Madness Or Method? Why Putin Recognized The Russia-Backed Separatists In Ukraine

There is a disconnect between the severity of the problem Putin laid out and the action he just took. Recognizing LNR/DNR doesn’t solve the problems he mentioned, which could only be solved by more drastic actions like regime change or a substantial use of military force. https://t.co/amsV49rYkv

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) February 21, 2022

And several analysts predicted that recognition would only be the first step toward what could be a major military campaign aimed at bringing down the government in Kyiv.

Russia doesn’t need 190k troops on Ukraine’s borders to recognize the independence of separatist republics. These troops are not even near the Donbas. This is the first step in what will likely be a large-scale Russian mil operation to impose regime change.

— Michael Kofman (@KofmanMichael) February 21, 2022

But at least for now, Putin may have seen recognition as a way to extract something he can claim as a win while avoiding two extremes — a massive new invasion and the bloodshed that would ensue, on the one hand, and the appearance of a climbdown in the face of Ukrainian and Western resolve on the other.

At the same time, Russia will presumably be able to continue exerting military pressure on Ukraine. In the Donbas itself, that pressure may loom larger than ever: The separatists claim the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in their entirety, not just the smaller chunks of territory that they hold, so recognition carries the implicit threat of a push to take over the rest of the two provinces.

Putin may have hinted at that possibility when he suggested in his speech that some parts of Ukraine should rightfully belong to Russia. Another form of pressure, in fact, is the suggestion that Russia could formally absorb the two territories, something that two of Putin’s top lieutenants hinted at — ostensibly by mistake — in the closely choreographed and national televised Kremlin Security Council meeting that preceded his address and the recognition decrees.

Domestic Concerns

Putin’s speech sounded like its aim could have been to prepare Russians for a more aggressive effort to subjugate Ukraine at some point in the future. But while a persistent and unprecedented clampdown on civil society and dissent has weakened the opposition and sapped the people’s potential to protest, Putin may understand that for most Russians – struggling with the COVID pandemic and economic straits — recognition of the Moscow-backed separatists is far more palatable than a major war with a neighbor few see in quite the same light as his repeated remarks about Ukraine suggest he does.

Weaken Kyiv…

In the eyes of the Kremlin, the recognition decree takes a bite out of Ukraine, excising a chunk of its territory eight years after Russia seized control of the Crimean Peninsula.

Putin may hope that this will weaken Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He won election easily in 2019 after a campaign in which one of the main platforms was a pledge to end the war in the Donbas — but not by surrendering territory.

…And Divide The West

A full-fledged invasion would be likely to increase unity in the West, bolstering the resolve of the United States and the European Union to present a common front.

Putin could be calculating that recognition will leave Western countries struggling to agree on how to respond and on what kind of sanctions to impose, particularly if Russia and the separatists do not seek to push into government-held territory in the Donbas and if Moscow begins to pull forces back from the borders — though so far there has been no indication that the latter would happen soon.

Provoke A Provocation?

Putin’s recognition decrees indicated that Russia would send military forces into the Donbas very soon, at least for a limited period of time — something it has denied doing throughout nearly eight years of war there, despite evidence of substantial involvement of Russia troops and officers.

Putin may hope to prompt a military response that could serve as a pretext for the further use of force to achieve his aims in Ukraine.

“Main takeaway from that barnburner of a speech is that Russia now has given itself a pretext to respond to ‘attacks’ on [the separatists] with no need to conceal its direct military involvement,” Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation think tank, wrote on Twitter.