ARE we at war yet? Those US intelligence reports leaked, not by Wikileaks, but by President Biden at the weekend claimed that Vladimir Putin was planning an invasion of Ukraine to start this very day. Reports of last-minute Russian troop withdrawals have been dismissed and Boris Johnson insists the threat remains. In a matter of hours we could be seeing the biggest military confrontation since the Second World War.

Or not, as the case may be.

Respected commentators like the BBC’s Orla Guerin (sometimes called the Angel of Death because of her tendency to be first into lethal conflict zones) have been reporting throughout this crisis that Ukrainians are bemused at the war hysteria in the West. The equally intrepid war correspondent of the Times, Anthony Lloyd, has been reporting much the same. No panic on the streets, no air raid drills, no mobilising of defence forces.

This is possibly because Ukrainians have been living with a low-intensity war in the disputed Donbas region for seven years. And because there is currently a ceasefire there. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has inconveniently said he doesn’t see any threatening Russian troop build-up. It’s all very odd.

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Indeed, with the West in disarray, British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss humiliated and Ukraine apparently reconsidering its application to join Nato, Mr Putin has indeed achieved many of his war aims without a shot being fired. If both sides now agree to implant the 2015 Minsk Protocol, as advised by President Macron, the Donbas, or more precisely Donetsk and Luhansk,would become an autonomous region under Russian influence.

It makes little sense therefore for Mr Putin to invade Ukraine. Devolution is better than revolution. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t. The Donbas ceasefire will not last. Separatist militias will surely exploit the tension to advance their aims. Once the guns go off, and non-military targets get hit, anything could and would happen.

Most wars start by accident, whatever the participants claim. The Baltic states are promising to intervene if Russia invades and they, like Poland and Hungary. are Nato allies. There is a configuration of forces in Central Europe now that is all too reminiscent of the unstable alliances that led to the Great War in 1914. No one wanted that either.

So, I don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the heightened tension is entirely phoney. That Joe Biden is hyping up war rhetoric to boost his faltering popularity. That Boris Johnson is trying to distract attention from Partygate. The massive Russian military presence on the Ukraine border is real enough, even if the Ukrainian government has chosen not to alarm investors by stressing it.

After the Iraq debacle we should of course be sceptical about “sexed-up” intelligence reports. But we don’t need dodgy dossiers to tell us that Mr Putin is willing to use military means to further Russian territorial ambitions. We have been here before.

It is only six years since Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, in defiance of international law, after a dodgy plebiscite. That was achieved largely through local militias backed by Russian forces wearing nondescript uniforms. “Little Green Men” they were called.

Mr Putin’s policy of coercive expansionism into former Soviet states has been successful. The West has had no answer to the annexation of Georgia and the dismantling of Ukraine, or the sabre-rattling at Baltic states like Lithuania. Many Russians still regard these territories as part of Greater Russia. Crimea and the disputed Donbas region of East Ukraine have large Russian-speaking populations, who can be relied upon to promote the false claim that Ukraine is a “historic” part of Russia.

Mr Putin also believes, with justification, that the risk of western retaliation is slight. Ukraine isn’t in Nato, which means that an invasion would not precipitate an immediate military response from the US and other Nato allies.

The initial response would be economic sanctions including the cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. But Russian spokespeople scoff at such threats. They insist a resource-rich country nearly twice the size of the United States can look after itself.

Russia can with some justification accuse the West of geopolitical hypocrisy. The expansion of the western military alliance onto the borders of Russia may not be against the letter of the Nato-Russia Founding Act, signed 25 years ago, which asserted that they were not adversaries. It is arguably against the spirit. The Cold War was supposed to be over. Mikhail Gorbachev had even talked about Russia joining Nato.

George Kennan, the former US ambassador to Russia, and architect of the successful policy of “containment” which brought about the defeat of communism by non-military means, vehemently opposed Nato expansion in 1997. He and others argued that the policy was a “fateful error”. It would “inflame nationalist anti-western and militarist tendencies in Russian opinion”. It’s hard not to think that his assessment has been vindicated by history.

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None of which justifies Mr Putin’s military adventurism. The point of the Nato alliance is that any democracy should be free to join it.

However, recent Nato exercises in the Black Sea, threats to restore medium-range nukes in Europe and the militarisation of the Baltic states are interpreted by Russia as proof of the West’s own coercive expansionism. The US wouldn’t accept a military threat in Cuba, so why should Russia ignore threats on its border?

This is the heart of the issue: the historic grievance of Mother Russia, demeaned and abused, as Mr Putin sees it, since the collapse of the Soviet Empire. He wants Ukraine to renounce its application to join Nato. And the signs are that Ukraine is re-considering.

But military mobilisation, once begun, has its own relentless logic. War fever is infectious. Ukrainian grannies are being photographed practising with automatic weapons to signify national resolve. We’re told that resistance will be fierce. That Ukrainians are preparing to defend the homeland with all means at their disposal, including American arms that are now pouring into Ukraine.

Politicians generally thrive on conflict. They can’t help stoking up nationalist fervour. We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo…

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