PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — What everyone feared has happened: Russia has started a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, raising innumerable questions. What are Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals? Was war with Ukraine inevitable, or was there something the international community could have done to prevent it? Can the Ukrainian military hold up against Russian forces? And what's going to happen next?
To answer these and other questions, Dr. Lisa Baglione, a political science professor at Saint Joseph's University, and Dr. Melissa Chakars, associate professor and chair of the SJU Department of History, joined the KYW Newsradio podcast team on Thursday for an episode of In Depth.
Listen to the episode here:
Both experts, who had joined the podcast on Jan. 26, expressing hope that the military threat would not turn into armed conflict, say that what the world is seeing play out now is indeed the worst-case scenario.
"The last time we spoke, I had ended with hoping for peace. And I have been hoping for peace ever since and hoped that, through diplomacy, we would be able to get out of this situation,” Chakars said. “This is absolutely a worst-case scenario. This is a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This is the worst military action, really, in Europe since World War II."
So far, the United States and the European Union have not pledged any military support to Ukraine. President Joe Biden on Thursday, and the EU and United Kingdom on Friday, laid out sanctions against Russia and Putin. Baglione says she doesn’t expect sanctions to be much of a deterrent, because they are a long-term strategy, delivering long-term results. So is the Ukrainian military strong enough in the short term to defend themselves?
"Ukraine has about 200,000 official military personnel. Russia has 1 million official military personnel. So we are looking at a really small entity,” Chakars says. “Putin has nuclear weapons. He has the bigger hand here to play. But as we all know, we saw the United States in Afghanistan for 20 years, and then we just pulled out and the Taliban came back. It doesn't mean that the smaller power won't win in the end. But this is going to be a long process. It's not something that's going to happen immediately."
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In the next couple of weeks, Baglione says, the international community will be watching to see if the level of Ukrainian resistance grows, how engaged Russian citizens are in any kind of resistance.
“I think we look to see how well Europe stays together. And I think we look to the U.S. in the domestic political arena. How united are Americans around the president's policy?” Baglione says. “This is a serious moment in American history. This is a time when we face a terrible challenge, and how we meet it domestically is really important.”
Chakras says much will depend on what further response comes from NATO, the U.S., the E.U. and Britain.
“Are they going to send more military aid? Are they going to send financial aid? Is there going to be a refugee crisis? Are people going to try to leave? … What's China's reaction going to be? Putin really does need to have a strong partnership with China,” she says.
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“I think what Putin’s actual plan is for Ukraine is also going to be interesting. He hasn't really laid that out to us. Is his intention absolutely to overthrow the government? … Does he want to actually make Ukraine a part of Russia, or does he want to make it some kind of puppet state and bring in a new puppet president?”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Putin made it clear that he wants to reconstitute the Russian Empire. Listen to the full conversation right now on the KYW Newsradio In Depth podcast.
Listen to the episode here: