Ukraine and Russia: The Thorny Questions That Will Not Go Away

When the Ukraine crisis erupted exactly a year ago, the British government initially treated it as an obscure dispute in a far-away country, of short duration and no lasting consequences. Officials in Downing Street continued to insist that the agenda for the NATO summit, which the UK was set to host a few months later, should be all about security arrangements after the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, or about counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea.

This surreal, head-in-the-sand attitude did not last; by the summer, Prime Minister David Cameron claimed to be ‘fully engaged’ in finding a solution to the crisis. But most of this engagement consisted of the release of a steady stream of communiqués expressing ‘anxiety’ or ‘alarm’ at events in the country. Meanwhile, British diplomacy was strangely absent: not only did the British not complain when they were not included in any of the diplomatic ‘troikas’ formed by the Germans or the French to handle the crisis, they also showed no predilection to formulate their own priorities.

It is now clear that the showdown over Ukraine has transformed Europe and will define a new British government’s security strategy for the rest of this decade. For Ukraine’s future is obvious: the country will be the scene of a proxy battle between Russia and the West – a confrontation over spheres of influence. This nightmare has been predictable since the end of the Cold War a quarter of a century ago. It has now become a reality which the next British government – incoming after general elections scheduled for May – will not be able to avoid.

The fight over Ukraine is not just about Russia’s quest for territory; it is a fight for historical entitlement – one of reclaiming a status which history, God or fate supposedly always reserved for Russia. This is a sentiment shared by most of Russia’s political elite; even Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet leader and a man who bent over backwards to be friendly to the West, never took Ukraine’s independence seriously, and often denied that Ukraine was even a state.

Contrary to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims, however, it was not the West that tried to ‘snatch’ Ukraine away from Russia. Yet what Western governments should stand accused of is in many respects just as bad: the persistent refusal to accept that Russia was never going to let go of Ukraine, and that the only way of handling the issue was either to confront Russian aspirations or to accommodate them.

Western governments did neither: they encouraged Ukrainian dreams of integration into the EU and even into NATO, yet failed to follow through in either direction. The result is that they alarmed Russia without stabilising Ukraine – the worst of both worlds. The current crisis is largely of Russia’s making. But its antecedents lie in misguided Western policies, and in the persistent Western habit of refusing to confront European realities as they really are.

There is now no turning back. Even if the currently negotiated ceasefire holds in Ukraine – and that is a big assumption – it is patently obvious that the country cannot be stitched back together again.

There is no way that Russia will relinquish control over the eastern provinces that are now under the control of ethnic Russian rebels. Nor is there any hope that a pro-Russian government will ever again come to power in the Ukrainian capital, if only because very few ethnic Russians still vote in Ukrainian elections, leaving the field open to Ukrainian nationalists.

Tragic as this situation may be, if the outcome of the Ukraine crisis could have been contained to the division of that country alone, Europe could have regained its poise. Sadly, that is not the case, for Ukraine’s carve-up has also undermined the full range of security arrangements put in place in Europe at the end of the Cold War. The former communist countries of Eastern Europe need reassurance that they are not going to be next in line. If NATO and the EU fail to provide such reassurances, both organisations will soon disintegrate. The West’s response is, therefore, no longer simply about Ukraine, but about the maintenance of broader Western cohesion.

This explains why, sooner rather than later, the US and its allies will start supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military. This will not be because anyone believes that Ukraine can defeat Russia; instead, there is the belief that, if the costs of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine start to rise, Moscow may be deterred from attempting to do the same elsewhere.

Most of the weapons will not be supplied directly from US or British arsenals; that would be too provocative to Russia and would cause problems for the Ukrainian military, which uses Russian-made equipment. Instead, arms will be supplied from stocks of Russian-made weapons held by neighbouring Poland and Romania, thereby creating a shadowy European arms route. In doing so, the aim will be to embroil Russia in a prolonged confrontation which it cannot sustain, and from which it cannot easily extricate itself.

Largely to counter this, Russia is increasing pressure elsewhere in Europe. One sophisticated, currently unfolding Russian strategy is to treat particular groups of European countries in very different ways. The small Baltic States are being subjected to regular harassment. Most of this is of a petty nature: the cutting of a ship’s cables, the interruption of gas supplies or the occasional, brief border incursion. But the harassment is relentless, designed to keep Russia’s smaller neighbours on edge.

Meanwhile, larger Eastern European countries like Poland and Romania are witnessing more persistent Russian retaliation, including trade bans. Yet, the Russians are also embracing a number of former communist Eastern European nations which they consider to be friendly: in February, Putin travelled to Hungary, a NATO country keen to gain access to Russian oil and money. Finally, a special place in Russia’s charm offensive is reserved for Germany, Europe’s largest and most influential nation, whose lost friendship the Russians are desperate to regain.

The objective of this multilayered strategy is to drive a wedge between various European nations, and between Europe and the US, which would paralyse both NATO and the EU from within. This would in turn unleash the security transformation that Russia wants in a continent over which Moscow would then exercise greater control – one increasingly divided into new spheres of influence.

Faced with this kind of a challenge, NATO’s decision to establish command centres in Eastern Europe and accelerate the creation of a spearhead force designed to reinforce the security of the region is not surprising; it is, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg rightly put it, the greatest reinforcement of military forces in Europe since the end of the Cold War. The objective is not to unleash another Cold War but, rather, to warn Putin that, although the West remains unwilling to use force in defence of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the Alliance will not hesitate to respond militarily should the security of its member states be threatened.

The hope is that Putin will understand the distinction between Ukraine and NATO. This he does, but the snag is that Russia has other ways of undermining the existing European security map. Russian attempts to compromise the relevance of NATO’s Article V security guarantee will be unrelenting, and one of the biggest contributions the UK can make to European security in years to come will be to ensure that the Alliance maintains its credibility by responding to these provocations, whilst upholding its internal cohesion.

History never repeats itself exactly. Today’s Russia is not the old Soviet Union; the Cold War will not return because the challenge posed by Russia is not global in scale; and a ‘hot’ war seems even less likely. Nevertheless, the return of the language of the Cold War is one of the most depressing current European realities. As is the return of the palpable sense of mutual suspicion. Indeed, Russian leaders are convinced that the West is out to undermine them, while Western leaders have exactly the same fears about Moscow’s intentions.
What we are likely to see is the advent of two proxy wars in Europe: one played out in Ukraine largely at the West’s initiation, and one played out with both NATO and the EU, largely at Russia’s instigation. In the long term, the Russians are likely to lose both confrontations, as they have lost all previous ones, and for the same reason: they cannot match military with economic power. In the short term, however, the proxy confrontations will condemn Europe to years of serious tensions.

This is a sobering thought for those in Whitehall who, only a year ago, were commissioning papers about where future crises may arise in obscure corners of the world, based on the assumption of an ‘old continent’ no longer facing direct security threats.

Dr Jonathan Eyal
Editor, RUSI Newsbrief.
Twitter: @JEyal_RUSI