Was Europe bracing for war on 29 January 2022?

Was a Russian invasion of Ukraine already being treated as a real prospect in Western capitals? On 29 January 2022, the evidence pointed that way, even as Moscow and its ally Minsk insisted they wanted no war.

Warnings from Washington

The previous days had set the tone. On 27 January 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by telephone that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February. The next day, at a special Pentagon press briefing, General Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that a Russian invasion would be "horrific" and could result in "significant casualties".

Denials from Moscow and Minsk

The response from the Russian side, also on 28 January 2022, was one of reassurance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia was not interested in starting a war, speaking after Biden's warning to Ukraine. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Belarus might go to war if it or Russia were attacked, while insisting his country did not want war with Ukraine.

The two messages sat awkwardly together: a conditional readiness to fight, framed as defence, alongside a stated unwillingness to attack Ukraine. The statements also showed that the question of who might attack whom was already being argued in public.

Reinforcing the eastern flank

The practical response from NATO members came on 29 January 2022, when France announced that it would deploy "several hundred" troops to Romania to support NATO's eastern flank amid tensions with Russia. The decision showed an allied government acting on the tension rather than simply commenting on it.

The same day brought a smaller diplomatic episode far from Ukraine. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney announced that the Russian Minister of Defence had agreed to his request to move planned exercises outside the Irish Exclusive Economic Zone. The exercises, as described in later accounts, had been proposed for the Atlantic southwest of Ireland, in international waters but within Ireland's zone, for 3 to 8 February 2022. Russia later cancelled them at the request of the Irish government.

Life beyond the diplomacy

Ukraine's domestic news that week was not dominated by the crisis alone. On 27 January 2022 in Dnipro, a National Guardsman shot a guard detail at the Pivdenmash plant, killing five people and wounding five; National Guard commander Mykola Balan submitted his resignation. On 28 January 2022, a gas explosion in a four-storey block of flats in Zaporizhzhia killed one person, injured two and damaged seven flats, and a criminal case was opened. The same day, the boxer Volodymyr Virchys was found hanged in the Dniprovskyi district of Kyiv, and a criminal case was opened.

What the day shows

Taken together, the reports from 27 to 29 January 2022 describe a region where public warnings, public denials and troop movements were unfolding at once. Washington spoke of February as a possible date and of heavy casualties. Moscow and Minsk spoke of not wanting war. France moved forces towards Romania. The Irish case showed that diplomacy could still produce an agreed adjustment, at least on a narrow question.

What the day did not show was any resolution. Each party was describing its own intentions, and the reports record only statements and a single concrete deployment. That mix of reassurance and reinforcement is the clearest feature of 29 January 2022.