Putin’s next move in Ukraine
Talks move into the deal-making stage as the Russian leader rattles his sabre. Emily Hohler reports
Boris Johnson confirmed on Tuesday that the UK will “contribute” to Nato deployments if Russia invades Ukraine, following Monday’s virtual meeting of Western leaders including US president
Joe Biden. Around 130,000 Russian troops are stationed on Ukraine’s eastern border and, although Moscow denies it is planning an attack, it has warned of “grave consequences” if the US doesn’t agree to “roll back Nato’s presence in eastern Europe and vow never to admit Ukraine”, which the US is refusing to do, say Max Seddon and Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli in the Financial Times. So far, attempts to break the impasse have failed, although US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who met last Friday in Geneva, have agreed to “keep talking”.
The West wavers
In the meantime, the US is “refining plans for all scenarios” and has put 8,500 troops on “heightened alert”. Nato members have pledged troops and equipment, which are on their way to eastern Europe, says Catherine Philp in The Times. The show of unity follows divisions, “highlighted inadvertently” by Biden last week. President Emmanuel Macron of France “muddied the waters” with talk of a “separate EU dialogue”. Germany has “publicly wavered” over the issue of sanctions and the future of the recently completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline (which bypasses Ukraine and could heat 26 million German homes, notes Al Jazeera). Biden is also drawing up plans to “hit Ukraine’s economy hard” in the event of an invasion with a ban on the export of semiconductors made or designed with US technology (this would affect smartphones, computers, aviation and the military), a tactic used only once before, on Chinese tech giant Huawei.
What is Putin’s motive? There has been tension between Moscow and Kiev since Ukraine declared itself independent of the Soviet Union in 1991, says Verity Bowman in The Daily Telegraph. “Putin maintains that Ukraine is fundamentally part of Russian civilisation.” The Russian president says Ukraine is part of Russia and sees it as key to Russian security; Nato’s expansion is viewed as an “existential threat”. Asserting his power over Ukraine is also part of “his push to affirm Russia’s place among world powers”.
That is his primary motive, says Robert Hunter, former US ambassador to Nato, in the Financial Times. There has long been a diplomatic understanding that Ukraine will never join Nato and it is “doubtful” that Putin “ever intended to invade” Ukraine. It would “make Russia a pariah state”. “There will be no war between Russia and the West” and the message from the Geneva meeting shows that it has “moved into the deal-making stage”. And yet there are US reports of Russian saboteurs positioned inside Ukraine in preparation for a “falseflag operation” (ie, a fabricated casus belli), says Ben Macintyre in The Times. Putin may not even care whether it is credible. All that matters to him is that “it plays well” with his people, galvanises ethnic Russians in Ukraine and “launches a war he wins”.
The “overarching aim” of Russia’s foreign policy is “to erect defensive buffers” on its borders and to “ensure the survival of the Putin regime”, agrees Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph. Putin’s “show of strength is that of a thin-skinned dictator flexing before his people and the world such muscle as he can still muster”, adds Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. If Putin does invade, the world will “descend on his head” with damnation and sanctions, as we saw in Crimea. At times of crisis, war can seem the simplest option; hopes for peace lie in keeping “everything in proportion and to see a way through”. (See also page 12.)