At the origin of the crisis between Russia and the West, the pro-Kremlin rebel territories in Ukraine now become the main stage of the military tension between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden and NATO (Western military alliance).
The region’s two self-proclaimed “people’s republics”, centered around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, decreed this Saturday (19) the military mobilization of all men of age to take up arms. Both entities accuse Kiev of preparing an invasion.
It’s hard enough, as Biden said on Friday, to believe that the Ukrainians would make such a move with at least 150,000 Russian troops massed around their borders — to be on the American side, as Moscow only says it is gradually withdrawing troops who completed exercises. The US estimates that 40% of the forces are ready to act.
At dawn and Saturday morning (six hours ahead of Brasilia), there were several reports of explosions north of Donetsk, in addition to reports of more intense fire exchanges. A shell fell on the Russian side of the border, 1 km into the Rostov region, according to the local government. Nobody was hurt.
The events have led Biden and other Western politicians to say that what is happening in Donbass (the generic name for eastern Ukraine, because it is the Don River basin) is a false flag operation — when attacks are simulated to give a pretext for a reaction.
There are signs of this under way, even though there is a history of independent action by the rebels, who have a rather turbulent relationship with Moscow.
The optional evacuation of civilians from the two areas, suggested by local governments on Friday, was met with official surprise in the Kremlin, but immediately the Ministry of Emergency Situations dispatched teams to Rostov and Putin ordered each refugee to receive 10,000 rubles. ) of help.
“I would say the odds of a confrontation of some kind in Donbass have gone up a lot this week, to 50%. But I still think there won’t be any invasion of the whole Ukraine, as Biden said,” said the director of global political risks at the British consultancy. Control Risk, Oksana Antonenko.
A week ago, she had said she didn’t believe in war in another interview with sheet. Now he sees a political development taking place. “It seems to me that the idea in Moscow is to make Kiev negotiate directly with the separatists, accept Minsk 2,” she said.
She refers to the second version of the Minsk Accords, which in 2015 established a fragile ceasefire in the civil war that has killed more than 14,000 people. It had started the year before, when Putin annexed Crimea and backed the rebels to retaliate for overthrowing the pro-Moscow government in Kiev and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union.
That bill was hanging until now, when the Russian president decided to use military force to try to force his terms to hold the expansion of the western institutional framework towards the former borders of the Soviet Union (1922-91), Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova ahead.
If this is Putin’s tactic, it carries several risks. Kiev claims that it is not attacking the rebels, but this is an impossible reality to measure, as there are only informational spasms of the conflagrated region. On Russian TV, intense bombing against ethnic Russians is described, music for Putin, which speaks of “genocide of his people” in the region.
In the Western media, the suspicion of the false flag and the uninterrupted accusation of impending invasion by Putin, which has lasted more than a month, are reported. A piece of data emerged on the investigative website Bellingcat: the metadata analysis of the message of the evacuation of civilians by leader Denis Puchilin (Donetsk) indicates that it was recorded on the 16th, although he explicitly mentions on the 18th. the retreat was determined by the border skirmishes of the fifth (17) loses strength.
Here and there more detached reports emerge, such as those from observers at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which confirm that something is happening — it’s just not clear what.
Alternatively, the Russians may have another hand in the game. Putin has ready a document to recognize the two republics, which would kill Minsk 2 because he would stop being a negotiator and become a party. On the other hand, it would facilitate the entry of troops to ensure the security of ethnic Russians in the region. Furthermore, of the 3.8 million people who live there, around 700,000 have received Russian passports in recent years.
Meanwhile, the leaders’ show away from the field continues. Putin will lead exercises of his strategic forces, nuclear and non-nuclear, with ballistic and cruise missile launches this Saturday. A clearer message, impossible, although the Kremlin insists that it does not want war and is waiting for a diplomatic opening from the West.
In Munich, where the annual security conference of Western powers takes place, the Norwegian secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, once again said that the crisis “is the new normal, and we have to prepare for it”. He stated that he still believes in a negotiated exit, and on the 24th there will be another personal meeting between the heads of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, and the US, Antony Blinken.
