The Biden administration on Friday escalated dire warnings of a possibly imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying it could happen at any moment, even as emergency diplomatic efforts continued. U.S. officials said the United States is preparing to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv, and Americans in Ukraine are being told to leave within the next 48 hours.
With Russia carrying out a massive military buildup near Ukraine and the West roundly rejecting Moscow’s security demands, a window for diplomacy in the crisis appears to be closing.
But even as Moscow continues to bolster its forces and holds sweeping war games, President Vladimir Putin is keeping the window open for more negotiations in a calculated game of brinkmanship intended to persuade Washington and its allies to accept Russia’s demands.
Russia seeks to restore its former position in the world and has repeatedly shown under Putin that it has the ability to destabilize international order. While Russia lacks the military power to challenge the United States’ superiority, Europe does not underestimate its capabilities. Moscow’s use of arms sales and military engagement to build ties with Asia, Africa, Latin America, and especially the Middle East, and the mass export of fossil fuels to Europe have given Russia more leverage to shape power dynamics in various regions. Russia’s growing share of the natural gas market, previously a major player in the oil market, has further extended Russia’s influence but after the Corona pandemic, sanctions of Western countries as well as Putin’s failure to diversify the economy and can put him in trouble.
Poland has declared its ambition to become the strongest military power in Central Europe. A NATO spending-leader already, Warsaw is eying a two-fold expansion of its armed forces, even though this will entail huge costs and defy demographic trends. Can it succeed?
“The champion of our petrochemical industry.” So boasted Todor Zhivkov, then-communist leader of Bulgaria, when the country’s first oil refinery at Burgas on the Black Sea coast launched operations in 1963.
Nearly six decades later, Bulgaria’s planned economy may be long gone, but the so-called champion continues refining oil into gasoline and other petroleum products. It is not only the largest such energy enterprise in Bulgaria but the entire Balkans region.
The Perils of Macron’s Shuttle Diplomacy
Just two months before he stands for reelection, French President Emmanuel Macron has launched a bold effort to mediate between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the West over the standoff at the border with Ukraine. After meeting with Putin for five hours on February 7, Macron struck a hopeful tone, telling reporters that Putin had assured him that there would be “no degradation or escalation” of the crisis by Russia. But the following day, as Macron met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv before flying to Berlin to meet with his German and Polish counterparts, the Kremlin denied that Putin had made any specific commitment to Macron. From the start, it had been unlikely that these meetings would have much effect: Russia and Ukraine remain very far apart on the status of the Donbas and Ukraine’s sovereign right to decide its own future, and Russia has made de-escalation contingent on demands regarding NATO that many in the West view as unacceptable. Yet this bleak outlook didn’t discourage the French president: such long-odds shuttle diplomacy has been characteristic of Macron, who has made high-profile, if often exceedingly ambitious, diplomatic interventions a hallmark of his five years in office.
Even though the “almost imminent” war with Ukraine has been dominating the media in Russia, another important issue has been debated almost constantly: the recent actions of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a person with the unique status in Russia’s political elite of not being subject to any laws existing in the Russian Federation.
Reports out of Washington suggest worry over a Russia-China partnership that would facilitate Vladimir Putin’s presumed ambition to absorb Ukraine and undermine the NATO-based European security system. So let’s examine that relationship to assess the US concern.
Sometimes the hypocrisy of the US government, especially when it comes to foreign affairs, is just too much to let pass.
The latest example of this is the Ukraine crisis, where the US pretty much stands all alone (unless you count Britain’s embattled and embarrassed Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who parrots US policy like a trained bird), accusing Russia not just of preparing for an “imminent invasion’ of Ukraine, but of violating international law and “rules-based international order,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken likes to put it.
The statement comes amid a standoff between the Kremlin and the West over the list of security demands Russian authorities made last year, which Moscow says are needed to defuse the crisis in Ukraine and lower tensions in Europe.