Why Putin has to be brought to heel on Crimea

There have to be consequences: Russian leader has broken several international agreements with invasion

Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing the “Russian imperialist” card, and it is outrageous in its scope, and is clear, naked military aggression, beyond all accepted norms of behaviour. It is the worst example of the brutal aggression since Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland and Poland, and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

His “spin” on why he is doing this in Crimea is vintage Soviet, completely made up, and bears no semblance to reality. It is historically false. But he is a master of creating illusions and stage- managing “spontaneous demonstrations,” as espoused by the two Russian women from Crimea who were put up for a TV interview, and stated that “we want our homeland back,” and “this is our ancestral home.”

Crimea was never “traditional Russian territory.” It was traditionally the home of the Crimean Tartars until 1944 when Stalin forcibly deported all of them to Central Asia and replaced them with Russian retired nomenklatura — administrators approved by the Communist party — for faithfully serving “the Motherland.”

Russia had a naval base at Sevastopol since 1784, but had only a minor presence on the peninsula until after the Second World War and Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tartars. To that point, this was the homeland of the Tartars, with Ukrainians being the other largest minority.

Now, it is true that Russia under Catherine the Great had conquered Crimea in 1783 and then built the naval base at Sevastopol, but then lost the peninsula in the Crimean War of 1853- 56. Lenin and the Soviet Union re- absorbed Crimea after the 1917- 1921 Revolution, but then in 1954, just 10 years after Russia started to settle Crimea with its faithful retirees, Nikita Khrushchev and the U. S. S. R. gave Crimea to Ukraine . Half truths and manipulative statements do not history make.

But the more important and most outrageous conduct of Putin has to do with the seven red lines that he has crossed — for he has broken, in the last two weeks, several international agreements and conventions. Of these, the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Council for Security and Cooperation in Europe Charter and the Budapest Memorandum are the most important.

But the media have so far missed the significance of the Budapest Memorandum.

In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal, and become a non- nuclear nation .

The CFE ( Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty, and the nuclear arms reduction negotiations of the Western powers, were very important considerations in the early 1990s, right after the fall of the Soviet Union, particularly to ensure that no nuclear weapons would fall into the hands of terrorist groups or other states. I was involved as one of Ukraine’s advisers on the CFE Treaty, and advised on their implications for Ukraine, and know much of this first hand.

Then- President Leonid Kuchma was very aware that giving up Ukraine’s nuclear arms would made Ukraine vulnerable to aggression from its neighbour, Russia, although Boris Yeltsin was a pro- western democrat, and certainly not likely to use aggression. But what might happen after Yeltsin? Both Kuchma and Ukraine’s Parliament knew that Crimea ( and Eastern Ukraine) could become an issue in the future, when Yeltsin would no longer be president, and if the next president had the “old Soviet” mentality.

Therefore, Ukraine required guarantees from the other major nuclear powers — Russia, the U. S. and the U. K., ( and later France and China) — that its “sovereignty and its territorial integrity” would be respected. According to the Budapest Memorandum, thenpresident Bill Clinton of the U. S., Yeltsin ( on behalf of Russia), and John Major ( for the U. K.), who personally signed the Memorandum in Budapest in December 1994, pledged to “respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty and its existing borders,” and “to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” Putin seems to have forgotten about this.

The Budapest Memorandum also provided that any of the parties could request a meeting of all the parties at any time to consult “in the event that a situation arises relating to Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity”.

Well, a week ago, Britain, the United States and France called for such a consultation meeting, to be held in Paris last Wednesday. Russia was given notice of the meeting, and invited to attend.

On Wednesday, March 5, all the parties, including France, came for the meeting in Paris — but Russia, which is, of course, the aggressor and transgressor of the agreement, refused to attend. This is completely unacceptable behaviour by a major power . You cannot sign an agreement guaranteeing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a neighbour, and then invade it. There have to be consequences, and you have to be held to account.

The question is — will Barack Obama, David Cameron and the West call Putin to task over this, as President John F. Kennedy did with Nikita Khrushchev, or will they play the role of Neville Chamberlain, and call it “peace in our time?”