“His
partition of Ukraine is an attack on global peace. Russian President Vladimir
Putin, in a long speech full of heavy
sighs and dark grievances, made clear today that
he has chosen war. He went to war against Ukraine in 2014; now he has declared
war against the international order of the past 30 years...
“Putin began
with a history lesson about how and why Ukraine even exists. For all his Soviet
nostalgia, the Russian president is right that his Soviet predecessors
intentionally created a demographic nightmare when drawing the internal borders
of the U.S.S.R., a subject I’ve explained at length here.
“But
Putin’s point wasn’t that the former subjects of the Soviet Union needed to
iron out their differences. Rather, he was suggesting that none of the new
states that emerged from the Soviet collapse—except for Russia—were real
countries. ‘As a result of Bolshevik policy,’ Putin intoned, ‘Soviet Ukraine
arose, which even today can
with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine. He is its author
and architect.’
“It
is true that Soviet leaders created the 1991 borders. That is also true of what
we now call the Russian Federation. Putin, however, went even further back in
history: ‘Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.’
“By
that kind of historical reasoning, few nations in Europe, or anywhere else, are
safe. Putin’s foray into history was nothing less than a demand that only
Moscow—and only the Kremlin’s supreme leader—has the right to judge what is or
is not a sovereign state… Putin’s claims are hardly different from Saddam Hussein’s rewriting of Middle
East history when Iraq tried to erase Kuwait from
the map…
“Putin
left no room for negotiation with the Biden administration. He is prepared for
sanctions, which he says will come no matter what Russia does. He asserts that
Western hostility is permanent (perhaps because it would be too painful to his
ego to admit that most people in the West, if given the choice, would not think
about Russia or its leaders at all).
“In
short, Putin is now embracing a Russian tradition of paranoia, an inferiority
complex that sees Moscow as both a savior of other nations and a victim of
great conspiracies, a drama in which Russia is both strong enough to be feared
and weak enough to be threatened. The West, in this story, is motivated not to
seek peace and security, but to undermine Russia, and Putin has cast himself as
the beleaguered Russian prophet who must subvert the evil plans drawn against
his people…
“At
the end of his speech, Putin recognized the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine,
the ‘people’s republics’ of Lugansk and Donetsk, as independent entities. In so
doing, Putin has effectively partitioned Ukraine. This specific form of
meddling in sovereign nations, too, is a Soviet tradition, as the Poles and
others would remind us. His claim to these areas—for they will be Russian
satrapies, and not ‘independent’ in any meaningful way—is a claim to be the
ultimate arbiter of former Soviet borders, including those now within NATO.
“Literally
within minutes of completing his television address, Putin sent ‘peacemakers’ into
eastern Ukraine. His likely next move will be to stage some sort of incident in
which he claims (as he did in Georgia in his war there) that the Ukrainians are
the aggressors, and that Russia is acting only in defense of ethnic Russians.
“That
‘defense’ could lead right into the streets of Kyiv. Putin demanded in his
address, as he has before, that Ukraine ‘cease hostilities’ in these areas—in
other words, that the legitimate government of Ukraine stop trying to control
its own territory—and he warned that ‘all responsibility for the possible continuation
of the bloodshed will be entirely on the conscience of the regime ruling on the
territory of Ukraine.’
“This
is the pretext for war. Putin has now affirmed that he refuses to accept the
outcome of the Cold War and that he will fight to dismantle the European system
of peace and security constructed by the international community after its end.
This is Vladimir Putin’s forever war, and Russia, cursed as it has been so many
times in its history with a terrible leader, will be fighting it for as long as
Putin remains the master of the Kremlin” (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic).
“…Ukraine… is Europe’s largest country after Russia. Many of its population of more than 44 million would become refugees if war broke out. Globally, it is a crucial exporter of maize and seventh for wheat, and a key supplier of agricultural produce to the EU. World food prices would rocket if Ukraine’s fields were full of tanks rather than tractors. And Ukraine is an important transit route for Europe’s energy.
ReplyDelete“Western leaders now grappling with Russia’s escalating aggression…: they know that appeasement can have disastrous consequences. They can see, too, thanks to Russia’s December proposals on European security, that Putin’s ambitions aren’t limited to controlling Ukraine: he wants to reverse changes in Europe’s post-cold war security arrangements. If Joe Biden, Macron, Scholz and Boris Johnson want to prevent a horrendous war – on a much larger scale than the Balkan wars of the 1990s – they need to focus on deterring Putin, not accommodating him.
“Deterrence will be impossible, however, if leaders keep telling Putin what they are not prepared to do, or if they turn up the pressure on him so slowly that he can always adapt. Biden has said that he won’t send US forces to fight in Ukraine; the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has publicly expressed doubts about cutting Russia off from the global payments system Swift; the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has said that sanctions should not hit gas imports from Russia; and the EU, US and UK have already indicated that the recognition of the ‘people’s republics’ looks unlikely to trigger full-scale economic sanctions at this stage, despite Putin’s deployment of troops.
“The western desire not to escalate is understandable. Putin is doing his best to show that Ukraine matters enough to him to shed blood over it, and he has past form: in the war he launched in Chechnya thousands of Russian troops were killed, according to Russian human rights organisations.
“But if Putin goes on to attack the rest of Ukraine, as his posture of force suggests he will, the costs of the resultant war for the west will be much higher than those of wide-ranging sanctions or providing military support to Ukraine, and Europe will be destabilised for decades. On 21 February, Putin advanced, but not far. If he is to be deterred from going farther, even at this late stage, the west needs to make him uncertain that the gain will be worth the pain. Everything must be on the table” (The Guardian).
-Ian Bond is the director of foreign policy at the independent thinktank, the Centre for European Reform, and a former British diplomat.
“…In his address on Monday, Putin denounced Western nations—particularly the United States—for pouring weapons into Ukraine and reiterated his view that Ukraine joining NATO would represent a serious security threat to Russia. The situation is ‘like having a knife against our throat,’ argued Putin, who said that Russia has ‘a right to take countermeasures to enhance our own security.’
ReplyDelete“Following Putin's announcement, the White House called the move a ‘blatant violation’ of international agreements signed by Moscow and announced it would move swiftly to impose trade restrictions on the eastern areas of Ukraine. In a statement, press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would be signing an executive order to ‘prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons to, from, or in the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine.’
“The statement said the order from Biden would also ‘provide authority to impose sanctions on any person determined to operate in those areas of Ukraine,’ but stipulated these measures were separate from others that would be imposed against Russia if it was to ‘further invade’ Ukraine.
“Shortly ahead of Putin's speech, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba characterized the Russian president's expected move as an escalation but added that ‘it's exactly now that we all should calmly focus on de-escalation efforts.’
“Writing in the Financial Times on Monday, economist and Columbia University professor Jeffrey D. Sachs put himself among those calling for a diplomatic solution, including an agreement by the U.S. to compromise on NATO expansion. ‘As misguided as the Russian actions are,’ argued Sachs, ‘American intransigence regarding Nato enlargement is also utterly misguided and risky. True friends of Ukraine, and of global peace, should be calling for a U.S. and NATO compromise with Russia—one that respects Russia's legitimate security interests while fully backing Ukraine's sovereignty.’…” (Common Dreams).