DONETSK, Ukraine -- The road between the last Ukrainian checkpoint and separatist-controlled Donetsk is desolate.
Empty, wet fields line the crumbling road, which is sporadically marked with handmade signs whose painted red skulls warn of the unexploded land mines in open areas between the territories.
The first checkpoint of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic comes into view, easily distinguished by the red, blue and black striped flag that struggles to remain attached to its makeshift moorings in the wind and rain.
It’s been a year since the pro-Russian rebels declared their independence from Ukraine.
While Ukraine — like the rest of the international community, with the exception of the Republic of South Ossetia, a partially recognized state in the South Caucasus — does not recognize the self-styled entity, it does stamp the passports of foreigners transiting from Ukraine into rebel-held territory.
Cars slow down and wait to be searched at the first checkpoint of the insurgents.
The heavily guarded, deeply trenched spot forms part of the frontline between the separatists and the Ukrainian army.
“Hello from Moscow!” A young militiamen shouts.
He laughs, raising and opening his arms wide and stumbling backward slightly.
His face is red from the stinging-cold air, and presumably also from the strong potato vodka he exhales with every breath.
He waves the car forward, into the Russian-backed, separatist-controlled region.
The streets of Donetsk, like the shelves of its grocery stores, are mostly empty.
Only a handful of restaurants remain open in the city, which is now cut off from the rest of Ukraine.
The remaining restaurants, along with the banks, clothing stores, movie theaters, markets, shopping malls and other commerce, closed over the past year as residents fled the frequent shelling throughout the city.
More than 6,000 people have died in the year-long conflict.
To the residents who remained in Donetsk the current cease-fire, which was announced at the end of January, is a dark joke.
Shelling can be heard on the city’s outskirts daily, as insurgents and the Ukrainian army exchange sporadic fire.
Abdelsattar Nassar, a cafe owner who moved to Donetsk four years ago, says he hears the shelling every day.
He says that in the early days of the fighting he tried to flee, but he simply can’t afford to close shop and leave, as many of his neighbors have done.
The cost of living in safe Ukrainian cities, such as the capital, Kiev, has gone up threefold in the year since the war began, Nassar tells Haaretz.
In Donetsk he at least has a roof over his head, if he fled he would be living on the street, he says. “I fear for my children every day in this city,” Nassar says, gazing out of the window of his cafe.
“They say there is a cease-fire, but what cease-fire? We see and hear the bombs every day.”
While both sides were supposed to remove heavy artillery from the frontlines at the start of the last cease-fire, each accuses the other of simply shuffling the armaments around.
Alexander Hug, the deputy chief monitor with the Ukraine mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, says neither side is cooperating with the agency’s investigation of compliance with the demand.
“By now both sides of the conflict should have withdrawn their heavy weapons,” Hug said.
“However the OSCE’s special monitoring mission has been unable to verify a credible withdraw because of a lack of cooperation from both sides.”
While the cease-fire is still holding on paper, violations are common, “mainly in and around the airport area of Donetsk and east of Mariupol,” Hug said.
Nassar says it is these violations that frighten him.
He believes the situation is only weeks away from another escalation.
His cafe, in the heart of the city, is filled with dubious-looking separatist fighters.
They can do whatever they want in this city now, Nassar says, there is no law in Donetsk anymore.
Outside of the city center, in the Kievsky district, the true dimensions of the destruction wreaked by the conflict are evident.
There are houses that have been leveled, their roofs torn off, and cars reduced to blackened shells.
The few homes and business the war has left untouched are shuttered, abandoned.
Kievsky is also called the airport district.
The city’s adjacent airport lies in ruins.
The site of fierce battles between rebel and government forces in May, October and January, it was closed to civilian air traffic in May.
In late January the insurgents wrested control of the complex from the Ukrainian armed forces in a particularly bloody battle.
The district’s civilian Hospital No. 21 was not spared from shelling.
There is a large gaping hole in the roof of the main building, evidence of a mortar round that smashed through the structure several months ago.
Shattered glass from blown-out windows lies on the ground outside.
The hospital corridors are dark and cold — the power is out — and the pharmacy’s shelves are bare, but patients still come to be treated by members of the medical staff who have not received a salary in months.
Alekseyenko Aleksandrovich, the head of the hospital’s surgery department, is one such physician.
As the low booms of shelling echo through the building, followed soon after by quick bursts of artillery fire, Aleksandrovich tells Haaretz that the situation in the hospital is approaching critical level.
Medical supplies are running dangerously low, and repairs to restore electricity and heating are needed desperately.
“A lot of shells have hit the hospital. Shrapnel has hit my office several times, some has even hit the pediatric ward,” the surgeon says.
“We have limited amounts of medical supplies and food for our patients.”
Hospital No. 21’s situation is not unique in Donetsk.
Medicine shortages and ruined medical facilities are commonplace in the separatist-controlled territory, according to Doctors Without Borders.
The aid organization is trying to fill in the gaps.
The city receives no medical supplies from the Ukrainian government.
Donetsk’s remaining residents are suffering, Aleksandrovich says, whether they were injured in the war or need medical care for preexisting conditions.
Aleksandrovich says he expects the body count to rise significantly over the following weeks and months.
The cease-fire is failing, he says, but the hospital and its staff will do whatever they can to help the people who remain in the city.
“We are ready for emergencies, we have additional operating rooms in the basements. The surgeons and the nurses are ready for anything,” Aleksandrovich says.
Monday, 13 April 2015
Monday, 6 April 2015
Why A Russian Decided To Fight For Ukraine
MARIUPOL, Ukraine -- Even while speaking through a translator, Andrey is a man of few words. When asked why he defected from Russia to join a Ukrainian National Guard regiment, the 22-year-old Muscovite simply replied: “Common sense.”
After an assurance that his face would not be photographed or his last name used, Andrey opened up, explaining in more detail why it was such a logical decision to leave behind his life in Moscow to fight pro-Russian separatists—who, he claimed, his native country is both arming and sending troops to support.
Sitting at the cafeteria in the Azov Regiment’s camp in Mariupol only minutes before leaving for the front lines, Andrey talked about life in Russia under what he called the “Putin regime.”
Andrey described a repressive political environment in Moscow fueled by government-run propaganda and fear.
“Many young people in Russia who have common sense understand they have been deceived by Putin,” he said between sips of tea, casually leaning back in his chair with his Kalashnikov assault rifle propped against the table.
“I have a brain, but there are also many young people who have been brainwashed by the propaganda.”
“There are more of us,” he added.
“Putin is afraid of a Russian Maidan.”
Two brushes with the “Putin regime” and its repressive tactics ultimately spurred Andrey to leave Russia.
The first happened after he witnessed pro-reform protestors handing out flyers in the Moscow metro.
Even though he was just a passerby, Andrey said he was forcibly taken into custody and interrogated by a group of four men who never revealed for which agency they worked.
“They said they just wanted to have a talk,” he said.
The second instance was at a government-sanctioned peace march in Moscow, in which Andrey was participating to protest Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
He said police began beating protestors without provocation.
“Their crime? They were just holding signs,” he said.
Fed up with life in Russia and with no substantial opposition party or movement to join, Andrey said he did “what any sensible man would do.”
He left Russia to fight for Ukraine as a member of the Ukrainian National Guard Azov Regiment.
The Ukraine war has drawn fighters from around the world.
Loose government oversight over civilian volunteer battalions opened a pathway for foreign fighters from countries including the United States, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Georgia, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Italy and Canada to join the ranks of pro-Ukrainian units with virtually no red tape.
There is even a Chechen volunteer battalion fighting for Ukraine named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen rebel leader who led a war against Russia in the 1990s.
But recruitment rules were tightened after a push by Kiev to incorporate volunteer battalions into the National Guard, sending many foreign fighters home.
Although, according to an Azov Regiment spokesman, a new law has removed Ukrainian citizenship as a requirement for joining the National Guard.
Unlike the majority of foreign fighters in Ukraine for whom returning home is an option, Andrey said he will never go back to Russia.
“They will never forgive me,” he said.
“I will be persecuted.”
Andrey, however, wasn’t worried about Russian authorities retaliating against his family in Moscow.
In fact, with the exception of his grandmother, he said his family generally supported his decision to leave.
“My grandma went through the Stalin times and it’s difficult to convince her that Putin isn’t right,” he said.
“She watches Russian news and is terrified by what they tell her is going on in Ukraine. It’s all lies of course.”
Years of exposure to Russian propaganda also distorted Andrey’s perception of Ukraine before his arrival.
He wondered whether the country had truly been taken over by Nazis and far-right groups as Russian media reports had claimed, or if the Ukrainian war effort was actually a front for NATO expansionism as Russian media sites had also reported.
“Of course it’s all a lie,” he said.
“When I got here, I realized the situation was totally different.”
One of the key differences was the military training and firepower of the separatists.
“We are not fighting coal miners and tractor drivers, we are fighting trained professional soldiers,” he said, referring to Putin’s characterization of the separatists on Russian TV.
“And where do these so-called tractor drivers and coal miners buy grenade launchers?” he added.
“From a supermarket?”
Following the interview, Andrey left for the front lines near Shyrokyne, a small town about eight miles east of Mariupol.
His mission that day was to film evidence of separatists using heavy weapons in violation of the Feb. 12 cease-fire agreement.
He said he doesn’t get scared anymore before going to the front lines.
While at the front, amid the constant sounds of mortars, artillery and small arms, he appeared calm, displaying the muted reaction to danger common to soldiers who have spent much time in combat.
When separatists’ heavy weapons ignited a fire in a residential area, sending up plumes of smoke, he climbed to the roof of the house being used as the Azov Regiment’s combat outpost for a better vantage point from which to film the damage.
He leaned around a corner, exposing himself to potential sniper fire, and filmed.
Asked earlier what he was fighting for in Ukraine, Andrey succinctly replied:
“Justice.”
Responding to a follow-on question, he added:
“For Ukraine.”
After an assurance that his face would not be photographed or his last name used, Andrey opened up, explaining in more detail why it was such a logical decision to leave behind his life in Moscow to fight pro-Russian separatists—who, he claimed, his native country is both arming and sending troops to support.
Sitting at the cafeteria in the Azov Regiment’s camp in Mariupol only minutes before leaving for the front lines, Andrey talked about life in Russia under what he called the “Putin regime.”
Andrey described a repressive political environment in Moscow fueled by government-run propaganda and fear.
“Many young people in Russia who have common sense understand they have been deceived by Putin,” he said between sips of tea, casually leaning back in his chair with his Kalashnikov assault rifle propped against the table.
“I have a brain, but there are also many young people who have been brainwashed by the propaganda.”
“There are more of us,” he added.
“Putin is afraid of a Russian Maidan.”
Two brushes with the “Putin regime” and its repressive tactics ultimately spurred Andrey to leave Russia.
The first happened after he witnessed pro-reform protestors handing out flyers in the Moscow metro.
Even though he was just a passerby, Andrey said he was forcibly taken into custody and interrogated by a group of four men who never revealed for which agency they worked.
“They said they just wanted to have a talk,” he said.
The second instance was at a government-sanctioned peace march in Moscow, in which Andrey was participating to protest Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
He said police began beating protestors without provocation.
“Their crime? They were just holding signs,” he said.
Fed up with life in Russia and with no substantial opposition party or movement to join, Andrey said he did “what any sensible man would do.”
He left Russia to fight for Ukraine as a member of the Ukrainian National Guard Azov Regiment.
The Ukraine war has drawn fighters from around the world.
Loose government oversight over civilian volunteer battalions opened a pathway for foreign fighters from countries including the United States, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Georgia, Poland, Spain, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Italy and Canada to join the ranks of pro-Ukrainian units with virtually no red tape.
There is even a Chechen volunteer battalion fighting for Ukraine named after Dzhokhar Dudayev, the Chechen rebel leader who led a war against Russia in the 1990s.
But recruitment rules were tightened after a push by Kiev to incorporate volunteer battalions into the National Guard, sending many foreign fighters home.
Although, according to an Azov Regiment spokesman, a new law has removed Ukrainian citizenship as a requirement for joining the National Guard.
Unlike the majority of foreign fighters in Ukraine for whom returning home is an option, Andrey said he will never go back to Russia.
“They will never forgive me,” he said.
“I will be persecuted.”
Andrey, however, wasn’t worried about Russian authorities retaliating against his family in Moscow.
In fact, with the exception of his grandmother, he said his family generally supported his decision to leave.
“My grandma went through the Stalin times and it’s difficult to convince her that Putin isn’t right,” he said.
“She watches Russian news and is terrified by what they tell her is going on in Ukraine. It’s all lies of course.”
Years of exposure to Russian propaganda also distorted Andrey’s perception of Ukraine before his arrival.
He wondered whether the country had truly been taken over by Nazis and far-right groups as Russian media reports had claimed, or if the Ukrainian war effort was actually a front for NATO expansionism as Russian media sites had also reported.
“Of course it’s all a lie,” he said.
“When I got here, I realized the situation was totally different.”
One of the key differences was the military training and firepower of the separatists.
“We are not fighting coal miners and tractor drivers, we are fighting trained professional soldiers,” he said, referring to Putin’s characterization of the separatists on Russian TV.
“And where do these so-called tractor drivers and coal miners buy grenade launchers?” he added.
“From a supermarket?”
Following the interview, Andrey left for the front lines near Shyrokyne, a small town about eight miles east of Mariupol.
His mission that day was to film evidence of separatists using heavy weapons in violation of the Feb. 12 cease-fire agreement.
He said he doesn’t get scared anymore before going to the front lines.
While at the front, amid the constant sounds of mortars, artillery and small arms, he appeared calm, displaying the muted reaction to danger common to soldiers who have spent much time in combat.
When separatists’ heavy weapons ignited a fire in a residential area, sending up plumes of smoke, he climbed to the roof of the house being used as the Azov Regiment’s combat outpost for a better vantage point from which to film the damage.
He leaned around a corner, exposing himself to potential sniper fire, and filmed.
Asked earlier what he was fighting for in Ukraine, Andrey succinctly replied:
“Justice.”
Responding to a follow-on question, he added:
“For Ukraine.”
Putin's Ukraine Gamble Has Largely Paid Off For The Kremlin
MOSCOW, Russia -- A year since the start of the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may not have emerged the winner in his showdown with the West but he has not lost either, analysts say.
By supporting Ukrainian separatists, they say, he took a huge risk but it largely paid off as it allowed him to punish Kiev's pro-Western authorities for seeking to turn their back on Russia and stand up to the West.
Most importantly for the Kremlin, the annexation of Crimea and support for fellow Russian speakers in Ukraine's east have given a huge boost to Putin's popularity ratings at home.
According to a February study from the Levada Centre independent polling group, the number of people who want Putin to seek a fourth term in 2018 has more than doubled to 57 percent since December 2013.
"What Putin wanted was clear a year ago -- he wanted a blocking stake in Ukraine or -- the next best option -- a manageable conflict," Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, told AFP.
"To a large degree the Kremlin has achieved what it wanted."
Ukraine marks the first anniversary of the start of the conflict in a hugely demoralised state with its economy shattered and NATO membership a very distant, if not impossible, prospect.
"They managed to keep Ukraine out of NATO because it is struggling with two unresolved territorial disputes," Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told AFP.
If Putin gambled that the West would not move to burn all its bridges with Russia nor engage the former Cold War foe militarily, he was right.
While Washington has been vocal in its assertion that Moscow has been sending troops over the border to buttress Ukrainian separatists, it has held off on supplying Kiev with lethal weapons over fears of escalation.
Economy-wise, the US and European Union have forged a united front, slapping Russia with several rounds of sanctions, but decided against radical measures like cutting Moscow off from the SWIFT banking system.
Russia has withstood the blow, and the government recently declared that the worst was over for the recession-hit economy.
After a shock slump late last year, the Russian ruble has recently rebounded following a lull in fighting in Ukraine and the steadying of oil prices.
Economists have forecast stagnation over the next few years but naysayers predicting imminent financial collapse have been floored.
In a sign that Putin may be getting ready to break out of Western isolation, he is considering whether to travel to New York to speak at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly this fall, the Kremlin said.
It would be his first UN visit over the past 10 years.
Such a move would have appeared unimaginable several months ago when Putin appeared crushed under the weight of international condemnation when a Malaysia Airlines Boeing came down over rebel-held Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
The West and Kiev claim that Moscow-backed rebels shot the jet out of the skies by mistake, with a missile provided by Russia.
In a bid to counter raging accusations that he was personally guilty, an ashen-faced Putin recorded an unprecedented nighttime video address, urging the West and Kiev not to exploit the tragedy for political gains.
But as a shaky truce appears to be taking hold in Ukraine, Russia has apparently managed to put the worst of the fallout behind it.
That may explain Putin's jokey mood at the triumphant celebrations marking one year since the takeover of Crimea last month when he quipped that Russia "will overcome the difficulties that we have so easily created for ourselves."
'Putin will not back off'
To a large extent, Putin has been lucky, after rushing into the confrontation with the West without a well-thought-out plan, observers said.
"There was a set of tasks and Napoleon's famous maxim, 'On s'engage et puis on voit' (Let's jump into the fray and then figure out what to do next)," Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group think tank, said of the president's attitude.
Even if his tactics have often defied comprehension, Putin has made his message abundantly clear: the West should understand that a new, post-Soviet Russia is a force to be reckoned with.
"Putin will neither give up nor back off," Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent report.
"Moscow will continue to defy US global hegemony and act in its own self-interest, guided by its own set of values and without seeking prior US or EU approval."
The fighting has exacted a huge human toll. According to official statistics, more than 6,000 people have died in eastern Ukraine since last April, and human rights activists say scores of Russian troops sent over the border have also perished in the ex-Soviet country.
Ties between ordinary Russians and Ukrainians have also been torn apart, with observers saying years -- if not decades -- will be needed to heal the rift.
While the fighting has largely died down, an end to the Ukrainian crisis is nowhere in sight.
"The crisis is dragging on through inertia, which is dangerous," said Petrov of the Higher School of Economics.
"It has become a necessity to a large number of people."
By supporting Ukrainian separatists, they say, he took a huge risk but it largely paid off as it allowed him to punish Kiev's pro-Western authorities for seeking to turn their back on Russia and stand up to the West.
Most importantly for the Kremlin, the annexation of Crimea and support for fellow Russian speakers in Ukraine's east have given a huge boost to Putin's popularity ratings at home.
According to a February study from the Levada Centre independent polling group, the number of people who want Putin to seek a fourth term in 2018 has more than doubled to 57 percent since December 2013.
"What Putin wanted was clear a year ago -- he wanted a blocking stake in Ukraine or -- the next best option -- a manageable conflict," Nikolai Petrov, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, told AFP.
"To a large degree the Kremlin has achieved what it wanted."
Ukraine marks the first anniversary of the start of the conflict in a hugely demoralised state with its economy shattered and NATO membership a very distant, if not impossible, prospect.
"They managed to keep Ukraine out of NATO because it is struggling with two unresolved territorial disputes," Alexander Baunov, a senior associate at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told AFP.
If Putin gambled that the West would not move to burn all its bridges with Russia nor engage the former Cold War foe militarily, he was right.
While Washington has been vocal in its assertion that Moscow has been sending troops over the border to buttress Ukrainian separatists, it has held off on supplying Kiev with lethal weapons over fears of escalation.
Economy-wise, the US and European Union have forged a united front, slapping Russia with several rounds of sanctions, but decided against radical measures like cutting Moscow off from the SWIFT banking system.
Russia has withstood the blow, and the government recently declared that the worst was over for the recession-hit economy.
After a shock slump late last year, the Russian ruble has recently rebounded following a lull in fighting in Ukraine and the steadying of oil prices.
Economists have forecast stagnation over the next few years but naysayers predicting imminent financial collapse have been floored.
In a sign that Putin may be getting ready to break out of Western isolation, he is considering whether to travel to New York to speak at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly this fall, the Kremlin said.
It would be his first UN visit over the past 10 years.
Such a move would have appeared unimaginable several months ago when Putin appeared crushed under the weight of international condemnation when a Malaysia Airlines Boeing came down over rebel-held Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
The West and Kiev claim that Moscow-backed rebels shot the jet out of the skies by mistake, with a missile provided by Russia.
In a bid to counter raging accusations that he was personally guilty, an ashen-faced Putin recorded an unprecedented nighttime video address, urging the West and Kiev not to exploit the tragedy for political gains.
But as a shaky truce appears to be taking hold in Ukraine, Russia has apparently managed to put the worst of the fallout behind it.
That may explain Putin's jokey mood at the triumphant celebrations marking one year since the takeover of Crimea last month when he quipped that Russia "will overcome the difficulties that we have so easily created for ourselves."
'Putin will not back off'
To a large extent, Putin has been lucky, after rushing into the confrontation with the West without a well-thought-out plan, observers said.
"There was a set of tasks and Napoleon's famous maxim, 'On s'engage et puis on voit' (Let's jump into the fray and then figure out what to do next)," Konstantin Kalachev, head of the Political Expert Group think tank, said of the president's attitude.
Even if his tactics have often defied comprehension, Putin has made his message abundantly clear: the West should understand that a new, post-Soviet Russia is a force to be reckoned with.
"Putin will neither give up nor back off," Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote in a recent report.
"Moscow will continue to defy US global hegemony and act in its own self-interest, guided by its own set of values and without seeking prior US or EU approval."
The fighting has exacted a huge human toll. According to official statistics, more than 6,000 people have died in eastern Ukraine since last April, and human rights activists say scores of Russian troops sent over the border have also perished in the ex-Soviet country.
Ties between ordinary Russians and Ukrainians have also been torn apart, with observers saying years -- if not decades -- will be needed to heal the rift.
While the fighting has largely died down, an end to the Ukrainian crisis is nowhere in sight.
"The crisis is dragging on through inertia, which is dangerous," said Petrov of the Higher School of Economics.
"It has become a necessity to a large number of people."
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Why The U.S. Does Nothing In Ukraine
MOSCOW, Russia -- The ongoing war in Ukraine recently passed the first anniversary of the highly dubious referendum that split Crimea off from Ukraine and eventually saw it attached to Russia.
Over the course of the conflict that followed, over 6,000 people have died, large swathes of eastern Ukraine have been destroyed, and Russian support for separatists rendered insecure by the change of government in Kiev has gone from highly suspected to fairly open.
Reaction in Washington has been equally vitriolic with politicians and commentators pushing for President Obama either to escalate the challenge to Russia by providing greater amounts of military aid to Ukraine more quickly or to come to some sort of great power accommodation instead, effectively ceding a low-importance country in exchange for an end to the conflict to a much more resolved adversary.
Recent expert interviews conducted by my colleague Andrej Krickovic and I here in Moscow on Russian strategic interests, and insights derived from the bargaining theory of conflict, suggest that the current policy – doing little at the cost of watching the collateral damage rise – may best fulfill U.S. foreign policy interests by refusing to give Russia the fight it wants at the time and issue of the latter’s choosing.
For a recent paper, Krickovic and I interviewed a number of foreign policy experts here in Moscow to understand the extent of Russian strategic interests.
The interview subjects clearly indicated that the war in Ukraine is a symptom of greater dissatisfaction with the post-Cold War international order.
As Evgeny Lukyanov, the Deputy Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, has said, “We need to sit down [with the United States] and renegotiate the entire post-cold War settlement.”
The experts further stated that the potential loss of Ukraine directly threatens Russia’s ability to pursue Eurasian integration, which is central to the country’s larger strategic vision of developing a Eurasian bloc (through bolstering the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization) to resist the consequences of U.S. unipolarity and to compete in the multipolar world it expects to emerge.
In terms set out by our interviewees, Russia seeks a “grand bargain” that explicitly identifies the role of the United States in the international order and puts limits on U.S. behavior to make America more predictable in its behavior and to prevent it from overstepping its own authority.
Three tenets of this bargain that would assure Russian security include a collective security treaty binding Russia, the United States, and the leading European states; a supranational decision-making body (Security Council of Europe of NATO, the European Union, and CSTO) as previously proposed by Dmitry Medvedev that would end NATO dominance in Europe; and a “Monroe Doctrine” for the post-Soviet space that legitimizes a sphere of influence in the region.
These ideas follow along Vladimir Putin’s “collective leadership” offer at the latest Valdai meeting: a new world order based on competing hierarchies of states, mutual non-interference in spheres of interest, and coordinated responses to transnational problems of mutual interest, such as Islamist terrorism.
Eventually, all these institutional developments would lead to an “integration of integrations” so that a bigger EEU could associate with the European Union and other Western institutions as a full-fledged partner enjoying the same status as these powerful institutions.
These terms set out exactly why Russia is motivated to fight over the resolution of Ukraine now rather than later.
By Russia’s own bloc-oriented view of the future of international relations, the failure to “get” Ukraine means that the Eurasian bloc has roughly reached its apex (Kyrgyzstan will accede in May 2015 while other regional states are seemingly getting cold feet).
Facing a negative shift in future bargaining power means that it should fight now before it gets too weak in the future to mount a credible challenge to revise the international order later.
This very well explains what Russia is doing, but how can we explain Obama’s reluctance either to commit greater resources to the conflict or to cut bait and leave?
Why has Obama settled on a policy of seemingly strenuous inaction?
It is very likely that Obama can observe that Russia’s bloc-oriented strategy has led to the same apex, and that future decline by Russia’s own standards is approaching.
Thus, to accommodate Russia in this bargaining framework would not only involve upsetting European allies and the Ukrainians, but would give a lifeline to an adversary by ameliorating the decline.
Moreover, to challenge Russia over Ukraine would be to escalate a conflict that the United States is less able and less resolved to win with acceptable costs.
This places Obama in a different position relative to formulating strategy regarding a rising challenger like China that needs to be accommodated or challenged because the latter is dissatisfied with the international distribution of benefits.
Russia is instead a declining challenger (by its own standards) that offers the United States a third policy course of maintaining the status quo and waiting to negotiate later from a position of greater strength.
If Obama believes that Russia has internal structural contradictions (resource-dominated economy) and is externally at its peak, then he finds himself roughly in the same position as Dwight Eisenhower roughly 60 years ago: confident of prevailing in a long war or arms racing against an adversary with internal structural contradictions (command economy), but wary of entering into short-term conflicts close to Russia.
Just as Eisenhower failed to intervene in Hungary in 1956, Obama is failing to intervene decisively in Ukraine and giving Russia a fight at the latter’s time and place of choosing.
The policy of strenuous inaction of helping Ukraine to prevent collapse but insufficiently strongly to avoid challenging Russia runs the risk of allowing events on the ground to run away from the United States and opens up Obama to considerable domestic and international criticism, but it may leave the United States in a much stronger position vis-Ã -vis Russia later on – even at the cost of death and destruction in Ukraine and the precipitous decline of bilateral relations.
Over the course of the conflict that followed, over 6,000 people have died, large swathes of eastern Ukraine have been destroyed, and Russian support for separatists rendered insecure by the change of government in Kiev has gone from highly suspected to fairly open.
Reaction in Washington has been equally vitriolic with politicians and commentators pushing for President Obama either to escalate the challenge to Russia by providing greater amounts of military aid to Ukraine more quickly or to come to some sort of great power accommodation instead, effectively ceding a low-importance country in exchange for an end to the conflict to a much more resolved adversary.
Recent expert interviews conducted by my colleague Andrej Krickovic and I here in Moscow on Russian strategic interests, and insights derived from the bargaining theory of conflict, suggest that the current policy – doing little at the cost of watching the collateral damage rise – may best fulfill U.S. foreign policy interests by refusing to give Russia the fight it wants at the time and issue of the latter’s choosing.
For a recent paper, Krickovic and I interviewed a number of foreign policy experts here in Moscow to understand the extent of Russian strategic interests.
The interview subjects clearly indicated that the war in Ukraine is a symptom of greater dissatisfaction with the post-Cold War international order.
As Evgeny Lukyanov, the Deputy Secretary of Russia’s Security Council, has said, “We need to sit down [with the United States] and renegotiate the entire post-cold War settlement.”
The experts further stated that the potential loss of Ukraine directly threatens Russia’s ability to pursue Eurasian integration, which is central to the country’s larger strategic vision of developing a Eurasian bloc (through bolstering the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization) to resist the consequences of U.S. unipolarity and to compete in the multipolar world it expects to emerge.
In terms set out by our interviewees, Russia seeks a “grand bargain” that explicitly identifies the role of the United States in the international order and puts limits on U.S. behavior to make America more predictable in its behavior and to prevent it from overstepping its own authority.
Three tenets of this bargain that would assure Russian security include a collective security treaty binding Russia, the United States, and the leading European states; a supranational decision-making body (Security Council of Europe of NATO, the European Union, and CSTO) as previously proposed by Dmitry Medvedev that would end NATO dominance in Europe; and a “Monroe Doctrine” for the post-Soviet space that legitimizes a sphere of influence in the region.
These ideas follow along Vladimir Putin’s “collective leadership” offer at the latest Valdai meeting: a new world order based on competing hierarchies of states, mutual non-interference in spheres of interest, and coordinated responses to transnational problems of mutual interest, such as Islamist terrorism.
Eventually, all these institutional developments would lead to an “integration of integrations” so that a bigger EEU could associate with the European Union and other Western institutions as a full-fledged partner enjoying the same status as these powerful institutions.
These terms set out exactly why Russia is motivated to fight over the resolution of Ukraine now rather than later.
By Russia’s own bloc-oriented view of the future of international relations, the failure to “get” Ukraine means that the Eurasian bloc has roughly reached its apex (Kyrgyzstan will accede in May 2015 while other regional states are seemingly getting cold feet).
Facing a negative shift in future bargaining power means that it should fight now before it gets too weak in the future to mount a credible challenge to revise the international order later.
This very well explains what Russia is doing, but how can we explain Obama’s reluctance either to commit greater resources to the conflict or to cut bait and leave?
Why has Obama settled on a policy of seemingly strenuous inaction?
It is very likely that Obama can observe that Russia’s bloc-oriented strategy has led to the same apex, and that future decline by Russia’s own standards is approaching.
Thus, to accommodate Russia in this bargaining framework would not only involve upsetting European allies and the Ukrainians, but would give a lifeline to an adversary by ameliorating the decline.
Moreover, to challenge Russia over Ukraine would be to escalate a conflict that the United States is less able and less resolved to win with acceptable costs.
This places Obama in a different position relative to formulating strategy regarding a rising challenger like China that needs to be accommodated or challenged because the latter is dissatisfied with the international distribution of benefits.
Russia is instead a declining challenger (by its own standards) that offers the United States a third policy course of maintaining the status quo and waiting to negotiate later from a position of greater strength.
If Obama believes that Russia has internal structural contradictions (resource-dominated economy) and is externally at its peak, then he finds himself roughly in the same position as Dwight Eisenhower roughly 60 years ago: confident of prevailing in a long war or arms racing against an adversary with internal structural contradictions (command economy), but wary of entering into short-term conflicts close to Russia.
Just as Eisenhower failed to intervene in Hungary in 1956, Obama is failing to intervene decisively in Ukraine and giving Russia a fight at the latter’s time and place of choosing.
The policy of strenuous inaction of helping Ukraine to prevent collapse but insufficiently strongly to avoid challenging Russia runs the risk of allowing events on the ground to run away from the United States and opens up Obama to considerable domestic and international criticism, but it may leave the United States in a much stronger position vis-Ã -vis Russia later on – even at the cost of death and destruction in Ukraine and the precipitous decline of bilateral relations.
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