Russia Armed & Ready – But The U.S. Blinks & Ordered Its Troops In Ukraine To Leave Immediately

Russia Armed & Ready – But The U.S. Blinks & Ordered Its Troops In Ukraine To Leave Immediately


Stocks dropped on Friday – the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) tumbled 503.53 points while the technology Nasdaq Composite fell almost 3%. Oil prices, meanwhile, jumped with energy stocks like Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips gained more than 2%. Defence stocks such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin jumped 4.5% and 2.8% respectively. But shares of travel stocks plunged.



Given the scenario above, there could only be one possibility – WAR – or at least that’s what the psychological warfare tries to project. As so-called intelligence suggests that Russia will definitively invade Ukraine as early as this Wednesday (Feb 16), Moscow continues to rubbish the speculation that Kremlin is about to fire its first bullet or missile, starting a war in Ukraine.



Moscow has accused the Washington’s insistence that a war is imminent as nothing but information pressure. Russia said it is against war, and the warmongering by the U.S. was part of a psychological game – even lies – which if repeated often enough will become the truth. The Russian Embassy in the U.S. said Moscow prefers diplomatic solutions to all international problems.



Arguably, if Russia refrains from invading Ukraine just to prove the U.S.’ prediction was wrong, Washington will win and can brag that it has succeeded in stopping Kremlin without firing a single bullet – a threat of economic sanctions. But if Russia eventually invades Ukraine, Washington also wins and can claim that it was right all along about the Kremlin’s aggression.



However, Russian President Vladimir Putin is a master strategist. Even till today, the Western intelligence isn’t sure if Putin was bluffing or was moving his chess pieces tactically and strategically to invade Ukraine. What is very clear is that the U.S. and its allies can do absolutely nothing except to warn that the West will impose “swift and severe economic sanctions on Russia.”



Like a broken record, President Joe Biden said that while the U.S. remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, “we are equally prepared for other scenarios”. Even if it’s true that “Sleepy Joe”, as his predecessor Donald Trump used to mock him, is prepared to punish Putin economically, the world can be assured that the military superpower America is not ready to engage Russia militarily.



In its latest move seen as abandoning Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered U.S. troops deployed in Ukraine to leave the country. The American troops, numbering about 160, were deployed to Ukraine in November 2021 to train with local forces. Pentagon said – “This repositioning does not signify a change in our determination to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces”.



The U.S. has also issued new warnings to its citizens who have not yet departed the country – “American citizens should not expect that the U.S. military is going to rescue them in Ukraine at the last minute. That’s not going to be happening in this scenario. And that’s why it is past time for them to leave Ukraine. It is past time for private citizens to leave Ukraine”.



For months, the U.S. and its Western allies have been watching a steady buildup of Russian forces along Ukraine’s border with Russia and Belarus. Hence, there were sufficient time to mobilize the Western troops into Ukraine – if indeed Biden administration was serious about defending the country from Putin’s political move, after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.



Not only Putin has mobilized between 100,000 to 130,000 troops around Ukraine’s eastern border and the northern border with Belarus, Moscow has also deployed air forces, naval forces, special forces, cyber electronic warfare, command and control, logistics engineers and other capabilities along Ukraine’s border. Field hospital has also been built, another sign which suggests an invasion.




While Biden has threatened Putin that the Russian supremo has never seen sanctions that the U.S. president promised to unleash, it’s also true that the U.S. has not seen the type of military mobilization being deployed by Russia. The U.S.’ highest-ranking military general admitted that Russia’s position along Ukraine’s border was unlike anything he has seen during his four-decade military career.



Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Army General Mark Milley apparently told the Pentagon on January 28 – “Given the type of forces that are arrayed, the ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together. If that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties”.



Milley and Commander-in-Chief Biden have every reason to fear – if it’s true that “Putin doesn’t give a shit about sanctions” – as claimed by Russia’s Ambassador to Sweden, Viktor Tatarintsev. As President Biden warned President Putin again on Saturday (Feb 12) that the West would respond decisively to any invasion of Ukraine, Putin responded with more attack helicopters.



Russian attack helicopters, including KA-52 Alligators and Mi-24, were reportedly on the move in western Russia amid suspicions they are being mobilized to the Ukraine war zone. Adding to the anxiety was the pulling out of Russian diplomats from Ukraine’s capital Kiev, not to mention dozens of tactical exercises involving the Russian Navy’s Caspian Flotilla near Ukraine’s southern border.



The Russian Navy has sent at least 6 amphibious ships into the Black Sea and declared off-limits the international waters surrounding occupied Crimea and the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The seizure of Crimea in 2014 has given the Russian Black Sea fleet full control over the port of Sevastopol and allowed Moscow to install the S-400 air defense system and other anti-ship missiles.



So far, neither the U.S. nor NATO has sent any warship to the Black Sea to challenge the Russian. But Black Sea is not the only strategic location under the Russian control. The movement of 9 warships in the Mediterranean Sea, which were carried out quietly as the world’s attention was focused on Russia’s tank and troop movements to the north, has also raised concerns and questions.



The U.S. and its allies were also not impressed when 140 Russian ships participated in what appeared to be a coordinate global exercise, the country’s largest navy movement not seen in decades. Ukraine is essentially under siege as the Sea of Azov was completely blocked and the Black Sea almost fully cuts off by Russian forces. But Putin said it was just part of a military exercise.



Moscow has also claimed that it has massed the troops near the Ukrainian border to maintain its own security against aggression by NATO allies. It was previously believed that Russia would not attack before the end of the Winter Olympics on February 20, which is being hosted by Putin’s closest ally, China. But now rumours said an invasion could happen before that.



Still, Putin may not want to invade, but to play mind games or engage in hybrid war with Ukraine. The current troop movement could be part of a destabilization campaign to pressure and damage Ukraine’s economy. Besides cyberattacks, Ukrainian has accused Russian of creating hundreds of fake bomb threats to weaken the country and sow panic with the intention to provoke discontent and protests.