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Report: Ukraine president says he’s been told Russia will attack Wednesday

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Unless there is some near-miraculous breakthrough, Russia will attack Ukraine on Wednesday, February 16, according to Ukraine’s President. NBC News reports:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that his government has been told that Wednesday, Feb. 16, will be “the day of attack” when Russia invades Ukraine.

The United States and its allies have repeatedly warned of an imminent invasion by Russia, which has stationed some 130,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders to the north, south and east. Russia denies it is planning an invasion.

“We are told that February 16 will be the day of the attack,” Zelenskyy said in a statement posted on Facebook, without saying who provided this information.

Analysis of what might, will or may likely be the consquences of the Russia’s likely invasion are all extremely pessimistic. immediate impact would be on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s political prospects, CNN notes. But there are far bigger possible impacts. Joshua C. Huminksi, writing in The Hill:

From the outset, if the West and NATO are to maintain credibility, there must be a response. Uncontested aggression only breeds more uncontested aggression and not responding could well set a dangerous precedent further afield.

….. One can be sure that Russia will respond to any Western response to its expanded invasion of Ukraine. What that response looks like, likely will be contingent upon what the West does. It is here that there is an alarming possibility of unintended consequences and escalation.

Russia has options should to respond to the West’s actions, which Western planners would do well to consider. Economically, there is, of course, the potential for the suspension of the oil and gas transshipment, a not insignificant weapon Moscow has wielded in the past to influence countries’ behavior. But Russia is also a key exporter of other critical resources and has threatened to withhold those, as well; at the end of January 2021, the vice speaker of Russia’s Federation Council suggested that Moscow would slow or halt natural resource transfers to Europe. The disruption of the sale of critical raw materials will have considerable knock-on effects in other markets, perhaps just as much as oil and gas prices.

Would Russia respond with cyberattacks? The reality is that they already are engaged in an aggressive cyber campaign against both Ukraine and the United States…

Thus far, the West has been fortunate enough to avoid an outright war in cyberspace. There have, of course, been cyberattacks, intelligence operations and criminality online, but an open war in cyberspace has not yet happened. Imagine a NotPetya-style attack on the United States in which computers of the financial sector and power grid, along with regular businesses, are wiped.

Would Russia increase its political warfare campaign? This too is a likely possibility.

Would Russia risk something bolder and more aggressive, seeking to increase pressure elsewhere? That is where the dynamics of escalation become of greater concern. Would Moscow consider seizing Gotland from Sweden? Would the Kremlin seek to foment a crisis in a country with an ethnic Russian population, like Estonia? Crises and responses tend to create their own inertia and their own momentum. While Putin, President Biden, and President Volodymyr Zelensky are all rational actors operating within rational systems crisis dynamics, an urge to respond and the pressure of the moment can and indeed do overwhelm rationality.

Read it in its entirety.

The Russian invasion could be the largest war in Europe since 1945. Video from CBS 8 San Diego:

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