Putin’s escalations in Ukraine show that any fear of NATO is diminishing

In the last few weeks, and despite the Prigozhin mutiny, Putin has continued to escalate his attacks against Ukraine and the West.  

He has sent Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus, the first time Russia has sent nuclear weapons to a foreign country since 1962. The Wagner forces too are relocating to Belarus. These moves have led Poland to take precautionary defense moves and, as a result, Putin launched threats against Poland that resemble those made against Ukraine before 2022. He said that Poland covets former territories in Ukraine and Belarus, owes its current statehood to the Soviet Union and any attack on Belarus equates to an attack on Russia. 

Beyond that, Putin withdrew from the grain accord with Ukraine supervised by the United Nations and Turkey. Russia has also launched massive bombardments of Ukraine’s ports, infrastructure and grain infrastructure. It has placed new mines in the Black Sea to threaten and interdict Ukrainian maritime exports, destroying the initiative that specified routes that would be free of mines. The U.S. government has also claimed Russia is laying mines in the Black Sea to create the basis for a false flag operation against Ukraine should civilian ships be sunk.  

Russia’s defense minister declared that not only Ukrainian ships, but any ship in the Black Sea delivering or taking cargo to and from Ukraine, is liable to be attacked as a ship working on behalf of Ukraine. Thus “any attempt to bypass the blockade might be seen as an act of war.”  Moreover, Moscow has also declared the Black Sea’s northern and northwestern waters to be a “dangerous” place for navigation. 

At the same time, Russian forces are using an occupied Ukrainian port to export confiscated grain to its foreign customers. Moscow is also drafting a plan to exclude Ukraine from future grain trade in the Black Sea so that it can continue its lucrative grain exports to China. 

These actions reveal that Putin still aims to destroy Ukraine’s statehood and not settle for a negotiated settlement. In other words, by escalating Putin is demonstrating that he believes NATO will not respond forcefully. Furthermore, these concerted actions go beyond efforts to strangle Ukraine’s economy to threaten global hunger, particularly in poor countries. They also claim an unlawful, exclusive Russian dominance over the Black Sea, violate the principle of freedom of navigation and implicitly brandish the threat of nuclear strikes. 

These moves, in their totality, constitute an open threat of escalating the war in order to have a free hand against Ukraine, given Putin’s belief that he can take such steps with impunity as no country beyond Ukraine will retaliate forcefully. 

These actions also occurred after NATO’s Vilnius summit, which punted on the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership. Although the moves regarding Belarus and Moscow’s complaints about the previous grain accord preceded the Vilnius summit, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the refusal to admit Ukraine — and Ukraine’s difficulties in its present offensive — reaffirmed Putin’s conviction that he can continue to escalate, including making nuclear threats, without fear of a NATO response. 

Therefore, it is imperative to furnish Ukraine with all the ground, air and naval forces it needs to win. Victory means not only defeating Russia’s army and restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity — including Crimea — but also breaking the Russian blockade of the Black Sea, which in itself is an act of war.  

The Western response must go beyond providing weapons to encompass providing armed escorts for international shipping as in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. At the same time, the West should quickly devise a plan to bring grain to stricken countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Concurrently, we must immediately open an information campaign showing that for all its fine words about Afro-Russian solidarity, Moscow is perfectly willing to starve millions of Africans to realize its interests. Likewise, Putin does not care about African interests as shown by his brusque dismissal of an African peace initiative. If we can replace Russian grain exports to China, a major food importer, that would help reduce tensions with China while undermining Russia’s ties to China at the same time. 

While the conjoined economic-political-military moves add to the pressure on Russia and help Ukraine, they also help to drive the West to formulate a strategy for victory.  Doing so will lead policymakers to seize the escalation ladder for themselves rather than always reacting to Russian escalation. Taking timely multi-dimensional actions against Moscow’s aggression and imperialism also will help restore deterrence, both conventional and nuclear, so that other nations grasp the enormity of the costs and likelihood of defeat if they consider modeling Russia’s actions.  

Apart from helping Ukraine prevail as quickly as possible, the looming threat of global hunger must galvanize our efforts behind a cause where both the ethical and strategic imperatives confronting governments point in the same direction.

Stephen Blank, Ph.D., is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a former professor of Russian national security studies and national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College and a former MacArthur fellow at the U.S. Army War College. Blank is an independent consultant focused on the geopolitics and geostrategy of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Eurasia.