All Putin’s goals in Ukraine (not just the Donbass)
Putin does not want to limit himself to the Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, but is aiming for the taking of Kiev. Enzo Reale's analysis for Atlantico Quotidiano
We explained that the Donbass would be at the center of the events revolving around Ukraine a few days ago. Moreover, one did not have to be refined analysts to guess the direction of the wind, given the request for recognition of the separatist republics of Lugansk and Donetsk that the Duma had already officially sent to President Putin. Yesterday the prediction was fulfilled in all its drama: at the end of an improvised North Korean-style Security Council, broadcast live on television, the Kremlin first communicated to Scholz and Macron and then to the nation that it will recognize the independence of the occupied territories by pro-Russian militias. It is the end of the Minsk agreements and probably of all diplomatic hopes of avoiding a large-scale conflict. Ukraine cannot accept this declaration or its practical consequences and will necessarily have to react. For the West, this is the time to bring out the attributes (if it still has them).
Putin will then have his war and an abyss of uncertainty opens up in the center of the European continent. With the signing of the presidential decree ends the politically and ideologically oriented fiction according to which Ukraine would be in danger as Russia would feel "threatened" by NATO expansion to the East: we are not facing a Ukrainian crisis but a crisis Russian, scripted, directed and performed by Vladimir Putin's regime. A plan conceived for some time and orchestrated in such a way as to lead to the inevitable epilogue of a large-scale destabilization of the country, to be implemented in successive phases, in all probability through its partition and ultimately the subjugation of a large part of its territory . The Putin doctrine, admirably described by Angela Stent, undergoes a decisive acceleration which makes any negotiated solution extremely unlikely at this point.
It was a turning point announced after the rebel leaders, in concert with Moscow, decreed a surreal evacuation of the population towards the Rostov-on-Don area last Friday. On buses and makeshift vehicles, elderly women and children had begun to parade in a sad procession towards an unknown final destination, mere pawns in a game larger than themselves, aimed at artificially creating a casus belli, an emergency situation to be attributed to an elusive attack by the Kiev army, which obviously never took place. Since yesterday, the formal recognition of the two republics of Donbass paves the way for the sending of regular Russian troops to Ukrainian territory and the subsequent occupation of the eastern areas still under the control of the Kiev government: a real redefinition of the borders, a situation that historically prelude to the outbreak of a generalized conflict.
"The Donbass is an integral part of Russia", "modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia" (Lenin), "you wanted de-communization, now we will show you what true de-communization is": this is the core of a presidential message addressed to the nation but directed as a deadly threat to Kiev. A revisionist speech, with paranoid implications, which calls into question the decisions taken in the past by the Soviet leaders themselves and which leaves little room for interpretation: the reconquest of Ukraine has begun and will be achieved with a war of aggression.
The messages on an imminent war operation echoed by Washington in recent days were not so propaganda at the time: the political recognition of the rebel territories is already in itself an encroachment, a covert invasion, the premise of an expansion we will see how gradual. From now on there will be two puppet states in Ukraine that Moscow will use in its work of destabilizing the country: the ultimate goal, regime change in Kiev and the reestablishment of political, economic, ideological and cultural control over the neighboring state. We will have the opportunity to analyze in detail in the coming days the modalities and perspectives of the Russian reconquest plan, but at the moment it is already possible to clearly identify the steps through which it has developed so far: 1) accumulation of troops on the border with Ukraine ; 2) formulation of inadmissible requests to NATO and the United States; 3) petition by the Duma for the recognition of the separatist republics; 4) forced evacuation of the Donbass territories; 5) permanent stationing of troops in Belarusian territory; 6) request for "military and financial assistance" by pro-Russian rebels; 7) signing of the decree recognizing the independence of Lugansk and Donetsk.
What will happen now? First of all, it will be essential to understand how the European chancelleries and the White House will react, beyond the rhetoric of the circumstance. Having rejected an armed intervention, the immediacy and intensity of the sanctions will measure the level of cohesion of the Western front. The first approach is disheartening to say the least: the head of European diplomacy, the ineffable Josep Borrell, hinted that sanctions could only be approved in the event of Russian annexation. But Moscow has no interest at this moment in proceeding with an incorporation, since the conflict in Donbass – destined to exacerbate – is key in its project of destabilization and division: the separatist republics serve the Kremlin as pro-Russian outposts in Ukrainian territory, in order to force Kiev into an armed response and thus justify further war developments. But also the internal political dynamics will be altered, due to the foreseeable nationalist pressures on President Zelenskij for the recovery of full sovereignty over the eastern areas.
It should be clear by now that Putin does not set limits to the reconquest mission he has assigned himself: with his head in Kiev, his hands on the Donbass and his boots firmly planted in Belarus (now de facto a satellite state of Moscow, political-ideological appendix and military base), it will depend exclusively on the reaction of Western democracies to establish the red lines that it will not be able to cross. Unfortunately, if we have come to this point, it is above all because we have deluded ourselves that we are dealing with a rational interlocutor, manageable through traditional diplomatic channels, with whom it was more convenient to try to reach political-commercial compromises than to confront on the level of principles. and true political realism, which passed through the unconditional defense of Ukraine.
In this sense, the legacy of Angela Merkel, who opened the doors of the continent to Putin with the nefarious management of the Nord Stream 2 affair, also endorsed by Washington's renunciation to oppose its completion and entry into operation, is disastrous in this sense. Putin saw that crucial passage as a weakness that would allow him to sink. To put it in Medvedev's words yesterday at the Security Council: "We know that there will be sanctions, but after a while the West will come back to us to beg for a report". Putin thought condensed into a single sentence.
Now it will be even more difficult to escape the Nord Stream blackmail, with the alternative gas pipelines located in a minefield, and the mortgage of the energy crisis on the back of the naive (let's call them that, out of modesty) European chancelleries. Until the very end, Scholz and Macron tried to persuade Putin to give up by playing the card of formalizing Ukraine's non-accession to NATO. But this approach reveals a fundamental misunderstanding, which has conditioned any reasoning on the possibility of avoiding a conflict: for Russia the anti-NATO guarantee has never been an end in itself but simply a means to reach the big goal, that is, the control of Ukraine and the re-establishment of one's own sphere of influence (read satellite states) over neighboring countries. The mask has fallen and with it all the speculations about the Kremlin's willingness to negotiate a new security system in Europe. It is not with the gun to the head, with the threat of an imminent invasion, with blackmail and bullying. Putin actually never had any interest in discussing a shared order with Europe and the United States, what he wanted was to simply impose what he has in mind. Knowing that he could never reach his revisionist purpose with good luck, he decided to go with the bad, entering a dead end road that now forces him to continually raise the stakes.
It would be another mistake to think that the Donbass will placate its advance towards Kiev and then – why not – towards the rest of Central or Baltic Europe. Only relentless deterrence can make him give up or back away at this point. Economic and financial sanctions must be applied immediately, with a progressive intensification mechanism associated with precise red lines, the first of which should concern the concrete risk of expansion within the “historical borders” of the Donbass. But not only. We now need a shared strategy that highlights the political (not just economic) costs of further escalation, starting with the provision of financial and military assistance to Ukraine, through diplomatic isolation of Moscow at various levels, and with the reaffirmation of the desire to protect Ukrainian sovereignty, also through the acceleration of those processes of accession to NATO and the EU that were not yet on the horizon. The road map to counter Russia's ambitions can no longer be postponed, we are already out of time.
Wishful thinking, probably, in the end the short arm and the traditional search for an appeasement will prevail which, once again, will not take into account the nature of the regime that must be opposed. The aggression looming over Ukraine is the result of a complete prevarication of Putin's real intentions, of the revanchist ideology that feeds them and of a guilty underestimation of the degeneration of his regime in the last decade. Despite the attempts of distinguished experts, especially our own, to create a narrative favorable to Moscow and to attribute to the West – and to the United States in particular – an alleged strategy of tension, the reality is that effectively summarized by the former American ambassador to Russia , Michael McFaul: “At some point we must stop treating this crisis as a test of different abstract theories on international relations and begin to recognize good and evil. One country is preparing to launch a preventive and unprovoked invasion against another. The other does not. Russia is wrong. Ukraine no ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/putin-ucraina-donbass-kiev/ on Thu, 24 Feb 2022 06:42:49 +0000.