Ukraine a test of where Trump stands on Putin

Within hours of a phone conversation between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Jan. 28, separatist and government forces in eastern Ukraine were hurling thousands of rounds of deadly artillery fire at each other.

The on-again, off-again civil war in Ukraine is now in its third winter. The dubious prize being fought over this time was the massive steel works at Avdiivka. The labyrinthine factory is an ugly rusting hulk that represents the very worst in Soviet architecture and ecological practices. A regular hot spot, it changed hands several times early in the war but has been occupied by government forces since the summer of 2014.

At least 33 people have died in the renewed fighting, according to The Associated Press, including rebel leader Mikhail Tolstykh. The flamboyant separatist, who took a particularly hard line on independence, died Wednesday in Donetsk when a rocket exploded inside his office.

Canadians should be paying attention to the latest uptick in violence. A fresh batch of military trainers built around the westernbased Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry is bound for Lviv later this month to continue a training mission that was set to expire at the end of March. The likely impetus for this extension, which comes after months of dithering by the Trudeau government, was a big push by the new foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, who is a passionate supporter of Ukrainian independence.

The Canadians — mostly master corporals, sergeants and warrant officers with Afghan combat experience — provide leadership mentoring to Ukrainians holding similar ranks before the Ukrainians return to the front lines in the east.

Whoever started it, the reason for this month’s fighting in half-abandoned Avdiivka, which lies just north of rebel-held Donetsk, is obviously not about the ramshackle plant itself, although it does supply vital heat to the homes of survivors still living in the area. The Ukrainian government, the U.S. and Russia — or their proxies in eastern Ukraine — are testing the limits of Trump’s apparently still blossoming friendship with Putin.

For a fellow who regards himself as an isolationist and an America First-er, Trump has caused global consternation on just about every foreign file. As with so many other issues from China to Iran to NATO, it is impossible to divine what, if anything, the U.S. president thinks or intends to do about the war in Ukraine, where fighting in the Donbass has already claimed more than 10,000 lives.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary from western sources as well as Russian ones, Trump suggested this week on Fox News that it was unclear to him whether Putin had any control over the rebels who claim to act on Russia’s behalf.

Trump’s comments came only days after his new ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, used her maiden appearance before the Security Council to accuse the Kremlin of initiating the latest violence. Citing what she called Russia’s “occupation” of parts of Ukraine, Haley vowed the sanctions applied against Russia when its troops seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 would remain in place. In so doing, Haley contradicted Trump, who has been waffling about the sanctions for months and has strongly hinted the U.S. might defy its allies and recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

Consternation over what Trump might get up to with Putin isn’t exclusive to Kyiv. Not far to the north are the Balts and the Poles, with their existential fear that Trump will ignore their interests just as Roosevelt and Churchill did at Yalta, and condemn them to the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.

For this reason and many others, the Germans are especially sensitive to Trump’s moods. One of their fears is, as with the refugee crisis that arose after U.S. military interventions in the Middle East, they will once again get stuck with the bill for Trump’s caprices along the old East-West fault line that runs from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

Whatever transpires as a result of the bombardment of Avdiivka, it is Putin rather than Trump who may face the toughest choices in Ukraine. The Kremlin can still turn the military tap on and off at will in the eastern part of the country and it may still want to establish a land corridor to Crimea by seizing the city of Mariupol.

But it has had a hard reckoning about its territorial ambitions since those heady early days when Crimea fell so easily, followed by Donetsk and Luhansk. For two years now, Moscow’s rebels have been holed up in what amounts to about five per cent of Ukraine’s post-Crimea territory. Nor has there been a military breakthrough in Avdiivka, where, perhaps because it was minus-13 C on Tuesday, fighting has suddenly abated.

British- and German-led battle groups are being deployed to Estonia and Lithuania right now, finally to be joined this summer in Latvia by a Canadian-led battle group from Edmonton, and not too soon. With the bloody stalemate in eastern Ukraine likely to continue, Putin may try to keep his personal popularity high at home by spooling up a military adventure in the Baltic states.