Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 1 – In January
1991, after Soviet soldiers killed 14 Lithuanians in Vilnius, a remarkable political
cartoon appeared: It showed a Soviet soldier pointing a gun at a Lithuanian who
was proudly thrusting his chest forward and then, further away, Uncle Sam, the
universally recognized symbol for the US, throwing up his hands in abject surrender.
On the one hand, this cartoon
reflected the anger many around the world felt about Washington’s failure to
stand up to Mikhail Gorbachev because the West was about to begin its campaign
against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But on the other, it underscored an
important truth: the real target of Moscow’s actions may not be the most
immediately apparent one.
Three analysts are now making that
point with regard to Putin’s military maneuvers near the Ukrainian border,
arguing that the Kremlin leader’s real targets are Barack Obama and other
Western leaders rather than Ukraine and that he hopes to achieve his goals by being
threats alone but will use force if they don’t give way and put pressure on
Kyiv to see things Moscow’s way.
Indeed, each of the three suggests
that Putin’s strategy is likely to be more effective if he can convince Western
leaders that unless they force Kyiv to accept Russia’s conditions, Putin will
use force and dramatically expand his war against Ukraine, something the West
doesn’t want and that it is struggling to find a way to prevent, short of
supporting Moscow.
The three analysts making this point
today are Nikolay Sungurovsky, of Kyiv’s Razumkov Center (nv.ua/opinion/sungurovskij/poslednij-rychag-putina-209138.html),
Russian commentator Stanislav Belkovsky (gordonua.com/news/worldnews/belkovskiy-putin-dobivaetsya-vnimaniya-obamy-i-sozdaet-fantomnye-ugrozy-vozle-granic-ukrainy-148125.html)
and Russian analyst Andrey Piontkovsky (apostrophe.com.ua/article/world/2016-09-01/pahan-prikidyivaetsya-pripadochnyim-putin-ispolzuet-g20-chtobyi-shantajirovat-zapad/7077).
Putin is seeking to put pressure on
Kyiv to accept his interpretation of the Minsk accords both directly and via
the West by the kind of threatening behavior that the West has often responded
to by seeking to find some common ground given that Putin appears quite
prepared to escalate the situation if he does not get his way, Sungurovsky
says.
Putin’s goal in Ukraine since his
Anschluss of Crimea remains unchanged: he wants to prevent Kyiv from “escaping
the orbit of influence of Russia.” He
hasn’t achieved that, the Kyiv analyst says; but he hasn’t given up. Using the
threat of force to frighten the West is just one more step in that direction.
And the Kremlin leader thinks he has
a chance to win out that way, to get the West to back down on sanctions against
Russia and on its support for Ukraine.
So far, that hasn’t happened; and if it doesn’t happen soon, then,
Sungurovsky concludes, Putin will go for broke and seize the territory of
Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts “up to their administrative borders.”
“The occasion for such actions, the
Ukrainian analyst says, “could be provocations similar to those used in
Crimea. Putn has shown what he is
capable of and the next provocation certainly will be more carefully prepared,
more massive, and more threatening.”
That too will send a message to both Ukraine and its Western partners.
Belkovsky shares this interpretation
of what is now happening: “Putin is seeking to gain Obama’s attention and is
creating phantom threats along the borders of Ukraine” to force the American
president to meet with and make concessions to the Russian leadership with
regard not just to Ukraine but around the world.
Putin’s “tactics are clear: the more
problems you create for your opposite number before negotiations, the greater
the chances that he will agree because he will want to escape from these
problems. Before the [G-20] summit, it is useful to create a foundation for
pressure and to fright everyone with the notion that Russian forces are about
to attack Ukraine.”
According to Belkovsky, “Ukraine is
for Putin ‘only an instrument to force the US into negotiations about the fate
of the world’” and not just about lifting sanctions. So far he has not
succeeded, but his latest military moves around Ukraine are an indication that
he has not ceased trying and even that he thinks the timing is especially
propitious.
The reason Putin thinks that he has
a particularly good chance to influence Obama now, the Russian commentator
says, is that the American president “is extremely interested in the victory of
Hillary Clinton. If a war in Ukraine
begins,” he argues, “this will have a negative impact on Clinton’s chances and
the chances of Donald Trump for victory will grow.”
Andrey Piontkovsky also agrees that
what Putin is doing around Ukraine now is all about the G-20 meeting and Putin’s
efforts to use the West against Ukraine and to force the West to make broader
concessions. The Kremlin leader’s
message to Obama and the others is simple, Piontkovsky says.
“’If you do not agree to our
interpretation of the Minsk accords and do not force Ukraine to accept it,’”
Putin is suggesting, “’then we will look for other means of solving the
situation, including military ones.’”
But Piontkovsky suggests, implying
that the West should keep this in mind that “Moscow isn’t prepared” for a real
war. That would be “insane.” But threats and bluffs of one often have
worked on Western leaders and diplomats in the past, and so it is no surprise
that Putin is using them again.
He concludes that he believes it
would be a very good thing for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to tell
Putin that he has no hope of achieving his aims. Poroshenko’s rhetoric has
become tougher in recent weeks, and Putin should hear directly from him that “Ukraine
will never change its constitution or destroy its state” as the Kremlin leader
wants because after all “Moscow doesn’t need the Donbass or Crimea but rather
all Ukraine.”
And a fourth observer, Dmitry
Tymchuk, a Ukraine Popular Front deputy who coordinates the Information
Resistance movement, says any quieting on the line of the front between
Ukrainian forces and pro-Moscow militants may work to Russia’s advantage and do
not preclude attacks in the future (gordonua.com/news/war/tymchuk-rezhim-tishiny-na-donbasse-eto-prelyudiya-k-dalneyshey-eskalacii-konflikta-148133.html).
In his view, the Russians are “trying
to show a certain contrast: now is a cessation of fighting but if need be, everything
can be changed” and changed very quickly because there are a lot of Russian
soldiers and Russian weapons in or near Ukraine and they haven’t been pulled
back at all.
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