On the fertile plains of Ukraine, the resurgent echoes of a Cold War with Russia risk turning into murderous frost. Washington is sounding the alarm at the concentration of troops of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the border and a possible attack on the Kiev government, which is looking to the west. While the stake is the risk of war in Europe, a question is at the center of the crisis: What does Putin really want?
The possibilities are endless and – especially for the hopes of an independent, prosperous and democratic Ukraine – they go from bad to worse. Forcing the West to make sweeping concessions on security in Eastern Europe? Push out any future paths to NATO membership, and long-term security, for what’s left of Ukraine? To formalize the control of Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region, invaded by Moscow’s “little green men” in 2014 and trapped in a near-constant state of armed conflict ever since? Or is Putin really intending to wave the Russian flag over Kiev’s Maidan Square to complete his vision of Ukraine as a fundamental part of the Russian state?
Concern over Russian designs in Ukraine, which had subsided following a similar crisis last spring, has come to the fore once more in recent weeks when fUS officials warned that intelligence services were pointing to the growing risk of a Russian invasion. President Joe Biden has discarded one of Putin’s main demands: a guarantee that Ukraine will never enter the NATO alliance. But Putin has already achieved at least one thing: getting the West to pay attention to him.
In an attempt to defuse the crisis, the United States and Russia are to hold bilateral talks in Geneva on Sunday and Monday, followed by further talks next week at the NATO-Russia Council on January 12 and negotiations at the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe, which includes Ukraine, on January 13. These talks come following Biden and Putin held their second call in a month last week, and Washington and Brussels warned Moscow of harsh new sanctions if Russia crosses a red line.
In his last call, as reported by the Washington PostPutin replied that any new sanction for the Ukraine crisis would trigger “a complete rupture of relations” between Moscow and Washington.
The intervention of Russian troops in Kazakhstan, at the request of its pro-Kremlin government, following the outbreak of widespread protests, may still influence the Kremlin’s military calculation or when to act in Ukraine. Following the violent crackdown on dissent in Belarus, the uprising in Kazakhstan underscores the challenges Russia faces in maintaining its sphere of influence.
But the challenge now is to play Putin’s biggest strategy in Ukraine.
In a captivating article in the Atlantic, Anne Applebaum writes regarding two schools of thought in Kiev. “The skeptical school essentially thinks that this whole situation might be a huge bluff: The Russians have deliberately set out to ‘scare the Americans,'” he says, “in order to create pressure on Ukraine to change its constitution as the Russians want. , or to put Putin in the center of international attention, or to reestablish a Russian sphere of influence within the former Soviet borders.
To them, Putin’s goal appears to have “scored some victories” by focusing the attention of the White House and NATO not on the Ukraine crisis itself, but on Russia’s attempts to force the West to engage with it over time. false claims of western aggression.
But there is also a more worrying pessimistic view. In July, Putin published a 5,000-word essay in which he effectively asserted a historical and cultural basis for his claims in Ukraine, questioning the legitimacy of its modern borders. and, as Peter Dickinson of the Atlantic Council pointed out, arguing that much of it occupies historically Russian land. “Russia was stolen,” Putin wrote bluntly.
Back in Kiev, Applebaum said that pessimists fear this: “If Putin believes that Ukraine must be destroyed sooner or later; if you believe that historical grievances should be corrected; Even if you just want to regain some of the popularity that has been lost to covadiction, corruption and bad economics, then you might have reason to think this is a good time to do it. “
America is a divided house. The EU is tired of the pandemic and distracted. What better time might Putin have?
A better assessment of Russia’s motives and goals might be the most useful outcome of the high-level meetings to be held in Europe next week.
“I think Putin wants a couple of things outside of the crisis that he has created, one of which is a solution of the [conflicto en el este de Ucrania] in Russian terms, with strong autonomy for the Donbas region, “Defense Priorities Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman said this week. “And secondly, he wants the United States to take the initiative to say that there is no NATO in Ukraine, and that there is no Ukraine in NATO ”.
Andrew Lohsen, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me that he hopes the talks will start strong on the bilateral with the Russians and the Americans, before losing steam when the forum shifts to NATO. Moscow would be making it appear that it feels that Washington is the one who decides and, therefore, wants to deal directly with the White House.
The question is not just whether Biden might end up backing down on some kind of compromise with Putin on Ukraine, but to what extent Washington is willing to discuss a broader renewal of the security paradigm in Europe. But nevertheless, Putin has generated so much excitement regarding the crisis in his country that he may have gone too far to back down now. If you don’t get concessions, you have several options. They might include missile attacks, cyberattacks, a broader intervention in Donbas or, as some fear, an all-out invasion.
“Russia needs to come out of this crisis with some kind of victory; it needs some kind of concession from the United States or NATO, ”Lohsen told me. “Limiting military deployments near Russian borders might be enough, but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough. This might well be a pretext ”for the aggression.
But Putin has also achieved something else: to increase the price of Western support in Ukraine. Even if Russian boots fail to march on Kiev, the continuing threat of invasion might force Washington and the European Union to act more lightly and to concede a measure of Russian influence, whether the Ukrainians like it or not.
“The conversation has shifted from how to solve this crisis in Ukraine to how to avoid a war in Europe,” Lohsen told me. “I think the terms are much broader now, and I think whatever happens, Ukraine will end up in a worse position than before.”
(c) 2022, The Washington Post – Anthony Faiola
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