The flavor of the posts from a year back are pretty much the same as they are today, there’s still a war on.
The flavor of the posts of two years ago was one of anger, how is it possible that a war has started in my country?!
And the flavor of the posts from three years ago are peace, family, friends, parties celebrations, good times.
A little over two years ago Euan MacDonald (now an editor at the Kyiv Post) authored a blog post entitled “Putin’s frog-in-a-pot war” in which he hypothesized that Vladimir Putin would crank the heat up in Ukraine bit by bit. Never quite taking a bold new step that would be enough, compared to yesterday, to warrant a severe rebuke from the West.
Looking back, it appears that MacDonald called things perfectly. This isn’t a case of hindsight being 50-50. This is a case of a seasoned journalist and an veteran observer of events in this part of the world making a prediction, and getting things pretty much spot on.
We have lived through the cycles of lies, and obfuscation, and denials, and a slim veneer of plausible deniability for two plus years; it is high time to stop and take stock of where we are today and how we got here, and what is the historic record of truth and fiction.
The only marginally proffered (indirect as formally involvement is still ridiculously denied) explanation for Russia’s aggression in and against Ukraine, is the need to protect the rights of Russian speakers or ethnic Russians.
This line has been pressed by Russia’s representatives at the United Nations Security Council and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and even by Putin himself – numerous times. The question is this – how do they get away with it? There never was a threat to the people of Crimea, and there never was a threat to the people of south and eastern Ukraine. This is another example of Russia’s “Big Lie” tactic.
There is literally zero evidence of any threat to Russian speakers emanating from Ukraine, and Russia’s self-asserted right to involve themselves in the case of any such threat more than a little reflects Hitler’s reasoning for Nazi Germany’s actions in Sudetenland in 1938.
While the Kremlin’s troll army might think that the current war in eastern Ukraine is sufficient evidence of a threat to Russian speakers it has to be remembered that, actually, Ukrainian military engagement in the east of Ukraine was preceded by the military takeover of Ukrainian towns and cities – something for which a military response was the only possible course of action. No threat to Russian speakers existed prior to that chain of events being unleashed by the Kremlin.
The fact that many ethnic Russians or Russian speakers have died in this conflict comes from the fact that a war was manufactured by Russia – it is only logical to conclude therefore that it is Russia, not Ukraine, which has posed a threat to the lives and well-being of these people.
On the ground today in eastern Ukraine there is an army that is larger than the armies of many countries, had Vladimir Putin been bold enough to thrown all of that military hardware along with the Russia command and control structure that runs, trains and equips that army surely Western reactionary sanctions would have been much more wide-ranging and severe than they are today. Does the fact that these forces have been built up over the course of two years warrant lesser reactionary sanctions? Is Putin being rewarded for his frog-in-a-pot approach to his most recent war therefore?
The issue of sanctions relief has been widely discussed, how is it even slightly possible that Russia can send an army into a neighboring country, refuse to abide by the terms of the three separate peace agreements that it has signed with regard to Ukraine, and at the same time even try to make a claim for sanctions relief?
As has been excellently argued, the economic cost to the European Union of the EU’s policy on Russian sanctions is, at best, minimal, and even a lifting of sanctions would have little to no positive effect on the economy of the EU except for a small number of “narrow commercial interests,” something admitted to by Cyprus in recent days.
In the Cypriot reasoning behind their vote they state that the sanctions “have in retrospect not helped resolve the Ukraine crisis” – is this another example of Putin being rewarded for his belligerence? He has doggedly refused to allow peace to return to Ukraine, it takes a pretty convoluted logic to turn that fact into a reason to relax sanctions.
The Cypriots are right in their analysis, but their response is incorrect. The sanctions have not helped to end the war, so far, and that is at the same time the worst argument for removing them and the best argument for increasing them, and doing so immediately.
Had Putin not spent two years building up to the point we are at today, gradually turning up the military pressure and building up the military presence bit by bit, would anybody be seriously talking about dropping sanctions?
Over the course of the last two years we have moved past the point where the international community and the international media gave the same amount of credence to Russia’s denials as they did to Ukraine’s complaints, and we have unwittingly simply arrived at a place where, yes, obviously, Russia has invaded Ukraine and Russian troops are indeed in eastern Ukraine, lots of them.
Even the Kremlin troll army (and Kremlin officials) have given up on the line “there is no proof, show me one piece of evidence” about the Russian military involvement because that line is so very easily refuted nowadays.
A war exists, and because of the sly way in which it was built up, people are now simply nonchalant to that fact. Where is the outrage? The outrage has been dissipated by the slow nature of the creeping build up, a blitzkrieg would have drawn anger, and reaction, turning up the heat bit by bit has not. That does not change the facts on the ground.
The facts on the ground are this, “combined Russian-separatist forces have continued to launch attacks on Ukrainian positions using heavy weapons proscribed by Minsk, while methodically obstructing the special monitoring mission from fulfilling its mandate. In the last week, eight Ukrainian personnel were killed and more than three dozen were wounded.”
As outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt recently stated in an interview with this newspaper, “In 2014, “I said Vladimir Putin could end this with one phone call. It’s tragic how little has changed. He could still end it with one phone call. He hasn’t.””
With Russian directed (actually, Russian) separatist forces breaching Minsk by using banned weaponry, breaching Minsk by “methodically obstructing” the OSCE, and breaching Minsk by continuing to attack Ukrainian armed forces; the only conversation we should be having at the present time is what kind of INCREASED cost should there be to Russia.
It doesn’t matter how long Russia took to get to this point, the only thing that matters is the reality on the ground today, and that reality warrants more sanctions.
Harder-hitting sanctions, or, as MacDonald called for just over two years ago, “sanctions with six-inch razor-edged fangs,” because this is what is needed, right now, to stop Russia’s aggression against Ukraine today, or who knows where tomorrow.
