Frost between Russia, Ukraine and NATO. And Europe risks war – Corriere.it

Putin has sent thousands of soldiers to the border. Kiev asks the West for help. The clash would be a disaster

Over the past few weeks Russia has brought nearly 100,000 troops along the border with Ukraine, deploying them in a war gear. As if that weren’t enough to escalate tensions, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that the security services have gathered evidence of a Russian-instigated plot for a coup against his government. He further said that a prominent Russian oligarch has been involved in the plot, raising the stakes in his battle against several Ukrainian billionaires, some of whom are suspected of having close ties to Moscow.

As Russia flexes its muscles, Ukraine looks to the West for help. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to warn him that a Russian aggression against Ukraine would have very serious consequences. A US intelligence report claims that Russia is planning a full-scale invasion, and President Biden is talking to Putin via Zoom. To reinforce the warnings, the US sent 80 tons of ammunition to Ukraine. The European summits have expressed their grave concerns on the matter. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has threatened new sanctions against Russia. NATO on maximum alert. Russia blames the tensions on the Ukrainian government, which, according to the Kremlin spokesman, has started intimidating maneuvers on its own.

What’s going on? It could be suggested that as he ages, both his and his government’s age, Vladimir Putin wants to resort, with increasing insistence, to the reflexes developed during the Cold War. Perhaps he imagines that anti-Western rhetoric will help him to shore up his popularity. (A poll collected in October by the Levada Center in Moscow revealed that the Russian population’s confidence in Putin dropped to 53 percent, the lowest level in a decade.) It would not be an irrational political strategy. The peak of consensus was recorded in 2014, during the Russian invasion of Crimea. An increasing number of Russians, however, may have grown weary of Putin’s leadership, but in the face of Western threats, he will be ready to take his side as the embodiment of Russian strength and might.

It could also be that, from Putin’s point of view, both Ukraine and NATO are behaving dangerously aggressive on the Russian border. The
war declared by Zelensky against Ukrainian oligarchs in league with Russia goes to erode Russian influence in the Ukrainian capital, and Putin could warn Zelensky not to strengthen his popularity with military action near the Donbas region, where the Ukrainian separatists, with Russian help, maintain a stalemate against Kiev.

Putin recently claimed that the sending of Russian military the direct response not only to Kiev’s provocations, but also to NATO’s surprise naval exercises in the Black Sea, not far from Crimea. The Kremlin is also annoyed by the recent use of drones, supplied by Turkey, a NATO member country, in that region. Perhaps Putin feels ready for action and reassured by the rise in oil prices, which have lifted the Russian economy, by the progress made in the construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Europe, and by the departure of his enemy. longtime, Angela Merkel, who is preparing to leave the German Chancellery.

Yet despite all the headlines, warnings and troubling headlines, Russia in all likelihood will be careful not to invade Ukraine and start a war. The invasion of Crimea seven years ago, in response to the political unrest in Kiev that forced the Russian-friendly Ukrainian president to flee, made the most of the element of surprise, an advantage that Putin’s government will not be able to rely on again. In addition, Crimea was the only Ukrainian territory where the majority of the population of Russian origin, which guaranteed an excellent reception for Russian troops. The Donbas region of Ukraine, which borders Russia, also includes a large ethnically Russian population.

There are no other territories in Ukraine where Russian soldiers would be welcomed as liberators, and the frozen conflict that sees the two countries lined up against each other has done nothing but antagonize the souls of millions of Ukrainians against Putin and Moscow. Consequently, any Russian attempt to grab new territories in Ukraine would provoke a war that Russia would win easily, especially since NATO would not intervene directly, but at a prohibitive price in terms of money and human lives. Add to this the cost of a long-term occupation of territories populated by people deeply hostile to Russian forces. Russia’s rusty economy cannot afford spending with no deadline in sight, nor the harsh sanctions that would undoubtedly follow from the European and American sides.

In spite of everything, Ukraine, Europe and the Biden government cannot afford the luxury of letting it go. They will have to continue to send the signal of maximum alert, that any hostile action by Russia will provoke a reaction of force. Here a troubling Cold War logic comes into play. As much as Kiev and Western governments fear a Russian intervention that will drag them into a costly war, Putin’s government continues to view Ukraine’s future as the central issue of its foreign policy. Just as Washington relentlessly watches over other countries’ attempts to equip themselves with nuclear weapons, so Moscow fears that neighboring countries may enter into military or political alliances with Europe or America. What is true for Russia’s other neighbors is much more true for Ukraine, an indispensable territory for Russian imperial ambitions for a thousand years now.

The result of this mutual fear is that threats risk coming true, plunging both countries into a conflict that no one wants. For the moment, the war remains distant. It is also true that we can only breathe a sigh of relief when Russia, Ukraine and NATO devise the best way to take a step backwards.

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(Translation by Rita Baldassarre)

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