The version war over the military situation around Ukraine literally exploded with a series of mortar attacks recorded on the front between pro-Russian rebels in the east of the country and Kiev forces.
On the one hand, separatists who have dominated two parts of the country since 2014 say they have been attacked by the Ukrainian government. On the other hand, Kiev claims that it was the target of the bombs and that this could be a pretext created for Russia to initiate military action in the region.
Both sides may be lying, as has been the norm in this conflict, but if the situation escalates, the high tension registered in the West with the alleged risk of Russian invasion will reach a new level. So far, no deaths have been recorded.
“The situation at the line of contact has escalated dramatically. The enemy is trying to launch hostilities,” the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, one of the two breakaway areas — the other is around the region’s other key city, said on its Telegram channel. Lugansk.
Kiev, meanwhile, says there was a mortar attack on a school in Stanitsia, injuring two teachers. This kind of skirmish has been going on ever since a ceasefire in 2015 tried to rein in the civil war that started the year before in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba has already pointed the finger at Moscow, saying the Russians are behind the ceasefire violation.
The problem is your timing. Tension between Moscow and the West is at its highest levels since the Cold War since President Vladimir Putin deployed tens of thousands of troops for constant training on four fronts around Ukraine in November.
This week, Putin announced the start of a partial troop withdrawal, signaling the West’s willingness to negotiate from a position of strength. He had used the Ukrainian crisis to try to establish security status throughout Eastern Europe, launching demands for an end to NATO (western military alliance) expansion, among other points.
This implies preventing Ukraine and other countries, such as Georgia and Moldova, from joining the club and also the European Union, in practice, thus preventing the existence of pro-Western regimes capable of inspiring opposition in their country. The US and allies do not agree.
On Thursday (17), the Russian Defense Ministry released more videos and information about the removal of military equipment from Crimea and regions near eastern Ukraine. But the West says this is a hoax.
The day before, NATO had said it had no confirmation of a substantial force reduction. Already on the fifth in Eastern Europe, the US said that, in addition to not withdrawing, Putin sent at least 7,000 more troops, reaching the level of 150,000 men on readiness. Its Armed Forces have about 900,000 soldiers.
In Moscow, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs repelled the mistrust. “What are you [Jens] Stoltenberg has to say no longer interests us,” spokeswoman Maria Zakaharova said of the military alliance’s secretary general.
It is in this context of cross-accusations that the renewed activity in the so-called line of contact, an informal border of 430 km that separates the two “people’s republics” from Ukrainian territory. More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict.
NATO countries and Ukraine have repeated fears that Putin will launch a “false flag” operation, that is, mount an attack against his own forces to justify an invasion. It turns out that, technically, the pro-Russian rebels are not formal allies of Moscow.
This is where the new letter inserted by the Russian into the conflict comes in, the request for recognition of the two areas made in conjunction with the Duma, the local Chamber of Deputies. If he does that, Putin can bail out a new ally, on demand, so to speak.
This is the Ukrainian and Western accusation. But there is an important obstacle: if he does that and wants to continue in the West’s game of controlled provocation, Putin will lose an important asset, which is his position as guarantor of the so-called Minsk Accords.
Signed in 2014 and 2015, they hold the precarious ceasefire in Donbass (eastern Ukraine), and establish a vague map for accommodation in the country, guaranteeing autonomy for the rebels, in effect federalizing Ukraine.
For Putin, technically this would solve his problem of seeing his neighbor in NATO, as the separatists would have a voice and would not allow them to join the military club. At the same time, everything would become a problem for Kiev to solve.
If he recognizes the republics and, worse, puts Russian troops en masse in them, he will no longer be a judge of the case. This is a week after gaining support from France, which considers Minsk the basis of any negotiations.
There are other issues. The rebels want the entirety of the former Lugansk and Donetsk provinces for themselves — today they occupy something like half of them. Would Putin help to actually violate Ukrainian territory, ultimately absorbing the areas as he did Crimea?
Georgi Tchijov, from the Kiev Reform and Relief Center, says in a message that it would make no political sense, even given the different context: eight years ago, Putin instinctively responded to the overthrow of the allied government in Kiev to stop the country’s westernization. Now, he has the initiative.
More than that, he points to the fact that the cost of a reconstruction, estimated by its center at US$ 22 billion, is priceless for Russia. The annexation of Crimea cost an estimated $5 billion and is an economic headache to this day for the Kremlin.
Another factor that weighs is public opinion. Over the years, polls by the Levada Center, Russia’s most respected independent institute, indicate that only a quarter of Russians agree with the idea of bringing separatists into the motherland. And if Putin is sensitive to anything, it’s polls.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said it would respond to US proposals on security, primarily missile control and monitoring of military exercises, later on Thursday.
But Chancellor Sergei Lavrov said, maintaining the bite-and-blow tactic, that Russia had nothing more to do at the table with the NATO members’ forum, which in early January was used for discussions on the crisis. At the same time, he said again that the threatening exercises with the Belarus dictatorship will end on the 20th, as planned.
Far away in Venezuela, dictator Nicolás Maduro said on Wednesday that he intends to expand his military cooperation with Moscow. “Russia is supported by Venezuela in the face of threats from NATO and the Western world,” he said, according to broadcaster Venezolana de Televisión.
Last month, Russia admitted it could deploy forces in Venezuela or Cuba, another ally in the US backyard, as a way of strategically compensating for the situation in Ukraine. Difficult to execute, the idea was seen as part of the side-by-side threat game in the crisis.
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