What happens if Russia invades Ukraine and creates a new migrant crisis?

On Sunday evening Russian forces staged one of those retro raids that makes one think of the late 1930s and early 1940s, involving a confrontation engineered to please domestic opinion and to provide cover for potential further aggression.

The Russians denied that this was the game, of course. ‎Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the incident in the Kerch Strait was “obvious provocation” by the Ukrainians. He was dismissive about the threat of new sanctions against Russia by the West: “As for the sanctions. I don’t know. This has not been a matter of concern for us for long already.”

Cue swift condemnation from leading European states who blame Russia. In contrast, President Trump was not keen to join in. Weirdly, and I cannot think why, it is such a mystery, he never criticises Vladimir Putin and Russia, ever.

The confrontation certainly looks like a classic piece of Putin opportunism, designed to exploit the divisions and weakness of the West. At an official level the EU, like NATO, says it is concerned, but opinion in the member states has long been divided when it comes to dealing robustly with Putin’s Russia. In a poll last year, more Germans (28 per cent to 25 per cent) said Russia was a more reliable ally than the US. Germany is reliant on Russia for its energy needs and anxious not to generate trouble that disrupts the relationship. Last year Germany was the largest buyer of Russian natural gas. Of Gazprom’s total exports last year, 27.5% went to Germany. France has its own compromising connections to Russia stretching back a long way. The UK and London is the laundry for Russian dirty money.

The response to the Ukraine crisis has followed the pattern, so far. The criticism and calls to action have been of the standard type. The Russians should face more sanctions; noises must be made at the UN; target the oligarchs; look grave and warn Russia to back off.

But – and I don’t seek to give Reaction readers nightmares – I do wonder if our assumption that the Western response (talk moderately tough) is someday soon headed for a collision with the Kremlin’s capacity for audacity and strategic improvisation.

In short, how well-placed is the West to respond if Russia finds a staged pretext, in its existing proxy conflicts in Ukraine, for a further incursion or even something approaching a full invasion? Not very.

It was a Reaction reader who pointed this out to me, based on the warnings and dire scenario planning we had both heard at various conferences on foreign policy and Europe several years ago.

I’m broadly in the school of thought that says we should not take the Russians at their own estimation – and all the romantic rubbish, and the posturing about the myth of Russia’s unique destiny – is cover for economic weakness and deep insecurity.

But the West is in a mess and unlikely to stop Putin if he moved. The US President is isolationist in the European context, and (he’s right here) determined to make the Europeans pay more for our collective defence. Meanwhile, France’s leader makes fantastical and increasingly deranged speeches about EU armies that are decades away and trumpets the supranational concept of Europe, invoking the notion of empire. A leaderless Germany turns up the heating – powered by Russian gas – and hopes it will all go away. And Britain? Does it have a foreign policy? I know Jeremy Hunt is trying to build one out of the rubble of the virtue-signalling NGO-style approach that has taken over parts of the FCO. Could Hunt get a move on please?

In this context, what would the West do if Putin did take most of Ukraine, triggering a migration crisis as hundreds of thousands fled West to escape?

It is a question to which I fear we know the answer. There is not very much we would or in our current state could do.