Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to hold phone calls with Defense Secretary Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, but the Russians “widely refused, to get involved,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Wednesday.
The attempted calls from Austin and Milley, which were not previously reported, come as Russia conducts operations near the borders of NATO members Poland and Romania, while the United States and its European allies conduct air policing operations over the Baltic Sea and pour weapons and equipment via Land transport to Ukraine.
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Moscow and Washington maintain a conflict-resolution channel, but current and former officials say contact with senior military leaders is needed to avoid unnecessary escalation or confusion.
“Without the firebreak of direct contact between top officials, there is a high risk of escalation,” said James Stavridis, who was NATO’s supreme allied commander from 2009 to 2013. “Very young people are flying in jets and piloting warships, and conducting combat operations in the Ukraine war. They are not experienced diplomats and their actions in the heat of the action can be misconstrued.”
“We must avoid a scenario where NATO and Russia sleepwalk to war because senior leaders cannot pick up the phone and explain to each other what is happening,” he added.
Russia’s recent use of hypersonic missiles and other sophisticated weapons against targets in western Ukraine has underscored the danger of spilling over into a broader confrontation.
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“The risks are obviously elevated right now,” said Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “Russia is attacking targets in western Ukraine that are not far from the border with NATO members, and the Ukrainian Air Force appears to be continuing to operate from that region, which means there is a risk that its planes will be intercepted by NATO aircraft the other side could be mistaken for edge.”
US defense officials have described the deconfliction phone line as a tactical mechanism to avoid miscalculations, particularly when it comes to protecting NATO airspace or territory, but its functionality may be limited.
“It’s not set up as a complaint hotline where you can just call and bitch about things,” a US defense official said this week when asked if anything had been communicated through the channel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, according to ground rules established by the Pentagon.
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Sam Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand Corporation, said calls from Austin and Milley serve a “fundamentally different purpose” than the decon conflict channel.
“One concerns tactical accident avoidance. The other about strategic engagement,” he said. “It is always important to maintain the strategic level to clearly communicate our interests and better understand their interests. When there is no communication at this level, their worst-case assumptions, often based on bad information, are more likely to dictate their behavior.”
As Russia’s battlefield setbacks become more pronounced and the conflict nears its second month, US officials are concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin could escalate militarily in hopes of changing the tide of the war. The more dangerous weapons and tactics used, the greater the risk of a major conflict.
“A nightmare scenario would be a Russian missile or attack plane destroying a US command post across the Polish-Ukrainian border,” said Stavridis, a retired admiral. “A local commander could react immediately, thinking that the event was a harbinger of a larger attack. This could lead to a rapid and irreversible escalation, including the possible use of nuclear weapons.”
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Stavridis said that when he was Supreme Allied Commander he was always able to telephone his Russian counterpart, “and did so on several occasions to clarify and de-escalate a situation.”
The Pentagon believes that engagement between US and Russian defense leaders “is critical at this time,” Kirby said. In addition to the conflict resolution channel, the United States and Russia can also engage through the Defense Attache at the US Embassy in Moscow or by relaying messages to the Department of Defense.
Communications between the United States and Russia have been much sparse since the war began last month. US Ambassador to Russia John J. Sullivan has met most frequently with Russian officials during occasional visits and phone calls in Moscow. President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, spoke last week to his counterpart Nikolay Patrushev for the first time since the conflict began. Some American and Russian military officials met at Russia’s Defense Ministry last week, CNN first reported.
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According to US officials, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted talks with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the conflict began.
It remains unclear why Russia’s top generals have refused to hold talks with their US counterparts.
“I suspect the problem is that Russia insists this is a ‘special military operation’ and is unwilling to admit the true nature of the war,” said Angela Stent, a Russia scholar at Georgetown University who served as senior intelligence officer in Russia was the Bush administration.
Given the high stakes of the conflict, the generals may also wait for Putin’s approval to make the calls, and he may not sign off, Charap said.
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Another theory is that Putin may now view the United States as a determined adversary bent on his downfall and not worth engaging. Russian officials balked at Biden, calling Putin a “war criminal” and saying it could lead to a complete rupture in ties.
Biden has attempted to avoid conflict by keeping US troops out of Ukraine and US planes out of its airspace.
“They talk about avoiding incidents with aircraft or at sea,” said Ben Hodges, a retired Army officer who served as commanding general of US Army Europe. “I’m sure they would have wanted to convey to Gerasimov and Shoigu that Russian pilots shouldn’t fire missiles too close to the Polish border, but they also wanted to talk about other places, not just Ukraine, where there are Russian planes.”
“I would also imagine they want to convey — here’s what we’re doing, don’t interpret what we’re doing as a provocative act,” he added.
Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.