Russia, Ukraine, NATO and Turkey are playing with fire at the gates of Europe

Ukraine is a country “Strategically critical” for Russia and the Kremlin believe that it is absolutely necessary to keep it under their influence for their defense. In 2014, Ukraine was looking west, it wanted to join the EU and NATO. Kiev believed that this change in geopolitical strategy was also essential to its survival. Hence the Russian occupation of Crimea and the promotion of independence movements in Donetsk and Louhansk. And the war that has been going on since then with 14,000 dead.

Ukraine is not yet a member of the EU or NATO. In this sense, Russia got what it wanted. The cost was the sanctions the West imposed on it on energy, defense and finance. This is what Moscow now wants to get rid of as well, and for that it is using its old bear paw power. Increases its military presence in conflict zones and threatens Europe and the United States. Its goal is that seven years after its strategic decision to prevent Western expansion in its territory of influence, the invasion, annexation and control of Ukraine will in fact be accepted.

And to achieve this, he has a plan worthy of Machiavelli’s imagination. He seeks to get the two breakaway regions to hold local elections and govern themselves, but that they do not separate completely from Ukraine. Moscow wants the territories to remain semi-independent and thus use them to influence political events in Ukraine, for example, to block any movement to join NATO. Russia’s ultimate goal is to have this quasi-independent status enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution.

For Ukrainian political leaders, this is unacceptable. Former comedian and current president Volodymyr Zelensky seems to be ready to do anything for prevent Moscow from eventually turning the country into a puppet. During Donald Trump’s US presidency, he obtained only lukewarm support that practically left Putin’s hands free to continue his occupation and his politico-military offensive. Joe Biden’s arrival at the White House gave him another chance. Zelensky began to arrange for the new administration to become more directly involved in the conflict and to draw a red line to russia so that he does not continue to advance. In times of pandemic and economic recession, as well as clashes with Iran and North Korea, among others, Biden doesn’t seem to have much time to think about Ukraine.

Putin knows this and has probably decided to concentrate his troops on the Ukrainian border for the time being. take advantage of America’s weakness and hoping that the pressure will lead the Ukrainian leadership to negotiate a political solution to the conflict, even without the withdrawal of troops. NATO does not seem willing to intervene at this time as long as the conflict continues at these levels. Even the military alliance turned a deaf ear to Zelensky’s request this week to create a roadmap for Ukraine to join the alliance within a reasonable time.

NATO seems to calculate that Russia is unlikely to make matters too much worse. The organization’s analysts believe that Moscow can threaten but that you don’t want to get involved in another costly conflict without a clear exit strategy. It is always possible that an unexpected event could cause Western countries, already frustrated by Russia’s actions in a number of other areas (electoral interference, cyberattacks, arrest of dissident Alexei Navalny), finally decide to give a blow. hand to Ukraine, at least in the form of tougher sanctions.

Considering that the military intervention in favor of Donetsk and Luhansk does not have the same political appeal to Russian public opinion as the previous incursions into Georgia and Crimea, the risk-reward calculation is too lopsided for Putin. Ukraine, for its part, does not want to be part of a protracted war with its much bigger neighbor if it can avoid it; Kiev also knows that if it takes offensive action against Russia, you may lose the little western support.

“Given all of this, the confrontation will certainly be concentrated in the limited areas along the ceasefire line, but not much beyond; and while the violence is contained, unlikely to result in further sanctions against RussiaWrote the analyst Ian bremmer, president of the study center Eurasia Group.

The conflict began in November 2013 when a pro-European student protest was taped to force Ukrainian President Víktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mikola Azarov to sign an association treaty with the European Union. They took the historic Plaza de Maidan and resisted. It became a revolution that destroyed the government and started a counter-revolution in the eastern Donbass region. In Moscow, all the red lights went on and Putin ordered the invasion of the Crimean peninsula. The nationalist forces of the Russian Federation, pushed by the government media for years and excited by the annexation, they set out to liberate eastern Ukraine from the rest of the country. In April 2014, Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory to support the separatists and clashed with troops from the Kiev army. The Donetsk and Luhansk republics were proclaimed and Moscow hastened to give passports to all the inhabitants to turn them into Russians. Since then, military incidents have occurred. In the last week alone, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed.

Russia has already amassed around 80,000 troops in the border region in an open deployment that includes tanks and other artillery units, short-range ballistic missile systems and the reinforcement of the Black Sea fleet, according to estimates by the military intelligence company Jane’s. Thousands of soldiers are found near the towns of Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don, a few kilometers from the Donbass region, where the young cadets have also arrived perform compulsory military service.

And even Turkey appeared in the middle. The weekend, President Zelensky met in Istanbul with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey is a member of NATO and although it has moved closer to Russia in recent years, it does not recognize the annexation of Crimea. He also sold military equipment to Kiev. The possibility for Ukraine to procure more Turkish arms prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to issue a statement calling on “all countries “Don’t feed the militaristic feelings” of Kiev. Turkey has already intervened in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where it has supported Azerbaijan while Moscow has done the same with Armenia. This has given the Turks more influence in the Caucasus, and many in Ankara are excited about the idea of ​​retaliating against Russian interests in the Donbass. In this way, a NATO member could get involved in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and forcing Europe and the United States to take a much stronger decision vis-à-vis Russia.

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