Will Russia Invading Ukraine Start WWIII?

We might literally be on the verge of World War 3 right now, if Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And the White House is reporting that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent, which experts believe would include “bombing raids, missile strikes and cyberattacks that could devastate Ukraine's military infrastructure, disrupt communications and pin down ground troops.” 

The Biden Administration is actively preparing to counter this possible act of war alongside NATO forces and Ukraine’s European allies. Over the past few weeks, Russia has amassed 100,000 troops with short range missiles and tanks along the Ukrainian border, and plans for up to 175,000 troops to engage in a full-scale invasion.

Simultaneously, the intelligence community is reporting that Russia is planning a false-flag attack in eastern Ukraine, potentially at a Russian embassy or consulate - to blame on far-right Ukrainian extremists as an excuse to begin their invasion. State-sponsored Russian online misinformation groups are ALREADY publishing propaganda at a rate of 3,500 posts a day, a 200% increase over the past few months, And just last week, Ukraine suffered massive cyberattacks that took down more than 70 government websites. 

Despite talks between Russia, Ukraine, the US, and NATO - no progress has been made, and it’s believed that Russia’s unreasonable demands are intended to provoke a breakdown in talks as a precursor to invasion. Russia launching a full-scale attack on Ukraine would be a global military crisis and trigger a number of mutual defense treaties that could easily turn into a world-wide conflict. The United States and other allies are agreeing to supply anti-tank missiles, armed drones, naval warships, and other tactical weapons to Ukraine, should a war break out. The US is also threatening economic sanctions against Russia, and even against Vladimir Putin personally. 

And while President Biden has previously said that sending American troops into the conflict was off the table, just yesterday he had this to say:  “It is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine, and that our allies and partners are ready to impose severe cost, and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy. The cost of going into Ukraine, in terms of physical loss of life, for the Russians, is going to be real, it’s going to be consequential.”

A NATO backed military response to Russia would immediately engage the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is essentially Russia’s personal version of NATO and includes five other post-Soviet states to bolster Russia’s efforts. And although a land war in Europe is already a nightmare scenario, there’s a very real concern of an all out Eurasian conflict if China gets involved.

There is a clear global delineation of military power, and despite a tense and unstable economic partnership between all the countries involved that’s been developed since the end of the Cold War, there isn’t that much stopping an all-out global conflict should Russia invade Ukraine, and possibly from there, other former Soviet states like Georgia. Russia's primary demand of NATO is explicitly designed to leave post-Soviet states unprotected. NATO is ultimately a collective security agreement, where an attack on a member country is treated as an attack on them all. By insisting that Ukraine and Georgia and other neighboring countries not be allowed into NATO, Russia is clearly signaling their intention to attack those countries without triggering an automatic NATO response. 

They’ve already accomplished this just a few years ago in 2014, when invading the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and pretending that the Russian soldiers in Ukraine were just on vacation. Since then, Crimea has effectively been under Russian control, and considered by the Russian government to be their property. Most troublingly, when Putin was asked point-blank if he intended to invade Ukraine, he angrily responded that the West must give Russia guarantees, and give them immediately, regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership. 

Not only did he not answer the question, he turned it into an ultimatum. And in that same press conference, he said that Ukraine was probably going to launch an offensive against rebels in the east - which is exactly the pretext of the false flag event that the intelligence community is expecting.

In short, there is little reason to believe that Russia is not about to invade Ukraine in the next few days or weeks, and the real question is: how big of an invasion are we going to see, and what is the global community going to do about it?

Looking at the Crimea response, it’s possible that they’ll do next-to-nothing and let Ukraine continue to be annexed by Russia. But should Russia attempt to seize all of Ukraine, particularly it’s capital Kiev, there is almost no possibility that it doesn’t devolve into a global conflict, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 1940s. How could 2022 be worse than 2021? By starting World War III.