After days of diplomatic efforts to try to defuse tension between Russia and the West, the crisis over Ukraine came to a boil again this Thursday (10).
In Moscow, there was an aggressive exchange of accusations during a meeting between Chancellor Sergei Lavrov and his British counterpart, Liz Truss. In Brussels, Britain’s prime minister spoke at the “most dangerous moment of the crisis” as the Kremlin carried out massive military maneuvers north of Kiev, and Ukraine said it was ready to face the Russians in the Black Sea.
So far, the high point of the conflicts was the unusual press conference after the tense meeting between Lavrov and Truss. The Russian, a dean of world diplomacy, was harsh: “I am honestly disappointed that we had a conversation between an idiot and a deaf man. Our more detailed explanations fell on unprepared ground.”
“They [os ocidentais] say Russia is waiting for the ground to freeze so our tanks can more easily enter Ukraine. I think the ground was like this here with our British colleagues, for whom countless facts that we brought in just bounced away,” he said.
“I don’t see any reason to have 100,000 troops stationed on the border other than to threaten Ukraine. If Russia is serious about diplomacy, it needs to remove these troops and give up the threats,” Truss retorted.
The disagreement is predictable, but the tone is not. It can be argued that it will stay that way until one of the parties gives in without appearing to have done so, without necessarily having a military conflict, but there are several dangers in the tactic.
Since November, President Vladimir Putin has decided to wall up the West and has presented an ultimatum to crystallize his strategic vision of having the former surroundings of the Soviet Union neutral or ally.
To this end, he wants Ukraine to be formally barred from joining NATO, a military alliance that expanded eastward in 1999 and absorbed former Moscow satellites. He also called for the withdrawal of offensive forces from these eastern members of the club, as well as opening negotiations on missiles and military exercises — the simplest bargaining chips.
The West said no to the central demands, and the impasse is due to the fact that, to make its willingness credible, the Kremlin reinforced equipment and even field hospitals with troops. For the US and NATO, it’s a sign of imminent invasion.
Kiev, on the other hand, although it daily accuses Moscow of threatening it, adopts a less alarmist tone. The panic, says President Volodymyr Zelensky, is unfounded.
Putin painted a big picture of his idea for Eastern Europe, but in the end he may be looking for a more punctual solution: ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which started in 2014. That year, the president reacted to the fall of a pro-Kremlin government. in Kiev annexing the ethnically Russian-majority Crimea region.
Subsequently, he encouraged the action of pro-Russian separatists in Donbass, the east of the neighbor. Some 14,000 people died in the conflict, which left two autonomous regions in rebel hands. Kiev demands their return in full, rather than with a degree of independence that would effectively make their entry into NATO impossible — the alliance is refractory to countries with serious territorial feuds.
This eastward design was provided for in the Minsk Accords, which Putin wants to see implemented and Zelensky does not. This week, while visiting the two leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron supported the Russian proposal. Despite side-by-side grievances, there were words of conciliation in Moscow and Kiev.
But the dynamics of the crisis did not allow 24 hours of refreshment, with the exchange of verbal aggressions between the chancellors this Thursday. Truss’s boss, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, visited NATO headquarters in Brussels and made even darker comments.
“Something disastrous could happen very quickly. Our intelligence remains bleak. This is probably the most dangerous moment, I would say, in the course of the next few days, in what is the biggest security crisis Europe has faced in decades,” he said.
Boris, a closer ally of the US than of the European Union, is trying to occupy the spotlight that was stolen from him by Macron in the crisis. Both have their agendas: the Briton is under pressure to step down, the Frenchman faces election in April.
But the prime minister was specifically referring to the start on Thursday of a massive 10-day military maneuver between Russian forces and Belarus, the Kremlin-allied dictatorship in northern Ukraine. In less than three hours by car it is possible to go from the border to Kiev.
They have occurred before during the crisis, but not on the current scale, with 30,000 Russian troops and an uncertain number of Belarusians operating anti-aircraft, armored and advanced attack aircraft. The Kremlin announced the exercise a month ago, and says that at the end of it, everyone will return to their barracks.
That’s likely to be the case, keeping NATO on its toes, but there’s also the risk that Putin has other plans or that some border incident escalates out of control. The Russians already have forces concentrated in the eastern surroundings of Ukraine, in Crimea and even a small spearhead to the west, in the Russian breakaway territory of Transdnistria (Moldova).
There is also action in the Black Sea, which borders the Crimea and the southern coast of Ukraine. Six Russian troop landing ships are exercising in the region, prompting the Kiev Navy’s accusation that there is ongoing militarization against which it is ready to act.
Crimea is historically home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which even leased its base in Sevastopol when the territory was in Ukrainian hands at the end of the Cold War. Kiev said it “is ready to face” the Russians, if necessary, in the waters.
In practice, they don’t have the firepower to do so. In recent years, NATO has carried out several military exercises and maintains a constant presence in that sea, but getting into a conflict is another story – Ukraine is not part of the club, after all, no one wants to escalate a war in which both sides have nuclear weapons. .
The alliance’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, again said that negotiation time is running out. He also did not escape criticism from Lavrov: “Stoltenberg repeatedly says that NATO needs to play a special role in the security of the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea in particular. This is a dangerous game.”
The words are in line with the cooperation pact formalized between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping last week. Both countries say they will act together against Western pressure and sanctions.
