‘Pawns on the chessboard’: Ukrainians watch as the US and Russia decide their future

Despite U.S. warnings intensified for several weeks that Russia could invade Ukraine this winter, Volodymyr Nahorniy spent Wednesday evening at a Kyiv slope throwing $ 500 on weapons for the two planned trips.

The store staff is said to have been filled with customers two weeks ago at Black Friday sales – especially young entrepreneurs like Nahorniy, a 28-year-old who works in one of Ukraine’s largest companies.

“Time will tell us what we are going through,” he said. “We are already at war with Russia,” he said, referring to a dispute with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that began when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

According to a US law review that has been shared with many Western allies, President Vladimir Putin has mobilized 175,000 Russian troops and powerful weapons around the Ukrainian border and may seek to create threats.

But in Ukraine, where officials spent weeks reducing the threat posed by Washington, there is no sign of danger. Instead of shopping, cafes, bars, and stores are crowded. Journalists with an oligarch in this country are more interested in domestic politics than in Russia. The Ukrainian people are accustomed to conflicts, as the Donbas war has been raging for seven years and has claimed 14,000 lives.

“The Ukrainian people have seen the film – that is, the big Russian military forces on the border,” said Brian Mefford, an American businessman based in Kyiv. It refers to the deployment of 110,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border in early spring. The Kremlin said it was a military operation but used the delegation to secure a meeting with US President Joe Biden in June.

Many of the thousands of volunteer fighters who took part in the 2014 push-ups have returned to the front.

“There is no fear – not for me, not for my friends, or for everyone,” said Valery, a 54-year-old businessman buying Christmas with his wife and son. “It seems to me that the people of Ukraine are not afraid of anything after all these years.”

Oleksii Reznikov, the defense minister, said that “Ukraine’s calm response to Russia’s recent threats shows the ongoing conflict between our two countries”.

Like many of his colleagues, Valery resigned from the job saying that Ukraine was the one that was affected by most of the matches between Moscow and Washington.

Putin, he said, was playing a game of brinkmanship to intimidate the West into disarming Kyiv and allowing the country to join the Nato military alliance.

“We’re just fiction on the chessboard,” he said.

Biden’s decision this week to agree to discuss with Putin Russia’s concerns over Nato’s rise has reinforced Ukrainian suspicions that the rise of Moscow’s military is a threat rather than a threat to the military.

“This is Russia’s attempt to try Biden to reduce US aid to Ukraine,” said Oleksander Danylyuk, chairman of the Kyiv-based Center for Defense Reforms. “Biden is doing what Russia wants it to do.”

Russian saber-rattling also helps to undermine the Ukrainian government and reduce the recession after the epidemic.

In an attempt to reassure investors, President Volodymyr Zelensky played the risk of a full-blown attack on a recent meeting with business leaders.

“President Zelensky assures us that foreign exchange in Ukraine is safe,” said Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. “The companies are operating as usual, which shows good financial results for the year.”

At the same time Zelensky tried to galvanize the Ukrainian troops, bus. He has held radio meetings with military personnel around the country, driving armored vehicles and touring boats provided by the US.

250,000 Ukrainian soldiers are well trained and fight hard. It also has better equipment, equipped with US-equipped Javelin tanks, elevated tanks and armored vehicles. It also has Turkish-made Bayraktar drones sent, to the wrath of Moscow, against Russian troops in the Donbas. Kyiv wants to buy submarines and targets from the UK and Turkey.

Although still relatively numerous and oppressed by the Russian military, Ukrainian troops are considered to be capable of destroying weapons. However, Ukraine has no air defense, leaving it exposed to Russian forces and to missiles. Some analysts say the explosion of Russian missiles to destroy Ukraine’s economy, especially its Bayraktar drones, is much easier than a landmine attack.

The people of Ukraine will not be surprised, but they are starting to prepare.

“Many of the thousands of volunteer fighters who took part in the 2014 push-ups have returned to the war; many have recently joined the newly formed national military force, “said Lada Roslycky, an American security expert who heads the Ukrainian security agency Black Trident.

A businessman who lives in a city near the Ukrainian-Russian border told the Financial Times that he was considering moving west to Kyiv and eventually moving to Europe if his headquarters were to collapse.

Carrying his new snowboard shoes, Nahorniy figured out what to do in the winter if Putin decided to hit.

“I will be prepared to protect my family, not to climb the snow,” he said, before adding: “It depends on the size of the plot.”