The aggressive decision taken by the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, baffled European diplomacy. The recognition of the two Ukrainian separatist “republics”, but especially the invasion of those territories by the troops stationed for weeks on the border, demolished in moments a series of efforts that pointed to a solution that seemed to be balanced within certain levels of realism.
This demolition happens without the geopolitical gain that this challenge could bring to Moscow being clear, although the costs are. The Kremlin managed from one moment to the next unite all his adversaries, who are now competing to define the scope of the sanctions that they will carry out against the Federation.
For the first time countries like Germany analyze the unthinkable two years ago to obtain an alternative to Russian gas that Turkey, a former ally of Russia, a member of NATO and a militant of Ukraine’s entry into the Alliance, proposes through Azerbaijan, among other sources.
The situation seems to repeat in another format the mistake that the autocrat made more than a decade ago whenpersuaded more by his impulses than by reason, he lost the influence that his country, with great difficulties, was consolidating over the Ukraine.
The story is simple. Since 2004, Russia has been striving to place a man of their own in the Kiev government. He did it with tycoon Viktor Yanukovych, whom he supported even with the help of the poisoning of his pro-Western rival Viktor Yushchenko who survived and came to power.
The separatist regions, now recognized by Russia and where the troops were sent
The Kremlin got a second chance when it finally got Yanukovych to the Ukrainian presidency and thus rival the EU with multimillion-dollar loans that cemented Ukrainian dependency. But this extraordinary corrupt it did not take long to aggravate the social and economic crisis that even today sinks that country as one of the poorest in Eastern Europe.
A series of historic and famous popular protests, the Euromaidan, which began in 2013, removed this satrap from power, enabling the establishment of a pro-Western command that remains until now.
It was when Putin, cornered, and in the midst of the war in eastern Ukraine promoted by pro-Russian separatists, decided to take Crimea in order not to lose control of the military base in Sevastopol and the projection for the Russian war fleet of that position towards the Mediterranean. The truth is resigned a country, not just any country, to keep only a piece and a trauma. The same thing happens now, and at a lower level.
The current warlike step has possibly also raised the eyebrows of its Chinese allies, opposed, for an existential question that involves them, to any construction that violates the sovereign borders of a State.
It is what the People’s Republic understands about its historical situation before with Hong Kong and Macao and lately with the demand on the island of Taiwan. The Chinese foreign minister himself had warned about it a few days ago, even citing Ukraine as anything but an exception to that rule of national respect.
But this surprising decision by Putin must also have produced confusion in his own cabinet, which was preparing for an imminent meeting between foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and the American Antony Blinken to organize a perhaps final meeting of both presidents.
Putin had given Frenchman Emmanuel Macron the green light to propose that meeting, which Joe Biden immediately accepted and in any format. However, just hours later, he said “it was too early” for that summit. That zigzag shows more weakness than convictions.
It so happens that this summit would be held on a different basis from the previous ones. Lavrov has been stating that there were diplomatic advances, in particular those that Macron and the German president Olaf Scholz have been weaving and that were evidenced in the announcements of the Ukrainian government that reduced the chance of that country’s entry into NATO.
An agreement at that level strengthened another type of agreed limits, based simply on the need for the US to give in to Russia in order to focus on the main Chinese adversary and forge distances in the alliance that Moscow and Beijing have put together. Realism not only involves Russia but also Westerners and that was a central weapon that Putin had, but he has not played it cunningly.
Russian tanks during the exercises, part of them hroa entered the separatist areas of Ukraine. AP
The scenarios that open now were in some predictions. The alternative of taking pro-Russian separatist spaces existed in the sandbox as a way for Moscow to try to divide especially the Europeans who, unlike the US, maintain full economic integration with Russia.
An invasion of the entire country is not the same as an invasion of two regions of relative importance, as happened in 2008 with the independence territories of Georgia.
But, at the same time, this drift has made the Kremlin completely unpredictable, which is the last thing a power seeking a way out of its disputes can do.
In this way, Putin has given an unexpected leadership victory to the US over a West that functioned very dispersed and now bowed to Washington’s agenda. It is more than likely that not even China will celebrate this explosive scenario Russia has created with great recklessness.