The third week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the biggest confrontation on European soil since the Second World War, began on Thursday (10) with a dangerous and widespread stalemate.
In Turkey, the first meeting of Chancellors Sergei Lavrov (Russia) and Dmitro Kuleba (Ukraine) ended as expected: no progress, to the delight of those who manipulated the market by selling the idea that peace was at hand the day before.
On Ukrainian soil, the routine of the previous week continued, with the Russians increasing the military pressure, although without yet decisive attacks. Kiev, meanwhile, accuses Moscow of deliberately bombing civilians, while humanitarian corridors are drawn across the country.
In the West, in this amalgamation led by the United States and its European allies, there are hitherto unprecedented signs of disagreements. Poland, the most belligerent NATO member in the east of the continent, has been pushing for more incisive action by the Western military alliance against the Russians, a move that raises fears of a Third World War.
The day began, politically speaking, with the diplomatic meeting in Antalya. The host, Turkish Chancellor Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, called it “very difficult but civilized”. The body language of Lavrov and Kuleba, both in official photos and in subsequent press conferences, only showed the first part of the definition.
“There was no progress,” Kuleba said, echoing the position of his boss, President Volodymyr Zelensky. He says Russian Vladimir Putin’s terms to end the war, particularly the way they are phrased, amount to a surrender that will not take place.
“Ukraine seems to want to hold meetings just for the sake of holding meetings,” retorted separately Lavrov, the doyen of world diplomacy turned pariah by the war. He said, however, that negotiations would continue. “We didn’t expect miracles,” said the Turk, representing a government that balances its position as a member of NATO and close to Moscow.
Obviously, there may have been some undisclosed exchange of positions or demands, and that will only become clear in the coming days. But the impasse continues. Russia demands the demilitarization of its neighbour, a constitutional promise never to join NATO or blocs like the European Union, recognition of the Crimea it annexed in 2014 as Russian and the self-proclaimed eastern Russian republics of the country as independent.
In an interview on Monday (8), Zelenski was even open to discussing the conditions, but the next day he returned to his defiant rhetoric, promising to fight to the end. The Russians, for their part, stopped talking about overthrowing the government, as they had at the beginning of the offensive. But they keep on going.
In Ukraine, this “until the end” is that question. If they haven’t doubled down on resistance in the country, Putin’s forces have advanced in the three weeks and don’t look like they will stop the tough economic sanctions applied to Russia. Kiev’s military degradation is great, except for the damage it inflicts on the Russians with anti-tank and portable anti-aircraft missiles, 20,000 of them supplied by the West.
The violence continues, despite the increasing difficulty of obtaining more reliable reports of what happens in the field: the work of the press is severely limited, and bad weather makes it difficult to observe the field through satellite photos, the famous open sources of intelligence.
Military assessments by the US and UK, widely broadcast on Western TV, need, like broadcasts in Moscow, to be read with suspicion.
For its part, Kiev maintains accusations that the Russians target fleeing civilians in humanitarian corridors, which the Kremlin denies. The humanitarian crisis is only getting worse, with more than 2 million Ukrainians fleeing the country.
The attack that hit a maternity hospital in the besieged port of Mariupol on Thursday (9) continues to fuel discussion. After saying that 17 people had been injured, the local government said today that 3 had died, including a girl.
After back-and-forth versions, Lavrov said the building was being used by Ukrainian fighters, without providing evidence. He again complained about the West’s supply of arms to Kiev, which he called “dangerous”.
This is where the third axis of the impasse comes in, the first visible cracks in the western block. Poland had its plan to send its 28 Soviet MiG-29 fighters, model operated by Ukraine, vetoed by the Americans.
It is clear in Washington and in Brussels, the headquarters of NATO, that such a deployment would be tantamount to entering the war and risking a conflict between nuclear powers. This had already guided the obvious decision not to try to implement a western no-fly zone in Ukraine, which Zelensky demands daily.
The US had to act, dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris to visit Warsaw. She gave a formal interview with President Andrzej Duda, in which the Pole repeated that “we need to be on Ukraine’s side” and she spoke in a choked voice about “unimaginable atrocities” perpetrated by Moscow.
Across the border, however, the tone was set by the combative Polish ambassador to Kiev, Bartosz Cichocki, one of the last remaining in the city. He told Reuters that “a no-fly zone would quickly end the war”, not to mention the risk of widening the conflict.
To calm Warsaw, Washington announced the deployment of two Patriot anti-aircraft batteries to the country, which should dissuade the Russians from acting more actively in western Ukraine — a plane that goes out of its way and is shot down makes the situation worse.
In Antalya, Lavrov was asked about the risk of nuclear war. “I don’t want to believe it, I don’t believe it,” he said. Putin was the first to resurrect the specter, threatening outside forces that would try to intervene in his war with “consequences never before experienced” in his speech announcing the invasion on February 24.
Three days later, he put Russian nuclear forces into “special combat mode”, something that does not exist in the country’s doctrine, due to criticism received from NATO countries.
The friction of the impasse carries the risk of some escalation, intentional or not, which only increases the danger to which the world, not to mention Ukrainian civilians, is subject in the crisis.
