Russian Intel. Elaborates on Western Plans to ’Freeze’ the Ukrainian Frontlines with NATO Troop Deployments: Preparing For a Second War
Eastern Europe and Central Asia , Ground
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has disclosed information on plans by NATO member states to initiate a major ground force deployment to Ukraine, and to temporarily end ongoing hostilities with the goal of eventually turning the tide of the conflict.
Citing its intelligence sources, the agency reported that amid mounting Ukrainian and allied losses on the frontlines, NATO members were increasingly in favour of ending the hostilities along the current battle lines. According to the Foreign Intelligence Service, this would allow Western Bloc states to rebuild Ukraine’s much depleted forces to “prepare it for an attempt at revenge,” adding that NATO training centres had already begun to be set up to process at least one million new Ukrainian conscripts.
This report comes at a time when Ukraine’s strategic partners in the Western world have pressed Kiev to reduce the conscription age in the country from 25 to 18, and as growing calls have been made in the Ukrainian government to also conscript females. This would potentially provide the manpower required to rebuild the Ukrainian Army after the extreme losses suffered 2022-2024.
The Foreign Intelligence Service further elaborated on plans to ‘freeze’ the conflict in Ukraine, stating: “To solve these tasks, the West will need to essentially occupy Ukraine.
Naturally, this will be done under the guise of deploying a ‘peacekeeping contingent’ in the country… According to the plan, a total of 100,000 so-called peacekeepers will be deployed in Ukraine.”
The agency added that the possibility of granting different Western Bloc states responsibility for specific areas of Ukraine was also under consideration, with Poland, Germany and the United Kingdom expected to play leading roles. Alongside a rebuilding of Ukraine’s ground forces, the respite provided by such a freeze is also expected to be used to rebuild much of Ukraine’s seriously damaged defence sector.
The Foreign Intelligence Service’s assertions would notably be far from unprecedented, with a Western-brokered suspension of hostilities in Eastern Ukraine under the Minsk Accords having been followed by intense efforts by multiple NATO member states to train and arm Ukrainian forces, paving the way for renewed offensives against Russian aligned separatist forces in the country’s Russian speaking regions in subsequent years.
European leaders have for months made vocal calls for major ground force deployments in Ukraine, with French President Emmanuel Macron having stated repeatedly that this was not ruled out as part of a policy to “do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.”
The French government began considering options for such deployments from June 2023, while calls for such options to be considered have been raised by figures such as Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, and the Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen.
Most recently in mid-November the French paper Le Monde reported that France and the United Kingdom had “reactivated” discussions on troop deployments to Ukraine.
The United States has notably been less committed than many of its more hawkish European allies to escalating the conflict with ground force deployments, and has similarly consistently been more reluctant that European states to provide new kinds of armaments to the country.
Western advisors, logisticians, combatants, and other personnel have notably already played a very major role on the ground in the Ukrainian theatre since early 2022, ranging from British Royal Marines deployed for frontline combat operations from April that year, to the Forward Observations Group American military organisation which confirmed the deployment of its personnel to support a Ukrainian offensive into the Russian Kursk region in August.
Reports of English, Polish, and French speaking personnel in combat have emerged repeatedly on frontiers from Bakhmu to Kursk, with Western ground forces, often operating as volunteers or contractors, having played central roles on multiple fronts throughout the conflict.
Nevertheless, the deployment of large formations of active service ground units could have a new impact on the conflict, as such ‘flag bearing’ forces may well be protected by their countries’ overseas arsenals including their nuclear deterrents, in order to deter Russian forces fro advancing or striking them. Le Monde in early 2024 referred to this as an effort to impose “strategic dilemmas” for Moscow.
Russian officials have consistently stated that should Western forces be deployed to Ukraine, they would be targeted as interventionists, much as Western contractors and advisors have already been consistently singled out for targeting.
A growing consensus has emerged in the Western world that Ukraine’s ground forces in their current state will be unable to secure any remotely favourable outcome to the ongoing war effort. Western sources have with growing consistency reported on the rapid decline in the capabilities of the Ukrainian Army’s frontline units, as losses among trained and experienced personnel have fuelled a fast growing reliance on conscripts with very poor capabilities.
The Financial Times, for one, reported that 50 to 70 percent of recruits at the front survived only a few days, while suffering from low motivation and being prone to panic. Training standards have reportedly been so poor that not all of them knew how to hold a weapon. Exhaustion in the number of males considered to be of fighting age meant that the average age of mobilised recruits was by mid-2024 already 45 years old.
Preceding this the Wall Street Journal reported in mid-2023 that the Ukrainian Army had been recruiting poor men from villages, furnishing them with Soviet-era rifles and uniforms, and after just two nights at a base sending them to the frontlines. With the situation having deteriorated considerably since these reports were made, most notably with the rapid attrition of elite units in Kursk, the state of the Ukrainian Army is thought to be a central factor influencing Kiev’s Western supporters to seek to pause the ongoing hostilities to gain time to improve their position.
