Russia’s Ukraine invasion: ‘A rather terrible conflict is looming’

Expert analysis on the Ukraine and Russia conflict hours before Putin declared war

David Harding, Kim Sengupta in Kiev, Kieran Guilbert and Mary Dejevsky (The Independent)

Hours before Putin declared war on Ukraine, The Independent’s Defence and Diplomatic Editor said it was “a question of not whether but when” Russia would invade.

Speaking live from Kiev, Kim Sengupta, who has been reporting from Ukraine for the last few months said the mood in the capital was “quite sombre”.

“It has been a bit of a rollercoaster the last few months,” he told a virtual panel event run by The Independent. “There have been very alarming reports mainly from Washington and London and western capitals about Russia intending to attack, intending to possibly occupy bits of the country but nothing happened for days and weeks on end and as a result people didn’t get blasé, but they became a bit more relaxed and that also changed the day before yesterday [Monday] with the security council meeting that Mr Putin called and then his speech in the evening.”

Sengupta said people in Donbas, in the south-east of the country, had been “quite resigned to an attack taking place” when he was there last weekend. “The mood is very much now that in Kiev as well.”

“We have been to the edge a few times in the past and then things have drawn back but the feeling here now is that the diplomatic path has come to an end and a rather terrible conflict is looming,” he added.

Watch back the full recording of the event above

Mary Dejevsky, columnist for The Independent, echoed Sengupta’s sentiment.

“Things have swung so dramatically over the last six weeks to two months, practically from day to day and even three days ago it looked as though the diplomatic track was absolutely certain,” she said.

“We were going to have a meeting of the US secretary of state with his Russian counterpart. We were going to have a summit between Biden and Putin, that was on the cards. It looked as though Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president was involved in the peace process, it was all about negotiations.

“Monday - everything changed - there were the meetings in the Kremlin, Putin announced that Russia was recognising Donetsk and Luhansk and the next step, it was assumed was that Russian troops were at least going to enter that far.

“Then this morning [Wednesday] we had one of the British people I regard as chief hawks - Liz Truss - the foreign secretary was doing all the talk shows and all the presenters were assuming that the Russian troops had entered this two reasons and technically that would have meant crossing the recognised Ukraine border and that would amount to an invasion but Liz Truss said that so far there was no actual evidence she had seen that this had happened. So, we may be looking at this evening.

“One reason it might be overnight or later is today has been Russia’s Armed Forces Day but this generally means there are various ceremonies and celebrations in all the barracks and camps so I’m not sure what condition the soldiers might be in if they’re going to be marching into Donetsk and Luhansk overnight.”

The Independent’s Deputy International Editor Kieran Guilbert was also on the panel, hosted by International Editor David Harding.

Guilbert talked through the various sanctions imposed on Russia and the possible sanctions that could happen if military action became a reality.

“The west has to be careful with its sanctions for two reasons - one because it doesn’t want to play its hand yet in this game of poker if you will,” he said.

“It wants to hold back stronger sanctions as this unfolds and just wait and see what Putin does and see whether this escalates. It also has to be careful any sanctions the west imposes can also affect western economies.”

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