MOSCOW (AP) — While the U.S. warns that Russia could invade Ukraine any day, the drumbeat of war is all but unheard in Moscow, where pundits and ordinary people alike don’t expect President Vladimir Putin to launch an attack on its ex-Soviet neighbor.
The Kremlin has cast the U.S. warnings of an imminent attack as “hysteria” and “absurdity,” and many Russians believe that Washington is deliberately stoking panic and fomenting tensions to trigger a conflict for domestic reasons.
Putin’s angry rhetoric about NATO’s plans to expand to Russia’s “doorstep” and its refusal to hear Moscow’s concerns has struck a chord with the public, tapping into a sense of betrayal by the West after the end of the Cold War and widespread suspicion about Western designs.
Speaking to reporters after President Joe Biden’s call with Putin on Saturday, Kremlin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov bemoaned what he described as U.S. “hysteria” about an allegedly imminent invasion, saying that the situation has “reached the point of absurdity.”
The U.S. says that Russia has concentrated over 130,000 troops east, north and south of Ukraine and has the necessary firepower to launch an attack at any moment.
Russian officials have angrily denied any plans to attack Ukraine and dismissed Western concerns about the buildup near the country, arguing that Moscow is free to deploy its troops wherever it likes on its national territory.
“We don’t understand why they are spreading clearly false information about Russian intentions,” Ushakov said about the U.S. warnings of an imminent attack.
In 2014, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of the country’s Moscow-friendly president and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donbas, where more than 14,000 people have been killed in fighting.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has taken a more combative tone, denouncing Washington’s warnings of an imminent Russian attack on Ukraine as “war propaganda” by the U.S. and some of its allies.
Zakharova alleged that the U.S. “needs a war at any price,” charging that “provocations, disinformation and threats represent its favorite methods of solving its own problems.”
She denounced U.S. intelligence claims about an alleged “false flag” operation mounted by Russia to create a pretext for invading Ukraine, comparing them to then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s 2003 speech before the U.N. Security Council, in which he made the case for war against Iraq, citing faulty intelligence information claiming Saddam Hussein had secretly stashed weapons of mass destruction.
“The U.S. politicians lied, are lying and will keep lying,” Zakharova said.
Such rhetoric has been amplified by state television, where hosts have alleged nefarious U.S. designs, accusing Washington and its allies of planning phony operations of their own to encourage hawkish forces in Ukraine to launch an offensive to reclaim areas controlled by Russia-backed separatists in the country’s east.
Opinion surveys indicate that the majority of Russians share such views.
More than half of respondents in recent polls conducted by the Levada Center, the top independent opinion firm, consider the U.S. responsible for the current standoff over Ukraine, about 15% blame it on Ukraine and only 3%-4% believe it’s Russia’s fault, while others were undecided, its director Denis Volkov said in comments broadcast earlier this month. Levada’s nationwide polls of about 1,600 people have a margin of error not exceeding 3.4 percentage points.
“Most people see the conflict as a Russia-U.S. conflict,” Volkov said, adding that respondents in focus group interviews said that the U.S. could push Ukraine into attacking the rebels in the east to draw Russia into the fighting.
Asked if she fears a war, Moscow resident Anaida Gevorgyan dismissed it as Western “propaganda.”
“Russia will never do it,” she said. “We are brotherly people, and we have lived together for so many years.”
Russian political analysts are broadly dismissive of U.S. war warnings, pointing out that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would carry a massive price without offering Putin any clear wins.
“For Moscow, risks of an invasion of Ukraine outweigh any possible gains,” Moscow-based security analyst Sergei Poletayev said in a commentary.
Unlike Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014 without firing a shot, and the conflict in Donbas, where Moscow has denied playing a military role despite Ukrainian and Western claims to the contrary, a full-fledged invasion is certain to become a political and economic disaster for Russia.
While the Kremlin appears bent on pulling Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit, a massive offensive will inevitably involve huge casualties, undermining Russia’s global standing, leading to its international isolation and shattering Putin’s posture as a leader who cares about ordinary Ukrainians and sees the two people as one.
“It’s impossible to imagine a war with Ukraine,” Moscow resident Vitaly Ladygin said. “We all have relatives there, we have always lived together. I love Ukraine and dream about going there once it all all ends.”
An attack on Ukraine would be certain to trigger draconian Western sanctions that would further cripple Russia’s stagnant economy, dent people’s incomes and erode Putin’s support. And while the Russian military could be expected to rout the much weaker Ukrainian army, it will inevitably face massive resistance later, resulting in a protracted conflict that would drain Moscow’s scarce resources.
Sergei Karaganov, a Russian foreign policy analyst with close ties to Kremlin thinking, said in recently published comments that while “it’s necessary to stop NATO’s further expansion and militarization of Ukraine … we definitely don’t have plans to conquer Ukraine.”
Many Russian observers predict that instead of launching an invasion, Putin could try to keep pressure on the West with more troop deployments and drills to keep Ukraine out of NATO.
“Having failed to score a full diplomatic result or dare to use force, Russia could turn its army presence near Ukraine into a constant or regularly renewed source of threat that will incur a damage to Ukraine that Western assistance wouldn’t be able to compensate,” Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center said in an analysis. “It will also keep the West under strain, and in the end Ukraine and the West could show a greater flexibility.”
Kirill Zarubin contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Ah yes, Vlad “the Impaler” Putin, known to resort to political assassinations, if need be, to hold on to his power, being too weak to govern successfully through shared power and trusted subordinates, so he must choose the pathway of ruling, through fear and intimidation. I vomit every time I hear him described as the Soviet Strong man, where everywhere his weakness is displayed in the bullying of those he perceives to be weaker that he cannot persuade, but must intimidate or exterminate. These pathetic human qualities may work well in a closed Soviet communist secular society of dog eat dog, and may work well for a time in the international arena, but in the long term always end badly for those who begin to believe in their own media-controlled lies, faux adoration of manipulated co-conspirators, when their false reality is embraced as real. Putin needs to stop reading his own rewritten false Russian history and understand what happened to rulers like the Czar and Ivan the Terrible who in anger gave the death blow to his own son, like Putin is about to do to his own people if he invades Ukraine on the false hope of creating another land buffer to protect a nation whose acts only end in uniting NATO into removing, he and any land buffers, that never work as well as the buffers of mutual trust, economic aid, help and admiration. It is freedom he fears most, the kind his own people would embrace over himself,,signs of his weakness indeed.
OF course they scoff.. JUST like they did before invading and taking over Crimea and other areas…..
Putin SAYS THAT , Yes , He HAS Amassed Russian Troops Along Ukraine B orders but he , Putin, Loves HIS Brothers & Sisters In URAINE TO EVER Attack Them, BESIDES , President Biden has Threatened Putin & Russia With Sanctions If Putin’s MIlitary does Attack Ukraine, WHO Does Putin THINK HE’s Fooling Around With, democrat President Joe Biden Means Business, And he will APPLY Those Sanctions If Putin DOESN’t Watch OUT!1 T o paraphrase a Quote here, ” Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones But Names Will Never Harm Me.”
IN the history of sanctions, WHEN HAVE THEY EVER WORKED???
The only thing his rogue administration is worried about us Russia Ukraine and China releasing all the corrupt money transactions between them and the Biden syndicate.
WHY would they fear that though?? NO ONE HERE, who is in any position of authority, that has the capability to DO anything about it, HAS THE SPINE TO DO SO..
You are absolutely right!
Reply to ” Timesup2022
You, of course were referring to the Wealthy
democrat Career politicians like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and their Ilk who passed legoslation favorable to the very Companies they were Relegulating , In Other Words, ” You , do me and my Company a Favor And I’ll let you in on some” Inside Information That will prove Profitable to You.
What has thus far turned out to be the Biden-Harris Administration’s much hyped non-war between Russia and Ukraine has served to conveniently distract the American public from the administration’s massive domestic and foreign policy failures. In addition, it has been used by the administration and its propagandists in the mainstream media to portray Joe Biden, a pathetically weak and frequently incoherent leader, as a tough guy who is not afraid to confront Vladimer Putin over Ukraine. If it ultimately turns out that Putin does not invade Ukraine, we can expect the administration and the leftist corporate media to proclaim Joe Biden as the savior of the Ukranian people. In that case, I would not at all be surprised if Biden is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
You are so right re: distraction but not from failed policies but from policies Dems have put in place to impose a Russia / China type all powerful centralized govt controlled by a Dem Party dictatorship in US.
US citizens don’t want to hear about US troops & multi million tax $ being used to defend the corrupt authoritarian EU country of Ukraine from their Russian kinsnen.
It is EU countries, not US, who should be stationing their troops & spending their money if they are so worried about Russia making Ukraine a worse place than it already is.
I read that accession of Crimea to Russia was done by vote that was sanctioned & deemed fair by international observers – so don’t know why anyone in US or anywhere else would be accusing Russia of invading & forcefully taking over Crimea w/o firing a shot.
Seems to me Crimea / Russia was no different than the foreign invasion being perpetrated by Dem Party who are already instituting measures to.allow multi millions foreign non-citizen invaders to vote for the Dem Party who let them invade US, also without firing a shot.
To ac0522
You mean Like China Killed Off Millions Of Americans And Didn’t have to Fire a Shot or Lose Any Troops With China’s Virus.
WHICH IS why i say, to hell with it.. IF NATO/the EU are not willing to step up and stop Russia, WE SHOULDN’T either.
The Russians have nothing to worry about if they invade Ukraine, as Joe Biden is bought and paid for by the Russians.
The Russians and Putin dpn’t know who They’re Fooling With, Joe Biden Will Put Those “Sanctions, ” on Putin And Russia, If I Was Putin I’d Be ” AFRAID, Be Very Afraid !! ” Joe Biden Means What he Says I’d would be trembling In my Shoes If I Were Putin, President Joe Biden doesn’t Fool Around, Oh, i know He’s a little Lax as a father with Hunter but thats different, Thats his Son After all. !