Plans are being made to freeze the conflict by sending 100,000 foreign troops to the country, according to the SVR
The West is secretly planning to occupy Ukraine and freeze the conflict with Russia by deploying tens of thousands of supposed peacekeepers to the country, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has said.
In a statement on Friday, the spy agency cited intelligence sources as saying that NATO is increasingly in favor of halting the hostilities along the current front line, as the US-led military bloc and Ukraine have come to realize that they are failing to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.
Freezing the conflict would allow the West to rebuild the shattered Ukrainian military and “prepare it for an attempt at revenge,” the SVR stated. It further claimed that NATO is already setting up training centers to process at least one million Ukrainian conscripts.
“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.”
According to the SVR, the plan would also involve Ukraine being partitioned into four large occupation zones. Romania would take the Black Sea coast, Poland would control Western Ukraine, and the UK would occupy the north, including Kiev. The central and eastern parts of the country would be taken by Germany, the agency claimed.
The SVR also alleged that Germany plans to revive practices implemented by the Nazi regime during World War II to “police” Ukraine. In particular, Berlin wants to create special “death squads” made up of Ukrainian nationalists to maintain order in the occupied territory, the statement read.
I've been saying this is a real likelihood for a while. The missiles into Russian territory thing was just another step on the escalation latter. Russia's muted response of only hitting Ukraine has emboldened them to take the next step which is to guess that if they pour troops into Ukraine Russia won't attack them and will begrudgingly freeze the conflict like Korea along a DMZ.
This will allow the west to avoid a humiliating loss, for NATO to avoid a loss of face and credibility and for western leadership to tell their people all the aid, the economic damages they suffered as a result of sanctions was for something. The west wants this at all costs and I believe will do it without hesitation as they believe and perhaps rightly so that Russia won't dare attack them and will not use nuclear weapons which is the only thing they actually fear.
The only way I can see to prevent this kind of escalation is Russia acting now to hit the west in some way in direct retaliation for their green-lighting use of ATACMs and similar missiles deep into Russia and doing so in a way that dissuades the west and gives Russia real credibility that they may say nuke the west if they pull this. Hitting Ukraine with a new weapon is meaningless. The west is convinced increasingly of the fact that Russia will not dare attack them directly so all the new weapons in the world do not scare them because they've so far been right in that they can escalate and Russia will only bite back with sharp words but no actions beyond Ukraine itself. They're also convinced and they are right that Russia's production capacity for this new weapon and their stocks are limited.
Frankly speaking I see three via options if this happens:
Caveats for 1 are of course this would be domestically unpopular. The death count for Russia would go up dramatically. If Russia continues the war using conventional means after NATO pours troops in to try and freeze it the dangers of being locked into inescapable cycle of escalation to full nuclear war rise dramatically.
Caveats for 2 are it would probably give the west the impetus to use their own nuclear weapons within Ukraine on the east and Russian forces and think they can play by those rules. This would also obviously hurt any chances of having peace in Ukraine as the people in a country (outside the east anyways who probably wouldn't care if the Bandarite regime to the west gets hit) aren't going to have favorable feelings or be able to easily reconcile with a country that uses nuclear weapons inside it.
Caveats for 3 should be obvious to the implications of a multi-polar world, the fear will be back that not obeying the west means military action which results in devastation, no longer will they look a paper tiger. It will also set the stage for another war in the future. The west will re-arm, re-nazify Ukraine, likely bring it into NATO and use it to pummel and attack Russia with much better weapons and better trained troops in 5-15 years. This is why IMO it's unacceptable for Russia and a loss in every way that matters.
Contrasting 1 to 2. One big humiliation for NATO, their troops being obliterated may be enough to break the cycle of escalation and lack of fear on the part of the west and save millions of lives. Then again it may not. I just think deterrence and credibility of action on Russia's part are lacking in the minds of western planners and that needs to be fixed and it would be best if this is done before the only option left to do that is using nuclear weapons.
Russia's hesitancy to take a stronger line out of fear of the west escalating has played right into their hands all along. It's what allowed Ukraine to become as much of a problem as it was by the time the SMO was launched. So their fear of escalation from the west, their hesitancy in rebuking them more directly and strongly in actions because of fear of escalation has led to inevitable escalation due to the west's feeling that Russia is all bluff and will choose to back down as they have time and again.
I hope either this is wrong or that Russia takes strong action now to hit the west. Since Biden is leaving office and doesn't want Trump to end the Ukraine conflict they have two months left so I suspect this plan will be put into force by early January at the absolute latest. The US itself won't be involved in the occupation so Trump can't draw down or resolve it, instead the other NATO pawns like Poland, Germany, etc will be the forces involved and Trump will have no ability to give them a stand-down order or to order them to leave. Thus Trump will be locked into either supporting them and possibly making some money via shake-downs or walking away and leaving Russia with a frozen conflict and the failure to achieve their goals which in this case we can count as a loss for the multi-polar world order.
There's gotta be alternatives to your three. I think the most overlook is Russia opening a new front in Africa via proxy that forces the West to act due to economic considerations. Getting the West to overextend is the name of the game right now.
Another option is to state that peacekeepers are combatants and then warn and then obliterate the first delivery of peacekeepers to prevent more from coming in. Once there are 100k troops in Ukraine, there is a huge problem, so let's assume Russia will use hypersonics on landing areas and personnel infrastructure.
The wild option is for Russia to fight on its Western border and Korea to fight on the peninsula in the hopes that the West just doesn't have the materiel. But that looks like Russia fighting on two fronts which looks strategically terrible.
I just don't see any. The chance to alter the west's calculation and prevent this deployment must occur before it starts. It must occur with some strike like I mention elsewhere like in the middle east that successfully sends the west a message to back off.
They do not have the resources for this fight. The west would out-compete and logistics them laughably easy. The west considers Africa important to suppress and control and exploit but I'm not sure they actually care to fight a war there. Unlike the middle east which is part of the grand chessboard's triangle of strategic control through which you prevent unified land powers as it's the crossroads of Asia+Russia+Europe+Africa.
Let's recall the US has hundreds of thousands of troops stationed around the world. They're an empire. They have bases with troops, aircraft, intelligence, naval assets in different oceans. Russia has some mercenaries that tried to revolt against the government not long ago.
There's also the consideration that Georgia is in the middle of a western backed color revolution attempt that's continuing to burn and Russia needs to keep some forces in reserve to go in and deal with that if it happens and the west is trying to make it happen to open another front and put more pressure on Russia to increase their own odds.
They don't care. They tried to warn them about their special forces and other personnel, they target them when they can but they're not inflicting losses in meaningful enough numbers for the west to care. Their intelligence is just so super that they can find and selectively eliminate them. I mean, the Russians have been CONSTANTLY since the beginning doing these warnings of "western troops, special forces, instructors, mechanics, mercenaries are valid military targets" and it hasn't dissuaded the west in the least because Russia cannot kill enough of them to impact their readiness or cause trouble at home from the body count.
Also this presumes Russian threats carry any weight. The very nature of the west undertaking this action shows they have absolute contempt for Russian words and do not believe they translate to actual actions. That they believe Russia will blink first. The west would shrug at this like it's shrugged at all the other threats before every escalation which has inevitably resulted in nothing but more angry words and their Ukrainian fodder getting hit a little harder for a bit.
Russia has better production capacity than the west for things like artillery and conventional shells and such but these advanced weapons require a lot of work. They can out-produce the west on this too but that doesn't mean a lot when their production best still won't give them enough to use them to the extent you're probably envisioning. They'd need much more production and launch capacity to suppress numbers this large using conventional weapons.
Frankly this gets back to the old NATO playbook to use tactical nuclear weapons on Soviet tank columns in a hypothetical war because they were just too numerous to have any prayer of taking them out using any other method given their advantage in numbers.
Russian intelligence is sadly not anywhere near where the west is. You'd need total visibility in real time and understanding of what boats and planes and trains are coming and going where and what's in them to have a hope of using such weapons effectively to take out groups of western soldiers and frankly the west isn't likely to tell Putin the first ships are on their way full of troops. He'll find out after the first deployments which will probably happen simultaneously via rail, road, air, and potentially sea.
1 Is mostly very bad for Russia, but one way that I could see it actually being a good strategic choice is if China massively supports Russia in a material way. As China is the west's next target after Russia, having Russia tying all of the west would be a massive win for them, although Russia would need a way to field enough soldiers and they would have to defend their rear against attacks.
For the first China could help with their massive economy and perhaps having both countries in some sort of free trade alliance, and as for the second China could station tripwire troops east of the Urals which would allow China to help Russia develop their industry in that area to support the war efforts and Chinese production with ease. These might work well as means to avoid your third point.
Good point. Second point is that Ukraine is a discardable puppet to the west, so anything happening in Ukraine doesn't matter to the west and any attempt to match western escalation by Russia attacking Ukraine will be seen as a weekness of Russia, which would likely escalate to more hits inside Russia and more likely nuclear war.
If Russia is to use a nuke they need to use it at least on one/a few US/western bases outside the west, like al-Tanf or the colonist entity. Anything less than that will be seen as a sign that Russia will not attack the US no matter what, which to be fair, I don't blame the west for thinking that as I personally don't see Russia attacking the west directly either.
Considering Putin was just a few day ago talking about becoming closer to Europe again I would say it's better to just assume they won't ever attack the west directly, unlike what Iran did. They might someday reach the point where they have to do it, but if it doesn't happen in the next few weeks I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Once NATO introduces any amount of "peacekeeping" forces, Russia has no choice but to make good on their promises. This is why the SMO started after all. Unfortunately I agree with you that russian restraint has so far only emboldened the west.
Really good analysis here, I have more to say about this but just based off of your analysis I sadly think that the third option is the most likely. To me deployment of NATO troops seems like a way for the west to freeze the conflict as is and come back to it in a few years. As it stands Russia is making consistent gains in the Ukraine and I think your assessment of their unwillingness to directly strike NATO assets is correct, so to me the deployment of "peace keepers" seems like NATOs best bet to halt things at the current line of engagement. This seems possible to me considering the rhetoric this week especially from Zelinsky himself about possibly negotiating on the basis of Russia controlling territories that have had referendums with a plan to retake them in the future.