suggesting that once again a red line is about to be crossed – throwing up more dangers of a greater retaliatory response.

Nuclear sabre-rattling

SOME analysts and observers maintain Putin’s rattling of his nuclear sabre is no more than a bluff and has been the Russian leader’s strategy from the get-go and throughout the course of the war.

Time and again Putin has threatened Western countries with dire consequences if they dared to intervene. Who can forget that televised address from the Kremlin at the start of the war on February 24, 2022?

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside, if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history,” Putin warned at the time

Barely days later, as Western nations including the US and UK mustered a response in the shape of weapons supplies, Putin summoned senior defence officials and ordered Russia’s nuclear forces to be placed on a “special regime of combat duty.”

In September 2022, it was the same story after Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions and while insisting that “this is not a bluff”, Putin reiterated that Russia would “certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us” if its territorial integrity, which presumably included the newly “annexed” regions, was threatened.

But as Katie Stallard, senior rditor, China and global affairs, at the New Statesman magazine, recently pointed out, the problem with Putin’s latest threat, as with all the earlier ones, is that it’s simply not possible to nonchalantly dismiss the words of the man who controls one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals. That’s a view echoed by Lord Kim Darroch, Britain’s former national security adviser and former ambassador to Washington. Speaking to the Financial Times (FT), Darroch said that just because Putin had previously not carried through on threats of reprisals when the West supplied key weapons supplies to Ukraine, it did not mean the same would apply to cruise missile strikes on his territory.

“If they are confident that he’s bluffing, then fine,” Darroch told the FT. “But he’s bluffing until he isn’t.”

He warned that allowing long-range Storm Shadow missiles to be fired by Ukraine into Russia risked a big escalation of the conflict.

“We really don’t want to escalate this,” Darroch added, also saying that he was not convinced that using Storm Shadow missiles to hit targets in Russia would be a decisive factor in the war.

The problem for Ukraine’s allies is that of differing approaches to the level of support on offer. By the end of May, for example, Finland, Canada, Poland, Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden, among others, had all expressed public support for abolishing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of allied-supplied weapons.

At the time, Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that he believed the allies needed to look at lifting restrictions on the use of weaponry provided to Ukraine.

“I believe that the time has come to consider some of these restrictions to enable the Ukrainians to really defend themselves,” Stoltenberg said ahead of informal talks of Nato foreign ministers in Prague in May.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels

Heavy fighting

Stoltenberg explained that “in light of how this war has evolved, in the beginning almost all the fighting took place… deep into Ukrainian territory”. However, this had changed in recent weeks and months, and “most of the heavy fighting has taken place actually along the border between Russia and Ukraine, in the Kharkiv region.”

Stoltenberg pointed out that Russian forces could “be on the Russian side of the border” with artillery, missile launchers, ammunition and fuel depots, and be “more safe than they would have been if they could have been attacked also with the most advanced weapons that Ukraine has received”.

His view, not surprisingly, was welcomed in Kyiv where Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has always made clear that his country is in a fight for its very survival.

Last week, on the social media platform X, Zelenskyy reiterated Stoltenberg’s view of the changed shape of the war in his continued lobbying of Western allies for permission to use the ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles on targets inside Russia.

“Anyone who sees a map where Russia launches its strikes from, trains its forces, keeps its reserves, locates its military facilities, and what logistics uses, clearly understands why Ukraine needs long-range capabilities,” he said on X on Friday.

Perilous as the situation is, when seen from Ukraine’s perspective there is perhaps less trepidation in response to Russia’s nuclear threats. Or as one Ukrainian military analyst commented to the New Statesman’s recently: “You can’t scare a nation that is in an existential fight.”

But the fact that Ukraine is in just such an existential fight is precisely why Washington has been wary at times of being sucked into a wider conflagration on Kyiv’s behalf.

That said, as Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs recently pointed out, the US position has still slowly evolved since summer 2022.

“At first, Ukraine was only allowed to fight within its borders and only at rocket-launcher range. Reluctantly, the White House then allowed deep-strike range – but only at targets within Ukraine (for example, to target the Russian Black Sea Fleet in occupied Crimea).

“Now, strikes into Russia’s border region at rocket-launcher range are permitted, but deep strikes into Russia are not.

“ It took two years and four months for Washington to reach that position, which is still heavily and one-sidedly detrimental to Ukraine,” observed Christie in Foreign Policy magazine last week.

And so after the Starmer-Biden meeting in Washington on Friday, Ukraine’s Western allies might once again be about to take another step in its contribution to the war’s evolution.

Starmer being a key mover in that process no doubt, in part, caused Moscow to revoke the accreditation of six British diplomats in Russia after accusing them of spying and sabotage work, signalling the Kremlin’s anger at what it sees as London’s vital role in helping Ukraine. With every month that passes in this conflict, the West has pushed past many of its self-imposed

restrictions.

To date in each and every case, Putin’s declared red lines have led to no consequences whatsoever to whoever has crossed them except Ukraine, with which Russia is in open war.

Uncrossable limit

BUT now, once again, Ukraine’s allies are facing an uncrossable limit from Moscow.

Ever since the war began, the West has been pushing against such limits and more than likely is about to do so again.

To date, such red lines have been crossed without any catastrophic outcome.

But this spiral dynamic of unrelenting Russian aggression and ever-increasing Western military support for Ukraine to counter Moscow’s momentum is far from slowing down and only growing in intensity.

With its Kursk invasion, Ukraine crossed one of Moscow’s red lines.

Should, as expected, its Western allies give the green light and loosen restrictions on deep strikes inside Russia, what Putin’s response will be remains to be seen.

Perhaps Putin’s warning that Western countries would be at “war” with Russia if they did and that Moscow would take “appropriate action” is just yet again another bluff.

But on that tricky question, Kim Darroch’s rather scary answer gives serious food for thought. Putin’s only “bluffing until he isn’t”.