The East-West Cold War, which defined much of the 20th centurye century, has beautiful remains. After Minsk against Warsaw with “the weapon of migrants”, Moscow against Kiev with tanks and 100,000 soldiers massed at the border …
Much of the world has eyes only for the ascending, intimidating and inescapable China. This rise and this threat undeniably structure the XXIe century and will partly determine what will become of democratic nations.
But on the Eastern European front are also playing out decisive tests of strength for the future of the world.
Is an invasion of Ukraine by Russia possible? The Moscow regime denies wanting to do so, just as it denies having helped in 2014 the rebels of Donetsk and Luhansk, in Russified eastern Ukraine, to secede from Kiev by force of arms.
Vladimir Poutine had qualified, at the beginning of his reign, the fall of the Soviet Union of “biggest catastrophe of the XXe century ”. His (barely hidden) fantasy is a sort of reconstruction of the Soviet Union, in its Slavic “hard core”: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus.
But Putin, who excels in the art of nuisance, while leaving doubts about his real intentions, knows that the price to pay for such a reconstitution of the Empire could be too high, above the forces of the Present-day Russia.
Hence this strategy of tension, gradualist, in which the “theater of intimidation” in which Moscow is engaged on the Ukrainian border – remake of an episode similar to last spring, but perhaps more serious this time – is as important, in itself, as the willingness to really cross the border with troops of conquest and occupation.
Most Russians have never accepted the independence of Ukraine, which came 30 years ago. The event, despite the opportunist rallying at the time of a President Boris Yeltsin in a weak position vis-à-vis the West, was and remains in Moscow as an uprooting, a betrayal.
Seen from Moscow, the very idea of an independent Ukraine, with a distinct identity, turned towards Europe rather than towards Moscow, seems an aberration.
Vladimir Poutine is resolutely of this school. He made the strategic choice to blow on the embers of division, in this country fractured between East and West on social, linguistic and identity questions.
Nine years after the aborted “Orange Revolution” of 2004, one year after Putin’s return to the presidency at the end of 2012, another “street revolution” has arrived in Kiev: the “Maidan” demonstrations (December 2013-February 2014), who had driven out the pro-Russian power.
The hour of revenge had sounded in Moscow: it was the conquest and annexation of Crimea in the spring of 2014; then the war in eastern Ukraine, relying on local pro-Russian populations… and on the famous “little green men”, mercenaries in the pay of Moscow.
Foucades for personalities give them big majorities (the oligarch Petro Poroshenko in 2014, the actor Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019), but fleeting because followed by rapid disappointments and radical disavowals.
Zelensky, elected in 2019 with 73% in the second round, now follows a pro-Western line, with repeated requests for membership in NATO and the European Union, which are refused.
Because the Westerners, in the Ukrainian affair, play an important role, but troubled and contradictory. We repeat the support in principle for the sovereignty of Kiev, heard again last week, with a succession of declarations and warnings.
The head of American diplomacy on European tour and the NATO ministerial meeting in Riga said it and reiterated: “An invasion of Ukraine would be serious and would have serious consequences for Russia. “
But at the same time, NATO said in Kiev: “No, you will not join our organization. And despite the economic aid, the arms supplies … Zelensky is made to understand that “we will not go and fight with you.”
The 100,000 Russian soldiers at the border seem to be gone for a while. The Russian strategy consists in durably intimidating the Ukrainians, but also the Westerners. With in watermark the message of Vladimir Poutine, repeated last week by his Minister of Foreign Affairs: “We want formal commitments according to which NATO will not extend any more towards the east. “
It is the old obsession with “imperialist encirclement”, which dates back to the USSR. The message seems to have been heard. We will not repeat the blow of the Baltic countries with Ukraine… and this, even if this is the wish of the peoples concerned.
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist for Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]