Ironically, the expression “Ukraine crisis” has been widely
used left and right in the last nine months as a euphemism for Russia’s war on
Ukraine, a bloody war in which Ukrainian army and volunteer battalion soldiers
are dying every week since last spring. For Ukraine it is nothing less than a
war of national liberation from Russia’s imperial yoke.
An army under war pressure needs the best weapons it can
get. This need is obvious and it has nothing to do with “military solution,” another gem of colloquial sophistry. It has everything to do with self-defense,
however. For instance, if an invasion is launched by Russia towards Odesa
along the coast of the Black Sea (a certainty according to some analysts and
unlikely according to others), “diplomatic solution” becomes another useless
sound bite.
It is well understood that economic sanctions imposed by
West on Russia will have a long-term effect. They are already beginning to bite
Russia’s economy, but again no one knows to what extent, if at all, they will
restrain or prevent Russia’s military escalation. That’s why talk of diplomatic
solution is no substitute for strong defensive weapons.
NATO remains very stoic about supplying some weapons. Jens
Stoltenberg, NATO general secretary spoke on December 1: “There is no military
solution to the conflict in Ukraine.” Conflict or crisis, the general secretary
apparently did not notice that Ukraine is not seeking a military solution. It
cannot trounce Russia. But it does want weapons to defend its own territory.
Some need to take off blinders and notice that Ukraine has
at least a 15,000 army fighting in the east. That’s not a mirage. NATO must
feel secure next to it (after the panic of last spring), considering that NATO
has not much of a standing army. During last summer it had sent to the Baltics
100 combat soldiers here and another 100 there. On the other hand, NATO is
putting up an impressive new building in Brussels for its nearly 4,000
employees.
How NATO would fare if Russia, hypothetically, tried
something unexpected. Pessimists say that nothing could stop the Russians from
rolling to the English Channel, until their trucks break down. It may not be as
grim as that, but it highlights the perils of overly relying on diplomacy.
Yes, there have been cogent arguments claiming that US
President Obama’s sanctions on Russia will be sufficient to deter Russia over
time. For instance, Will Ritter’s op-ed in the Kyiv Post (“Obama playing the
long game against Putin in Ukraine”, December 7) covers all angles, except one:
How a Russian thrust into more Ukrainian territory can be stopped or more
effectively resisted if it comes, unless Ukraine gets stronger weapons?
It is also true that “providing more effective arms will not
solve all of Ukraine’s defense problems”. It would, however, make it much
riskier for Russia to undertake a major intrusion. For instance, a thrust
toward Crimea and farther west along the coast could result in encirclement of the
invaders by a powered Ukrainian maneuver toward the Sea of Azov coastline
behind the Russian lines.
Not credible is the presumption that “US-provided weapons
could fall into the hands of ‘volunteer’ battalions outside of Ukrainian army
control and might then be used in an effort to overthrow Ukraine’s
democratically elected government”. The sacrifices the volunteer battalions
make for Ukraine at the front line should inspire a bit more confidence in
their commitment to common sense.
More pertinent is criticism of Poroshenko and
Yatseniuk’s“huffing and puffing” about re-imposing control over lost territory
in the Donbas. Face it, Donetsk and Luhansk with their Soviet nostalgia are
strongly inclined towards joining Russia and have been a major problem for
Ukraine in the last 20 years. Yes, if
they had voted in parliamentary elections last summer, the Communists and the
pro-Russian Party of Regions would have 120 members in the Verkhovna Rada
instead of less than 50. As it is, Ukraine is by far better off as they stay
outside and possibly become Vlad Putin’s problem.
Also, Poroshenko knows by now that the most he can do is
hold on to the existing front line in the east, even if Ukraine gets more
armaments.
Since the beginning of confrontation in Donbas last spring,
nearly 400,000 have fled from that area to Russia. Given their sympathies, that
choice is understandable. An op-ed in the Kyiv Post (“Driving Ukrainians into
Putin’s arms”, December 9) blames the government in Kyiv, perhaps forgetting
that the separatist rebellion had started with large crowds in Donbas
passionately waving Russian flags and forming a backdrop for seizure of
government buildings by militants and disarming the police.
Recent complaints about funding freeze by Ukraine’s
government in areas under separatist control are preposterous, considering that
the latter have enthusiastically seceded from Ukraine. And so is “the distrust
of Kyiv government over its decision to maintain a relationship with the Azov
battalion”, the battalion of volunteers dying for Ukraine in battle against
Russia’s proxies and Russian spec-naz troops.
Distrust of Ukraine’s government described in the article comes
along with fumigating against the Nazis who had done much harm in Ukraine
during World War II. Is this not the same phantom connection promoted now by
Vlad Putin? Curiously, where is the fury
against Stalin’s Soviet regime responsible for killing millions of Ukrainians
in the Holodomor in the 1930s?
And what about the very real connection between Stalin and
Nazi Germany when he was toasting Germany’s foreign minister Joachim von
Ribbentrop in the Kremlin in September 1939 and praising the Gestapo chief
Heinrich Himmler for his efficiency, while comparing him with NKVD boss Lavrentiy
Beria who “is doing a good job” (“On rabotaet ne ploho,” literally in Stalin’
own words). That was eight months before Beria, Putin’s KGB predecessor accomplished the mass murder of over 14,000 Polish POW
officers in Katyn forest.
The real “Ukraine
crisis” today is the economic crisis caused mainly by Russia’s war on Ukraine. The International Monetary Fund has identified
a $15 billion shortfall in its bailout for war-torn Ukraine — wrote the Financial Times (December10). Ukraine
may be forced into default on its sovereign debt obligations if additional aid
from the West is not found.
Napoleon Bonaparte had famously stated that three things are
needed to wage war: money, money, and money. If President Petro Poroshenko is
correctly saying that by defending itself against Russia’s aggression Ukraine
is also defending Europe, and if Ukraine begins to make progress in
implementing the required reforms, western governments and NATO should get on
board.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
