Leader gambles on restraint
Petro Poroshenko has launched his presidency with a gamble that will probably define it. He believes that even dozens of Russian deaths in the battle for Donetsk will not provoke a Russian invasion because Vladimir Putin still wants a client state on his western flank, not a war zone.
Ukraine’s new president is just as wary of war. He has stuck with the interim government’s language of counter-terrorism operations, with the difference that these now consist of fullblown aerial attacks and artillery bombardments instead of hesitant posturing.
This is Poroshenko’s shock and awe moment.
He hopes that the battle will be over ‘‘within hours’’, but if the recent history of east European separatist movements is any guide these words will haunt him.
The new government in Kiev claimed yesterday that Russian military vehicles were trying to cross into eastern Ukraine. There was no solid proof, and Putin ordered most of his 40,000 troops massed near the border to pull back shortly before Monday’s election.
Even so, the worst-case scenario now is clear: if the Kremlin decides that Poroshenko has overplayed his hand to the point that it cannot look away, Russian and pro-Russian paramilitaries will escalate the violence in eastern Ukraine with the aim of delegitimising the new regime before it finds its feet.
A less disastrous scenario is still possible. If Kiev’s reports of cross-border infiltration prove exaggerated, Poroshenko’s decisive opening gambit could pay off. It has already ended the drift endured by the east under an interim government that never conquered its fear of invasion.
However, even in this analysis the chocolate billionaire with the world’s toughest job has only bought himself time. He has a mandate, but that counts for little in Donetsk and more than ten other eastern towns and cities where polling stations were closed on Monday and in which pro-Russian hardliners still assert control. Putin has demanded an end to the ‘‘punitive’’ violence and the start of dialogue between Kiev and the secessionists – but the more important talking is between Kiev and Moscow.
Ukraine has no hope of stability, much less the new relationship with Europe that a majority of its voters have demanded since last November, unless and until the Kremlin accepts it cannot annex Donetsk as it did Crimea. There are signs that Putin, who came to power crushing separatists in Chechnya, knows this. Since the election he has even complimented Poroshenko on his chocolates.