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credentials, Zelenskiy strengthened his position. In foreign policy terms, it was amid the crisis along the border that President Biden called Zelenskiy for the first time, ending an awkward pause. Both NATO as an institution and individual US allies voiced their support for Ukraine. The UK, in its new role as a power separate from the EU, convened a meeting of Ukraine’s closest friends: the United States, Canada, Poland and Lithuania. Against that background, Zelenskiy repeated Kyiv’s earlier request to be admitted to NATO.
It is hard to say whether Russia has “won” anything. Moscow certainly backed up its earlier verbal warning with a credible demonstration of force. However, it is less clear whether Russia’s demonstration will lead to the United States monitoring its Ukrainian clients more closely and avoiding making misleading statements of the kind that landed Saakashvili in trouble in 2008. As for the Germans and the French, who of course are much more worried about a war in their own neighbourhood, they have little influence in Kyiv. Russian pleas for the Europeans to take a less uncritical attitude toward Ukrainian policies and actions are unlikely to be heeded.
Perhaps the most important thing for the Russian leadership in this episode was to prevent the need to actually go to war against Ukraine in the future. It’s unlikely that Putin was bluffing when he said that a major attack against Donetsk and Luhansk would provoke a massive Russian response
“The most important thing for the Russian leadership in this episode was to prevent the need to actually go to war against Ukraine in the future”
with catastrophic consequences for Ukraine. Unlike the 2008 war with Georgia, in which Russian objectives were limited to restoring the territory of the South Ossetian enclave and temporarily holding some areas in Georgia proper, it appears a war against Ukraine would be bigger by several orders of magnitude. Such a war would also deeply affect Russia itself and its international position. Going for overkill in terms
of military manoeuvres on the Ukrainian border now may avoid the need to do terrible things at a later point. Under that same logic, doing nothing now would sow uncertainty and invite trouble, while doing nothing when trouble arrives would be suicidal for the Kremlin leadership. While Russia is not looking for more US sanctions, it is ready to take them as a price for its muscle-flexing.
Prospects
The passing of the war scare is not the same thing as de-escalation. The high level of tension in the region is now the new normal. Unfortunately, there is no political solution in sight. The 2015 Minsk II agreement, the basis of the diplomatic process for ending the Donbas conflict, was stillborn. To the keepers of the national flame in Kyiv, implementing that agreement would always have been a case of high treason. Poroshenko only signed it because the Ukrainian military
was decimated in Donbas, and it was the only way to stop
the disaster. Putting the agreement into practice, however, threatened to undermine the work of the Maidan revolution by giving Russia a foothold, and thus was deemed completely unacceptable. Withdrawing from the Minsk agreement is not an option for Kyiv either, however, because the agreement was brokered by Berlin and Paris. Zelenskiy’s mission to get Russia to agree to a major revision of the Minsk terms in Ukraine’s favour has turned out to be impossible.
Expanding the format of the Normandy talks (currently held among France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine) to get the dialogue to result in an agreement is both impossible – Russia is unlikely to agree to US participation – and impractical: even if the United States, which is not particularly willing, were to join, it would not lead to Russia yielding under US pressure.
Absent progress on the Minsk agreement and Normandy talks, however, diplomacy will be increasingly practised not in the usual way of harrowing but confidential negotiations (tellingly, Russia’s Kozak, frustrated with his counterparts, proposed making to the talks public: a non-starter, of course), but by means of sending messages through specific actions, like Russia’s current exploits on the Ukraine border. The only lifeline to peace left then will be direct contact between the Russian and US military chiefs.
This article was published as part of the “Relaunching US-Russia Dialogue on Global Challenges: The Role of the Next Generation” project, implemented in co-operation with the US Embassy to Russia. The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Embassy to Russia. It first appeared on the Carnegie Moscow Center website.
Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, has been with the centre since its inception. He also chairs the research council and the Foreign and Security Policy Programme.
He retired from the Russian Army in 1993. From 1993-1997, Trenin held a post as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow. In 1993, he was a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome.”
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