Ukraine on the brink

S P SETH

The developments in Ukraine are getting ugly and dangerous. Both Russia and the US are accusing each other of fomenting the trouble. It all started in November when the then President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement to integrate with Europe. The EU deal didn’t have any real provision to urgently rescue Ukraine’s economy that was in bad shape. Instead, Ukraine would be required to restructure its economy based on austerity provisions and related measures. Faced with a hard choice, Yanukovych turned to Russia, with Putin only too keen to provide $15 billions of loans and a further reduction in gas prices for an ailing Ukraine. The protests that followed and the resultant violence from the police and the riotous mob showed that Yanukovych was no longer in control and he fled to Russia. Moscow called it a coup, attributing it to US/Europe machinations. That wasn’t altogether untrue, as revealed by a leaked conversation between the US ambassador in Kiev and the US assistant secretary state for Europe where she chided the Europeans, in colourful language, for not doing enough.

What is clear enough is that both Russia and US/Europe are pushing their own strategic agenda. In the process, Ukraine has become a battleground of sorts, with the majority Russian-speaking people of southeast Ukraine barracking for Russia, and the western parts of the country, where Ukraine’s interim government is based in the capital Kiev, wanting to integrate with Europe and eventually join NATO. Russia is against Ukraine joining European Union, bringing western presence right on its borders. To put it simply, Moscow would like a friendly regime in Kiev mindful of its larger neighbour’s sensitivities and interests, and accommodative of its Russian-speaking population. Undoubtedly, Yanukovych’s toppling, with the interim government in Kiev without any real representation from the eastern region, has contributed to the unrest in that region with Moscow’s support.

With the interim government determined to crush the separatists in southeast, calling them terrorists, Ukraine is descending into civil war. And if this were to result in fatalities among Russian-speaking people of the region, as has already happened in a few cases, Moscow might find itself drawn into it. Russia has no doubt that the crisis in Ukraine is engineered by the west. According to Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to the UN, as he told the UN the Security Council, “This is their responsibility. Clearly they are chaperoning power of the people that came to power after the coup. So it’s their responsibility to prevent further escalation of this crisis.” Moscow believes that Ukraine’s interim government is a collection of radical nationalists and neo-Nazi elements intent on harming ethnic Russians.

The US and Europe are clearly angry at, what they consider as, Russian propaganda. As the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, summed it up, “Insecurity in Ukraine is written and choreographed by Russia.” With its troops massed on Ukraine’s eastern borders, Washington and NATO fear that Russia might be poised to intervene in Ukraine, like it did in Crimea. Apart from threatening more sanctions against Russia if this were to happen, NATO is moving air, naval and ground troops to reassure its eastern allies, like Baltic States, Poland and other countries that were once part of the Soviet Union and/or part of the Warsaw Pact, that their security would be protected. At the same time, NATO has effectively ruled out military action over Ukraine, as it is outside its alliance system. There is increasing demand by some elements in the US and Europe that Ukraine should be provided with military weapons to fight back any Russian incursion/attack. Such military aid might soon be in the offing.

It is somehow believed that a rigorous sanctions regime against Russia will be an effective deterrent against any Russian military incursion/attack into eastern region of Ukraine. This is too simplistic. The sanctions are likely to hurt Europe more than Russia for two reasons. First, because Europe is significantly dependent on Russian gas supplies, and any interruption/curtailment will adversely affect their economies. Some of these countries, like Ukraine, get their gas at highly discounted price, which Russia has since raised significantly as well as calling on Kiev to pay its past bills to the tune of about $2 billion. And there is no easy replacement for Russian gas in the immediate and, possibly, medium term. Russia will, of course, suffer from the loss of income with reduced exports of gas. Therefore, a tighter sanctions regime is not a real solution.

At another level, some European countries, like Germany, have invested heavily in Russia, and some rich Russians have invested heavily in British real estate and other assets. In the case of France, it has a large contract for the supply of military hardware to Russia. A punitive financial regime will, therefore, seriously affect trade and investment. It is not surprising that Europeans are less enthusiastic than the United States on a gung ho approach to Russia. Europe is right in the middle of a highly unpredictable and explosive situation, if the situation in Ukraine is not handled well.

The recent deal in Geneva between the US, Europe, Russia and Ukraine to de-escalate the situation by requiring vacation of government buildings by protesters on both sides, the separatists in the east and the ultra-right Ukrainian groups in the west of the country, has already collapsed. Both the US and Russia are accusing each other of sabotaging the diplomatic process and, instead, escalating the crisis. The problem, though, is much deeper than that. Which is that Moscow fears further encirclement by West/NATO with Ukraine’s integration into European Union and an anti-Russian regime in Kiev. And with elections due on May 25, US/Europe will seek to legitimize, what Russia believes, is an ‘illegitimate’ political order. With half of Ukraine in the country’s south and east rejecting governance from Kiev, the future of the country seems quite rocky.

On the other side, the US and Europe are equally convinced that Moscow is behind all the trouble, starting with the annexation of Crimea, and intent on repeating it in eastern Ukraine. President Putin has made it quite clear a number of times that Russia will take measures to protect ethnic Russians if Kiev were to launch military action against the pro-Russian region. Which, in a sense, has already happened. The question is at what point Moscow will regard Kiev’s military intervention as having crossed the threshold? 

Note: This article first appeared in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au