Category Archives: European Union

Britain, European Union, Foreign Affairs, Government, Military, NATO, Politics, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United Nations, United States

Russian troops amass on Ukraine’s border…

UKRAINE

Intro: As world leaders tell Vladimir Putin to back off, 80,000 Russian soldiers have amassed on Ukraine’s borders. The fear now is that there could be a full-scale invasion…

Ukraine has warned that 80,000 Russian troops have amassed on its borders and could invade. World leaders have told Vladimir Putin to back off.

A senior security chief in Kiev said Moscow could launch a full-scale invasion and Russian troops would be in the Ukrainian capital within ‘two or three hours’ of the order to advance.

Photographs of Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers close to Ukraine’s borders are adding to the tensions.

British officials have been receiving reports about Russian troops massing on the border since Tuesday and are concerned by the show of force.

British intelligence is unsure whether the movements are intended to back up the annexation of Crimea, preparation for an invasion or simply defensive.

Moscow’s show of force started earlier this week as Ukraine’s prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, met Barack Obama in the Oval Office and NATO continued military exercises in Poland.

During a week of rising tensions, G7 leaders, including David Cameron and Mr Obama, warned Russia not to annex the Crimea after a referendum in the province, tomorrow, which has been taken over by pro-Putin troops.

Their statement warns the Russian president to ‘cease all efforts to change the status of Crimea contrary to Ukrainian law and in violation of international law’ and threatens ‘further action’ if Moscow seizes Crimea.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Russian MPs who voted to use force in Ukraine and Kremlin officials behind the invasion would be hit with asset freezes and a travel ban to the European Union – most likely to be issued at a Brussels summit on Monday.

But the main concern of Western leaders is to deter Russia from seizing the rest of Eastern Ukraine.

Andriy Parubly, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, has said that even Kiev may not be safe from Putin’s troops, who were regrouping in ‘an offensive manner’.

Mr Parubly claimed that forces massing included ‘over 80,000 personnel, up to 270 tanks, 180 armoured vehicles, 380 artillery systems, 18 multiple-launch missile systems, 140 combat aircraft, 90 combat helicopters and 19 warships and cutters’. He added: ‘Critical is the situation not only in Crimea, but along the entire north-eastern frontier. In fact, Russian troop units are two or three hours of travel from Kiev.’

Former Putin adviser Andrey Illarionov has predicted that in addition to Crimea, Putin may move to annex other major cities in Ukraine – including Kharkov, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Odessa.

Pictures of Russian armoured vehicles on the move in regions close to the Ukrainian border include motorised infantry vehicles and tanks. The military movements are also said to include Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launch vehicles. Tanks have also been pictured being carried by rail in Belgorod, and are reported to be parked in a village just 12 miles from the border.

The moves came as the Russian armed forces announced a huge military exercise by its airborne troops. The three-day exercise ordered by Putin involved a vast ‘landing operation’ by 4,000 paratroopers.

NATO has conducted its own show of force to reassure countries in Eastern Europe. The US and Poland began war games during the week that involved at least 12 American F-16 fighter jets. A joint naval exercise of US, Bulgarian and Romanian naval forces in the Black Sea also started.

Events have been building to a crunch point when tomorrow Crimea will vote on whether to join Russia. If Putin recognises the province as Russian, sanctions will follow.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met in London yesterday, but as expected those talks failed to make any progress on the crisis.

Infographic:

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea.

Geo-political infographic of Ukraine and of Crimea

 

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Economic, European Union, Government, History, Russia, Society, Ukraine, United States

An outcome in Crimea must be fair…

CRIMEA

Intro: The current situation in Ukraine has been described as the biggest crisis in Europe since the turn of the 21st century

Russian troops are now controlling Crimea in the south-east of the country. The chaos in the former Soviet state is the most troubling development on European soil since the turn of the millennium. The crisis has all the hallmarks of a 20th century conflict; one that resembles the days of the Cold War, or even beyond it. The American missile destroyer USS Truxton has arrived in the Black Sea and will permitted to stay there for a period of only 21 days under the Montreux Convention, an international agreement that allows a warship of any non-Black Sea country to be in its waters.

Whilst European leaders have spoken about ramping up tough diplomatic measures against Russia, Vladimir Putin is unperturbed and so far seems untroubled by the prospect of their disapproval. Mr Putin is determined to see the Crimean peninsula become part of his wider Russian Federation, particularly given the economic advantages to the Russian economy of its offshore gas fields. There also remains a strong pro-Russian element in the Crimea, a factor that Mr Putin will wish to capitalise upon. It was, after all, fierce disagreement over whether Ukraine should forge closer links with the European Union or Putin’s Russia which brought about the crisis in the first place. The very idea that former Soviet states be integrated into the European Union is an anathema to Mr Putin as he seeks, instead, to build a Russian dominated Eurasia Union.

The American missile destroyer USS Truxton has arrived in the Black Sea and will permitted to stay there for a period of only 21 days under the Montreux Convention.

The American missile destroyer USS Truxton has arrived in the Black Sea and will permitted to stay there for a period of only 21 days under the Montreux Convention.

But with European measures to find a solution reaping little success, the arrival of a US destroyer in the region seems likely only to exacerbate the situation. Russia has a strong naval presence in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the deployment of US gunboat diplomacy surely misreads the temperature in the Ukraine and the temperament of the Russian president. The Americans insist that Truxton is merely participating in a ‘planned exercise’, but the timing of its arrival will be more suspicious to those who doubt such an announcement.

Observers and analysts have turned to the 20th century to draw parallels with the actions that led to both world wars. It is not unthinkable that the crisis in Ukraine could be allowed to escalate with similar consequences.

On 16 March, the people of Crimea will be offered two choices in a referendum – they can either vote to become subjects of the Russian Federation or by favouring the restoration of the 1992 Crimean constitution (which would be a declaration of independence from Ukraine). Transparent democracy seems the only hope for a peaceful solution.

Crucially, however, this referendum doesn’t offer citizens the choice to remain with the status quo, with Crimea as an autonomous republic within Ukraine. The options on offer are either to join with Russia or declare independence, then join with Russia soon after.

The referendum has no credibility. How can it be when the outcomes it promises amount to no more than a stitch-up? The West should be concerned that the people will be asked to make a decision while their homeland has effectively been seized by Russian forces. Putin may tell the world that his troops are there to protect Russian speaking people, but that argument ran out the very moment Russian soldiers displayed their intention to protect by pointing their threatening weapons in the direction of their Ukrainian counterparts.

Mr Putin’s troubling empire-building is at the heart of the issue. It may well be that a majority of the people of Crimea will choose to enter the Russian fold. We would have no concerns if such a transition took place openly and democratically, and in full view of the world. A vote is needed that is open, honest and fair, and a plebiscite that is carried out without Russian soldiers prowling the streets.

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Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Russia, Ukraine, United States

Drawing a line with Russia…

THE UKRAINIAN DICHOTOMY

Intro: The West should have concerns, and these should leave Mr Putin in no doubt that his forceful entries in Georgia in 2008 and now in Ukraine, cannot be allowed to extend to those former Soviet countries – such as in the Baltic States – that are now part of the European Union and NATO, but which also have Russian-speaking populations

A meeting of the NATO-Russia council earlier this week to discuss events unfolding in Ukraine was a welcome development in the efforts to defuse the crisis. Dialogue has been important because not only is ‘jaw-jaw’ better than ‘war-war’, but because of the need to minimise the risk of misunderstandings and misjudgements.

The West appears to have allowed the Russians to annex Crimea without the slightest of physical restraint, a position that has immediately led to the Kremlin redrawing the map of Russia that now contains and subsumes the southern region of Ukraine. The perception that the West was rather relaxed was reinforced when a document photographed in the hands of a British government security adviser appeared to rule out any direct response to Russian aggression in Crimea, whether military action or economic sanctions. There is also irony in the fact that Vladimir Putin says he did not aim in annexing the Crimea, a portrayal that will be impossible for some to untangle.

A political anomaly arose, too, when the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, said that Washington was reaffirming its guarantee of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and integrity as set out in the Budapest Declaration of 1994, which the UK is also a party and signatory to. How, though, this can possibly extend to keeping Crimea within Ukraine is not clear. Even if sanctions are off-limits – for the Government will be acutely aware that any British sanctions could soon backfire, such as energy supplies from Russia to Europe being curtailed or Russian capital outflights from the City of London – it is difficult to see Mr Putin being cowed by diplomatic isolation or the cancellation of the planned G8 summit in Sochi in June. No doubt, the Russian leader can probably have confidence in the quickly arranged referendum planned for March 30, which will aim to grant greater autonomy for Crimea, to do his annexation for him.

But the West should have concerns, and these should leave Mr Putin in no doubt that his forceful entries in Georgia in 2008 and now in Ukraine, cannot be allowed to extend to those former Soviet countries – such as in the Baltic States – that are now part of the European Union and NATO, but which also have Russian-speaking populations.

John Kerry said the United States did not seek a confrontation with Russia, but will stand-by Ukraine. How, when US sanctions on Russia has already led to Mr Putin selling billions of dollars’ worth of his country’s gold in propping up the Russian Rouble? Further volatility on the Russian currency could have a devastating effect on the livelihoods of almost all Russians.

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