Page 74 - bne monthly magazine October 2022

74 Opinion
bne October 2022
Filled with hardliners, the security fraction has supported the war in Ukraine. But the unknown now is how they will react to Russia's crushing defeat in this battle. The kneejerk reaction will be to crack down even harder on dissent inside Russia and escalate the economic war with the West, say many pundits.
Russia has reached a crossroads where it is very difficult to say what will happen next. Analysts, pundits and even the Kremlin have been caught out by the speed and scale of the Ukrainian rout of the Russian forces. Analysts that have been following events closely from the start have had to admit they were taken totally by surprise by the events of this weekend.
“Ukraine's counter-offensive in the northeast – liberating in a day territory that took Russia a month or more to conquer – is breath-taking. Inspiring, even,” tweeted Sam Greene, the Professor of the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) at Kings College in London. “But it should also be sobering. Apart from anything else, it reveals just how much we struggle to analyse this war.”
BALKAN BLOG
What Turkey’s Erdogan can offer the Western Balkans
Clare Nuttall in Glasgow
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spent this week visiting three Balkan countries – Bosnia & Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia – as his country seeks to extend its influence in the region. As well as various economic deals, Erdogan offered Turkish help with some
of the pressing security issues in the region, namely the internal tensions in Bosnia and the situation between Serbia and Kosovo.
During his visit to Belgrade on September 7, Erdogan said the region would have Turkey’s support to resolve the disputes that threaten its stability.
“We are ready to extend our support and I hope that there is now a positive acceleration which will be sustained in the Balkans, because the Balkans can no longer tolerate these kind of problems,” he said at a press conference alongside Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
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“Focusing on objectives rather than achievability does not mean that we should ignore reality. Quite the opposite: the reality is that much of what we think we know about achievability is a fiction. Ukrainian troops on the outskirts of Donetsk seemed a fiction just yesterday,” Greene added.
In what may be unrelated news, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov brought up the topic of peace talks again in an interview on September 11.
“Russia does not reject negotiations with Ukraine, but their further delay by Kyiv will complicate the possibility of reach- ing an agreement with Moscow,” Lavrov said in an interview with Rossiya-1 TV channel on Sunday.
Lavrov noted that Putin conveyed Moscow's position during a meeting with the State Duma and faction leaders. "The president told the meeting participants that we do not deny [the possibil- ity of] negotiations, but those who do should understand that the longer they postpone this process, the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us," the minister said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) with his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic in Belgrade on September 7. / predsednik.rs
Commenting on the situation in Bosnia too, Erdogan added that Ankara would like to help the ethnic groups in the country “find reconciliation”.
Turkey is by no means the only interested party in this region. As a tense standoff developed between Serbia and Kosovo over the summer, both the EU and the US dispatched special envoys in a diplomatic offensive aimed at preventing any potential outbreak of violence. The international community has been represented since the wars of the 1990s by its high representative in Bosnia. As well as the Western powers, both Russia and China have an interest in the region.
So what does Turkey bring? As the world – or at least the northern part of it – divides along East/West lines following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ankara has positioned itself as a neutral partner between the two. This put it in a position to broker the July Istanbul grain deal that enabled Ukraine to