Reuters reported early that the ceasefire deal includes a
prisoner exchange while armed forces on both sides will remain in their current
positions. Negotiations between the government and the separatists will follow,
covering the sticky points. That’s where Russia’s Putin will press his agenda
and plans, reinforced without a doubt by
his unpredictable moves, including contrived truce violations.
Despite pitfalls expected from haggling with Russia and her proxies
in Donbas, talking is better than having a shooting war which Ukraine cannot
win. It should be apparent to all by now that President Petro Poroshenko’s
military action in Donbas was a gamble with no chance of success, given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s determination to prevent Ukrainian victory.
Ukrainian forces were clobbered by the Russians with
superior weapons in the last several days of August, with horrendous losses in
killed and wounded, partly because of what now is seen as egregious tactical
mistakes by military commanders in the vicinity of Ilovaisk near
Donetsk.
Poroshenko’s overall wartime decision-making, however,
should not be quickly judged. The future will tell. But hardly anybody can deny
that much of Donbas is now semi-permanently detached from Ukraine. Some believe
(including this writer) that keeping it out is a net gain for Ukraine. Similar
view is supported by Alexander Motyl in “Putin’s trap” (Foreign Affairs, Sept
1). He also points out there is no need for Ukraine to take the costly chore of
rebuilding Donbas and its rust belt from the destruction of war.
Not surprisingly, Putin is figuring that
re-attaching Donbas to Ukraine would preserve the powerful pro-Russian
political power base in the country, and give him the most leeway for meddling
in Ukraine. This appendage, augmented with Donbas autonomy or decentralization,
is an enhanced prescription for dividing and destabilizing the country, even
more than it was before the EuroMaidan Revolution.
The divide between Ukraine and Donbas is not only abstractly
political, but also intensely emotional. Donbas residents mostly feel they are
Russians, with simmering hate towards the Ukrainian mainstream which they call
fascist. Language is not a factor, despite Putin’s canard. Their leaders, like Aleksander Zakharchenko, the latest Russia-appointed
president of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic are anti-Ukrainian firebrands,
and would be easily elected to represent Donetsk and Luhansk majorities under
any jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, jokers in Ukraine’s government languishing from
the Soviet era don’t give up easily. In the Kyiv Post (Sept 5) you find:
“Deputy Head of State Board Service says wall on the Ukrainian-Russian border
will be built”. It will span several oblasts. This was on the same day when massive concrete
obstacles erected by Ukrainian defenders on the road from the east to Mariupol
were blown off by Russian artillery. Try to put it up along Donbas-Russia
border. Obsession with wall building seems to be endemic at some level.
In these critical days, Poroshenko was doing his
best, spending much time in an attempt to get some tangible commitment from
top-level NATO meeting in Wales, mostly in vain.
The NATO meeting had the Ukraine debacle at the top of its
agenda for public eye, with eloquent speeches in support of Ukraine against
Russia’s aggression. Arming Ukraine was left up to individual decisions of
member governments. There are no takers. The feeling is that Ukraine cannot win
war with Russia anyway, and would only drag NATO into war.
But the figure of speech heard loudly was “NATO stands with
Ukraine.”
Russia’s former President Boris Yeltsin, in exasperation
with haggling over Russian fleet’s presence in the port of Sevastopol in the
Crimea in the early 1990s, once said that war between Ukraine and Russia is
impossible. The NATO meeting in Wales leaves an impression that only its
eastern member states are really concerned about imminent danger from Russia.
The reaction of original NATO members is a mix of panic and
stagnation. To assuage the Baltic states’ concern, it was decided to create a
rapid reaction force. Right now NATO has a 15,000 strong Spearhead Force which
is not very quick. The new rapid reaction force will be the size of a brigade,
4 to 5 thousand troops. It sounds more like farce than force, if the intent is
to interdict the Russian army.
A BBC News article, “NATO’s question of political will” (Sept
4) has this: Rather than seeing the new
crisis in Eastern Europe as a rallying call for new commitments to collective
defense, many NATO members remain trapped in the mentality of the past decade’s
“contingency operations” involving
“coalitions of the willing” in Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
As expected, the first and foremost for Obama
and Secretary of State John Kerry at NATO meeting was the ISIS crisis in Iraq
and the need for NATO members to get involved in forming an international
coalition to “degrade and destroy” the bestial menace. A 10-member state
coalition is formed, but no boots on the ground this time.
There is an overall impression that the USA is squeezing
more from the almost lifeless NATO than the latter is drawing from America in
the last two decades, despite repeated argument that Europe is not sufficiently
sharing the cost of defending Europe.
Polls show Americans are opposed to fighting in Iraq again.
They are still struggling with consequences of the two wars longest in American
history. Nearly one-half of the millions of veterans of Afghan and Iraq wars
have applied for disability benefits, many of them because of traumatic stress disorder. The processing of claims is more than one year behind.
In contrast, from what we have seen so far, the Russians are
showing lots of enthusiasm for subduing Ukraine. Putin’s popularity is soaring
in Russia. Part of it may be explained by the receding memory of the Soviet
fiasco in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The historic Russian hyena is on the prowl
again. Stay tuned.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
