On Monday, the NATO secretary general warned Moscow against “potential offensive action”, as Ukrainian officials estimated 90,000 Russian troops were “near the border and in temporarily occupied areas” as well as in the Black Sea. ,
The questions that need to be answered are: 1) How dangerous is the situation; 2) what the Western Coalition can do to prevent Russia from further provocation; and 3) What does Russian President Vladimir Putin really want?
Privately, European diplomats and officials answer these questions by saying they do not believe the situation is the same as in 2014, when Russian operatives invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea’s Black Sea peninsula.
Orisya Lutsevich, a Ukrainian analyst at Chatham House, agrees. “This is the best war you can fight without shoes. Unlike 2014 it is not about the region, but about reducing Ukraine’s persistent movement to the West and telling the West that Russia has a legitimate presence in the region.
However, those officials fear that Putin has created something out of a Catch-22 that he is more than happy to take advantage of.
Putin knows that if he creates an army, the West will have to answer. That means statements like the above from senior US, French, German and EU officials. Sadly, the statements and other measures have not historically forced Putin’s hand.
“Russia has shown many times that it is able to wait out sanctions,” said Kathryn Kluwer Ashbruck, director of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “Putin knows that sanctions are difficult to sell to certain groups at home when they can indirectly affect German trade or energy supplies in France,” because companies cannot work with Russian companies.
The catch-22 is that Putin gets legitimacy when these Western leaders are forced to speak with him to defuse tense situations. A senior said, “Every time someone like Merkel is forced to pick up the phone and talk about preventing a crisis, she simultaneously becomes the cause and solution of the problem. It brings her home and Europe.” I feel very powerful elsewhere.” EU diplomats.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of creating a crisis by directing migrants from the Middle East and Asia to the border. The sudden arrival of any country within the EU creates a real potential for political crisis and headache for Brussels.
The nature of the EU’s internal borders means that once you enter a country like Poland, it is easy to move around within the bloc. This will almost certainly prompt member states to turn on each other, sowing divisions within the bloc and undermining EU unity – something that makes Putin and Lukashenko very happy.
To further complicate matters, Poland is currently in a long-standing dispute with Brussels over Warsaw’s lack of compliance with EU law. A senior EU official explained to CNN that Poland was “already using this crisis to argue for unity on the issue of migration. The problem is that it has given its own rules to solidarity by Poland.” Breaking will be taken as cooperation which weakens the union.
While Putin has denied any involvement in this redirection of people, he has defended Lukashenko’s handling of the crisis. Russia is also Belarus’ most important ally, helping Lukashenko – often called Europe’s last dictator – stay in power. Most analysts say such a confrontational policy is unlikely to be implemented without at least consulting the Kremlin.
This type of crisis allows Putin to support Lukashenko and enjoy lighting fires while playing the role of peacemaker. If Putin made it clear that he wanted to stop Lukashenko, it was almost certain that he would.
It is not clear what Putin’s long-term plan is for a crisis. While it’s a safe bet that the West looks disillusioned and impotent in the face of its borders, it is considered good news for the Russian president, and the crisis will receive continued coverage on Russian state TV.
And the West has appeared impotent in the face of Russian aggression several times over the past decade.
“The West’s diplomatic toolbox is hopelessly empty when it comes to Russia,” said global affairs analyst Michael Bocciurki.
He believes that the combination of American apathy, Europe’s cognitive dissonance over what it wants from Russia, and Putin’s relative inability to do any real harm to more powerful Western nations left Putin with the impression that Given that he can essentially do what he wants and gets nothing more than harsh words.
“Many Eastern European countries now fear that the US and its close allies are no longer interested in foreign affairs, especially since the withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Bokiurki said.
As dire as the situation is in both Ukraine and Belarus, it is entirely possible that they are explained simply because relatively weak leaders like Putin and Lukashenko are flexing their muscles in parts of the world they know. So that they can get rid of it. In fact, Putin is not a major threat to the West.
The tragedy of that reality is that for those who live within his sphere of influence, the lack of pushback from the international community means that a man who hates playing by the rules has absolute power over his life. Whether this becomes a strong enough incentive for countries such as the US, Germany, France and the UK to take action, should the aggression worsen, is really anyone’s guess.