Page 2 - bne IntelliNews weekly newspaper June 23

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June 23, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
US-Russia tensions soar with sanctions and aerial brinkmanship
now materialise. But the current spike in tensions already overshadows an anticipated first meeting of presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hamburg on July 7-8.
While the early days of Trump’s presidency in January produced speculation that the two leaders could find common ground when they meet, the situation six months later suggests damage limita- tion and de-escalation could instead be the focus.
“Normally, leaders of countries have at least some low-hanging fruit to pick during their first meet- ing, in part to prove that their meeting has yielded concrete positive results for their countries,” Simon Saradzhyan, director of the Russia Matters project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center tells bne Intel- liNews. “Given the current atmosphere, including the Russian side’s decision to cancel [the sched- uled June 23] closed-door meetings of [US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas’] Shannon and [Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov to discuss normalisation of the relationship, I have begun to doubt whether there will be an opportunity for such low-hanging fruit picking when Trump and Putin meet in Germany.”
The developments mark a worrying stage in rela- tions between Moscow and Washington, tradition- ally difficult over the decades apart from a period of relative detente during the 1990s following the Soviet collapse.
On June 20, Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance’s military exercises with 11,000 troops and scores of ships and aircraft now underway in the Baltic republics and Poland aim to send a strong signal of deterrence to “a more assertive Russia”. The deployments too of new battle groups to the Baltic region also underscore that “an attack on
one Nato ally will trigger a response from the whole alliance”, Stoltenberg added. The military alliance has also tripled the size of its response force to 40,000 troops, including a group that could deploy within days.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said the exercises by the military alliance illustrated the West’s reluctance to give up its “anti-Russian course”, while his country and China plan to hold large naval exercises in the region immediately after Nato’s drills end. Another joint show of force is also scheduled days after Trump visits Nato ally Poland in July on his way to the G20 summit.
And in the autumn, Russia will conduct with Belarus its Zapad (“West”) military exercises with 100,000 troops along Nato’s western border to simulate a full-scale conflict with the alliance, the first of these regular four-yearly wargames since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
But beyond these carefully calculated shows of mili- tary strength, it is the alarming brinkmanship in the skies in the past days that raises the most worries.
The June 18 shooting down of a Syrian govern- ment warplane by a US aircraft already brought the uneasy interaction between Russia and the US-led coalition in the Syrian conflict into the spotlight once again. Russia responded by severing com- munications channels designed to avert mid-air incidents, and said US jets flying in Syria west of the Euphrates River would be treated as targets.
On June 19, the US said a Russian jet had flown within 1.5m of a US spy plane in the Baltic, while Moscow responded by saying that the reconnais- sance plane had made a “provocative” move.
Upping the ante further, on June 21 a Nato F-16 fighter jet flew close to Defence Minister Shoigu’s plane as he flew to the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, prompting a Russian fighter plane to intercept and show a Nato pilot that it was armed by dipping its wings. The Nato jet then flew off, ac- cording to footage that was aired later.