At the center of the worst security crisis in Europe since 2014, with four fronts of its territory under the crosshairs of Russian troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Tuesday (1st) that he intends to expand his Armed Forces by 50%.
When signing the decree authorizing another 100,000 soldiers over the next three years, with salary increases, the president at the same time said that this was “not because we will have a war soon, but so that we have peace in the future”.
Ambiguity over the Russian question is the hallmark of Zelensky, a comedian who starred in a series in which he was an accidental president of his country and who, in an exercise in reverse metalanguage, meteorically ascended to power in real life.
On November 26 of last year, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine denounced the Russian military escalation on the borders, with the validation of the US intelligence services, Zelensky said: “There is a threat today that there could be war tomorrow.”
He went on to scream wolf, to stay in Aesop’s fable, until the end of 2021. The crisis then escalated into a major international clash, with Washington and Moscow deciding the future of a European nation at negotiating tables in Geneva and Brussels. .
Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, the scenario could not be one of greater déjà-vu, especially with the European inappetence to deal with the problem. Zelensky took a contrary tack since the turn of the year: he went on to say that there is no imminent risk of war and that the West needs to avoid panic and hysteria around Russia.
This can be read in two ways, somewhat opposite but also complementary. First, a preamble: Zelensky has low popularity and has seen the rival he defeated in 2019, former president Petro Poroshenko, return to the country despite the risk of being arrested on treason charges.
Porochenko was the leader who emerged from the movement that toppled the pro-Kremlin government in 2014, at the genesis of the current crisis. A billionaire, he seeks to reposition himself. One way or another, the Ukrainian president works under strong internal pressure as well.
So it is possible that he is dealing with the perception that he is a puppet of the West in the fight with Vladimir Putin, which has led to his grievances. This would try to show some authority to the Ukrainian elite.
In the opposite line, the same elite today feeds a strong anti-Russia sentiment. But that doesn’t mean he wants to see his country involved in a fratricidal conflict that he won’t be able to win militarily, suggesting that new territorial concessions may be inevitable.
According to leaf heard from Western diplomats in Kiev and Moscow, this perception of the cost of war has become mainstream in more elite circles in the capitals in both countries.
This scenario also justifies the idea of a peace and love Zelensky, so to speak, perhaps willing to give Putin some token of diplomatic victory, such as accepting the terms of the 2015 peace accords in Donbass (eastern Ukraine), paving the way for Russian demobilization.
The problem is that its room for maneuver is slim, and the announcement that it could form a sort of security alliance with Poland and the United Kingdom suggests that other options are at play.
This was clear in the tone adopted by Zelensky when he met, also on Tuesday, with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in Kiev. If he didn’t return to the anti-Russian platform, he made a point of using dark inks. He said Ukraine would “fight to the end” and that “this will not be a war between Ukraine and Russia, it will be a European war, an all-out war”.
There are limits of another order. The idea of increasing the Armed Forces may sound popular, but it remains to be seen where the money will come from. From 2010 to 2020, Ukraine’s defense spending nearly tripled, from 1.1% of gross domestic product to 3.1%, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London).
There was a huge increase in real terms, of course, in 2014 and 2015 (57% and 30% respectively), in the wake of the Crimean crisis and the civil war, but the pace has already dropped to almost single digits. Today there are 209,000 servicemen on active Ukrainian service.
If you lose Russian gas transit fees across the country, something like $2 billion a year, with the opening of the new Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, fiscal space is even tighter.
With all these variables, Zelensky bites and puffs in an attempt to balance his role as the crisis unfolds.
Source: Folha
