Wait for it. The reality is that if there’s no attack on the Ukrainian infrastructure, there won’t be an invasion. The objection is not NATO but always has been that EU relationship. Putin seems not to be getting that kind of capitulation, where the EU pressures NATO to finlandize Ukraine. Fortunately, “troubling signs” are not the only signs. So much certainty, so little time left.
Blinken issued the warning in Australia after meeting leaders of the Quad countries, the United States, Australia, Japan and India. Blinken cited “troubling signs” regarding Russia, including adding to the more than 100,000 troops it has amassed at the Ukrainian border.
www.voanews.com/...
The images suggest that Russia has increased its military readiness in the region. That would allow Russia to mount an offensive on short notice should President Vladimir V. Putin decide to do so.
U.S. and NATO officials have said that Mr. Putin appears to be preparing for a full-fledged invasion. Russia continues to dismiss that suggestion, insisting that all troop and equipment movements are for ordinary exercises.
www.nytimes.com/...
The diplomatic manoeuvring came as Russia-Ukraine relations soured further. On Thursday Ukraine’s foreign ministry accused Moscow of showing a “blatant disregard for the rules and principles of international law” by planning missile tests in the Black Sea that Kyiv says will make shipping navigation impossible there and in the Sea of Azov. Russia has just started 10 days of drills with Belarusian forces.
In Berlin on Thursday night, Russia and Ukraine said they had failed to reach any breakthrough in a day of related talks with French and German officials aimed at ending an eight-year separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.
[...]
It had not been possible to “overcome” Russia and Ukraine’s different interpretations of the 2015 Minsk agreement aimed at ending fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces, said Russian envoy Dmitry Kozak.
His Ukrainian counterpart, Andriy Yermak, said both sides agreed to keep talking. “I hope that we will meet again very soon and continue these negotiations. Everyone is determined to achieve a result,” he said. The conflict in the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions, known together as the Donbas, simmers despite a notional ceasefire.
Military analysts estimate Moscow has massed more than 135,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine, both in Russia and in Belarus – and some now believe nearly all the necessary elements are in place if Putin wanted to attack.
In his interview, Biden reiterated that under no circumstances would he send US troops to Ukraine, even to rescue Americans in case of a Russian invasion. “That’s a world war. When Americans and Russians start shooting one another, we’re in a very different world,” he said.
www.theguardian.com/...
- I've been writing about this for years. Here, in 2017:
- This truth upsets Washington's sense of its own geopolitical primacy, and Brussels' sense of its own geopolitical non-zero-sum-ness.
- It also complicates the "just stop expanding NATO" line, because stopping NATO won't make the problem go away.
- It's worth remembering that Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine was sparked *by a trade treaty*, not by a near- or even mid-term threat of NATO expansion.
- And no, the EU is not a back door to NATO. If anything, the NATO is a back door to the EU, which is much, much harder to join.
- Moscow's problem with the EU is geo-economic, which should not be read as being somehow less salient than geo-politics. Put briefly, the continued expansion of the European geo-economic project poses a threat to the current Kremlin's political survival.
- The expansion of EU influence puts insurmountable pressure on the Russian political economy to move from a rent-based, patronal model of wealth creation and power relations, to a system of institutionalized competition.
- Having satellite states that are governed in the same patronalist mode as Russia gives Moscow geo-economic breathing space, adding years or decades to the system's viability. Losing those satellites removes those years and decades.
- That's why Moscow needs an effective veto not over Kyiv's defense policy, but over its ability to integrate with the EU, to reform its institutions, and to reorient its markets -- a veto that the Donbas war makes possible.
- That's also why NATO is a red herring. Yes, a Ukraine that is in NATO -- or greatly supported by NATO -- can resist or even reverse the pressure exerted via the Donbas. But keeping Ukraine out of NATO won't be enough for Moscow, if Kyiv keeps pursuing ties with the EU.
- And it's why the 'Finlandization' idea is so pernicious: it means allowing Moscow to dictate not only Ukraine's security relationships, but its economic relationships, too. (Remember that Finland and Austria didn't join the EU until 1995!)
- And no, geo-economic 'Finlandization' isn't an option. It is impossible -- as a matter of economic governance, and as a matter of customs law -- to integrate simultaneously with the EU and the EEU. One way or another, Ukraine will be forced to choose a primary trading bloc.
- Now, I'm not here to say that Moscow is out to destroy the EU. It isn't, and Moscow profits -- to a degree -- from having the EU as a trading partner. But only to a degree.
- Even within its current borders, the EU puts immense pressure on Russia to do things like adapt the natural gas sector -- the country's biggest source of rents -- to fit the Third Energy Package.
- Moscow's worst nightmare isn't hypersonic missiles in Ukraine -- it's the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
- Now imagine that mechanism -- and others like it -- extended to Ukraine, and maybe you begin to get my point.
- In other words, while NATO is easy to set up rhetorically as a threat to Russian security -- a threat that Moscow knows is highly unlikely ever to materialize -- it is the EU that poses the clearest and most present danger to the Kremlin's ability to maintain power.
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