The happy complacency of post-Cold War peace is being shattered by Russia’s threats, demands and massive military buildup around Ukraine.
German armored vehicles being deployed to Lithuania to reinforce the NATO mission there.Gregor Fischer/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
BRUSSELS — Ulrike Franke is a self-confessed German millennial, a defense analyst who worries about her generation’s allergy to the military, especially as it moves into positions of power.
“After 30 years of peace,” she wrote last year in a well-read essay, “German millennials have a hard time adjusting to the world we are living in now. We struggle to think in terms of interests, we struggle with the concept of geopolitical power, and we struggle with military power being an element of geopolitical power.”
Russia’s massive and open military threat to Ukraine, she and others say, is now shaking a sense of complacency among young and old Europeans alike who have never known war, hot or cold. For some, at least, the moment is an awakening as the threat of war grows real.
But just how far Europe is prepared to go in shifting from a world where peace and security were taken for granted remains to be seen. For decades Europeans have paid relatively little in money, lives or resources for their defense — and paid even less attention, sheltering under an American nuclear umbrella left over from the Cold War.
That debate had begun to shift in recent years, even before Russia’s menacing of Ukraine, with talk of a more robust and independent European strategic and defense posture. But the crisis has done as much to expose European weakness on security issues as it has to fortify its sense of unity.
Ms. Franke, 34, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, is not convinced that anything short of a major Russian invasion of Ukraine will very much alter public opinion.
“We’re having in Europe and Germany a status quo problem,” she said in an interview. “We’re very comfortable with this version of European security, and most people don’t realize that to defend this status quo we need to act.”
The elite feels the cold wind from Russia, she said, but “on the level of public opinion, people want to be left alone and for nothing to touch them.”
Ms. Franke who is an expert in drone warfare, may be too pessimistic, some believe.
Daniela Schwarzer, who ran the German Council on Foreign Relations and now manages Europe and Eurasia for the Open Society Foundations, thinks that “the image of Russia has changed a lot.”
“Even in Germany there is a sober realism that our relations with Russia and our energy policy have to be dealt with in a much more strategic way than generally acknowledged in the past,” she said.
But even after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Germany and Europe did very little to diminish their energy dependency on Russia or to prepare for Moscow weaponizing energy supplies.
With the new Ukraine crisis, that is quickly changing, she said.
Europeans bordering Russia have always warned about Moscow, but other Europeans farther away now see the point. “There is now the perception that conflict on our continent is possible,” Ms. Schwarzer said.
In 2008, when Russian troops went into Georgia, or annexed Crimea, or inserted themselves into the recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, there was little lasting change in perception of Russia.
“But this conflict would have a different dimension, since it so directly opposes the West and Russia, and is seen as proof that the current European security order no longer provides security,” she said.
Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador to France now in the House of Lords, agrees. This conflict has put “war back into focus again in the trans-Atlantic world,” he said.
For the younger generation, concerned, like the German Greens, with the environment and focused on human rights and gender and racial equality, “this is 19th-century policy erupting and crashing into their 21st-century concerns,” he said.
In the larger sense, Mr. Ricketts said, the conflict reminds Europeans of the importance of NATO and of American leadership in the trans-Atlantic alliance. “Faith in talking to Russia rather than deterring will be severely damaged by this,” he said.
A major Russian military action would bring about more military spending, push NATO to increase troop deployments closer to Russia, “deepen the chasm between Russia and the West and push Russia more into the hands of China and the renminbi zone, with Russia a small partner,” Mr. Ricketts said.
Already NATO countries, including Britain, France, Germany and the United States, have moved troops, aircraft and ships to shore up member states from Poland and the Baltics to Romania, with France offering a more permanent deployment in Romania. Those deployments may last for some time.
There are “some long-term consequences, some long-term deterioration of the security environment in Europe from this significant Russian military buildup, the threatening rhetoric,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, said as defense ministers gathered in Brussels. “I regret to say that this is the new normal in Europe.”
Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine
The Kremlin’s position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscow’s growing military presence on the Ukrainian border was a response to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.
There will also be new debate about the push by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, for European strategic autonomy and resilience. A European security crisis where the European Union has little to add beyond the threat of sanctions troubles many. But there is no easy or quick answer, suggested Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House.
“This really does bring the security element to the fore, and it’s not what the E.U. is best suited to manage,” he said. “It will mean treating NATO more seriously as the anchor of European security and not overplaying E.U. strategic autonomy.”
European security still comes only with American leadership, he said, adding: “Maybe this crisis is telling that to Europeans, some of whom don’t like it.”
But undercutting any new faith in American leadership is a wide European concern that President Biden is likely to be a one-term president, weakened by November’s midterm elections, and that former president Donald J. Trump or another Republican in his disruptive nationalist mode will win in 2024.
“We don’t know what’s coming after Biden,” said Claudia Major of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “America is back for a moment, but it doesn’t change the overall course of the superpower competition, which is China. Is this the last time the Americans come to save us?”
An opinion poll in seven E.U. countries released last week by the European Council on Foreign Relations found evidence of shifting attitudes toward Russia.
Majorities in Europe now believe that Russia will invade Ukraine in 2022 and that it is important for the European Union and NATO to support Ukraine. Europeans are prepared to bear significant threats, including refugee pressure, higher energy costs and cyberattacks, and they see energy dependency on Russia as their greatest shared challenge.
“This has been a real wake-up call,” much more than in 2014, said Mark Leonard, the group’s director. The polling points to some fundamental views, he said: “that war in Europe is thinkable once again, that the E.U. should respond to Russian aggression.”
But even in France, during an election campaign, the crisis “reinforces the idea of NATO as the guarantor of territorial security for Europe rather than any illusion of European defense,” said Célia Belin of the Brookings Institution, even as it might “give an electric shock” to countries like Germany that have devalued security concerns for so long.
Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s International Affairs Institute, also doubts that even a major war in Ukraine “would translate into European defense, but it is already translating into a revival of NATO, since deterrence is what NATO does.” Mr. Putin, she said, “has done miracles by uniting us.”
From Yahoo News. Zelensky is acting like a coward. On the other hand, maybe he has good reason to fear for his life in Kyiv.
The New York Times’ latest report.
Russia-Ukraine Tensions
Updates
What’s at Stake
Shelling Stirs Fears
Putin: Strategic or Reckless?
Map: Russian Military Positions
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Feb. 18, 2022, 8:43 p.m. ET
Feb. 18, 2022, 8:43 p.m. ET
Live Updates: Biden Says Putin Has Decided to Invade Ukraine
President Biden said Russia will target Kyiv in the coming week, citing U.S. intelligence. The Russian president said earlier on Friday that he is still open to diplomacy.
Here’s what you need to know:
Biden says the U.S. believes Putin has decided to invade Ukraine.
Call for mass evacuation by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine is an ominous development.
Putin has already weakened Ukraine’s economy.
The U.S. says Russia’s troop buildup could be as high as 190,000 in and near Ukraine.
What videos reveal about tensions in Eastern Ukraine.
Germany suggests the Nord Stream 2 pipeline won’t go ahead if Russia attacks Ukraine.
A timeline of the tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
On the ground: In eastern Ukraine, people know the price of war all too well.
Biden says the U.S. believes Putin has decided to invade Ukraine.
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President Biden said the United States had intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had decided to invade Ukraine and target its capital, Kyiv.CreditCredit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday the United States has intelligence showing that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has made a final decision to invade Ukraine, rejecting the final efforts of diplomacy.
“We have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to, intend to, attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” Mr. Biden said in the Roosevelt Room at the White House. “We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
Asked whether he thinks that Mr. Putin is still wavering about whether to invade, Mr. Biden said: “I’m convinced he’s made the decision.” Later he added that his impression of Mr. Putin’s intentions is based on U.S. intelligence.
The president’s comments, the second in three days, are the clearest indications of just how close the world may be to a catastrophic conflict in Europe. Previously, the president and his top national security aides have said they did not know whether Mr. Putin had made a final decision to follow through with his threat of an invasion.
Still, Mr. Biden implored Russia to “choose diplomacy.”
“It is not too late to de escalate and return to the negotiating table,” Mr. Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister have agreed to talks next Wednesday. “If Russia takes military action before that day, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.”
Mr. Biden was more direct on Friday about his belief that war between Russia and Ukraine may be inevitable. But he also vowed that the United States and its allies are united behind imposing severe economic sanctions if Russia’s forces cross Ukraine’s borders.
Yelnya
Russian or Russian-
backed military
positions as of Feb. 13
Minsk
Ukraine
BELARUS
RUSSIA
Klintsy
Kursk
POLAND
Kyiv
Lviv
Kharkiv
Boguchar
UKRAINE
Stanytsia Luhanska
Dnipro
Luhansk
Donetsk
Approximate line
separating Ukrainian
and Russian-backed
separatist forces.
MOLDOVA
Rostov-on-Don
Tiraspol
ROMANIA
Odessa
SEA OF
AZOV
CRIMEA
Sevastopol
200 MILES
BLACK SEA
Source: Rochan Consulting | Map notes: Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. The action was widely condemned under international law, and the territory remains disputed. The dotted line in eastern Ukraine is the approximate dividing line between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists who have been fighting since 2014. On the eastern edge of Moldova is Transnistria, a Russian-backed breakaway region.By Scott Reinhard
The president spoke after he held another round of urgent, virtual talks with European leaders on Friday afternoon.
Tension in the region escalated as Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for a mass evacuation of the area on Friday, claiming Ukraine was about to attack, a dire development that Western officials denounced as Russia’s latest attempt to create a pretext for President Vladimir V. Putin to send tens of thousand of troops into Ukraine.
Senior American officials also said for the first time that they believe Russia was responsible for cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks this week. And they warned that they are bracing for possible cyberattacks by Russia on American targets if the United States and its allies impose tough sanctions on Russia.
Mr. Biden’s remarks follow a new assessment by American officials based in Europe that Russia has as many as 190,000 troops massed at the Ukrainian border and inside two pro-Moscow separatist regions — Donetsk and Luhansk.
Mr. Biden said just days ago that 150,000 Russian troops were ready to participate in an invasion. Friday’s assessment by the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe indicated that the larger number includes military troops and other Russian-led or backed forces.
As unverified reports of Ukrainian attacks and acts of sabotage in the separatist regions filled Russian state media, Ukraine’s military intelligence warned on Friday night that Russian forces had mined “social infrastructure facilities in Donetsk.” The mines were part of an effort, the defense ministry said, to stage a false-flag attack and “create grounds for accusing Ukraine of terrorist attacks.”
Mr. Biden and the allies have warned for days that they believe Mr. Putin is prepared to stage fake attacks that could be used to justify an invasion. Mr. Putin insisted on Friday that he was prepared for further diplomacy, but Russian officials said the country’s military will conduct drills over the weekend that include the launch of ballistic and cruise missiles. The test of the country’s nuclear forces added to the sense of foreboding in the region.
“We are ready to go on the negotiating track under the condition that all questions will be considered together, without being separated from Russia’s main proposals,” Mr. Putin said in a news conference alongside his close ally President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who was visiting Moscow.
— Michael D. Shear
Call for mass evacuation by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine is an ominous development.
Image
Valentina Melnichenko, 72, in her backyard that was hit by artillery in Vrubivka, Ukraine, near the gray zone occupied by Russian-backed separatists, on Friday.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine — As fears of an Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, the Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called for the evacuation on Friday of every woman and child in the region, claiming that the Ukrainian military was about to launch a large-scale attack.
The head of Ukraine’s ministry of defense said the claim an attack was imminent was false, a ploy designed to inflame tensions and offer a pretext for Russia to invade. He made a direct appeal to people living in the region, telling them they were fellow Ukrainians and were under no threat from Kyiv.
The separatist leaders called for evacuation as state-controlled media in Russia released a steady stream of reports claiming the Ukrainian government was stepping up attacks on those breakaway regions — Donetsk and Luhansk.
The United States and its NATO allies have warned for days that Russia might use false reports out of eastern Ukraine about violence threatening ethnic Russians living there to justify an attack. The hyperbolic warnings from the separatists — who offered no proof of imminent danger — were greeted with a sense of urgency by the Ukrainian government.
The defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, urged Ukrainians in the separatist-held territories to ignore Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government was going to attack them. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “Ukraine is not your enemy.”
But Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a secessionist state in Ukrainian territory, offered a starkly different version of what might be coming.
“Very soon, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will order the military to go on an offensive, to implement a plan to invade the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics,” he said in a video posted online, offering no evidence.
“From today, Feb. 18, a mass organized transfer of the population to Russia is being organized,” he added. “Women, children, and the elderly will need to be evacuated first. We urge you to listen and make the right decision.” He noted that accommodation would be provided in Russia’s nearby Rostov region.
The leader of the separatists in Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik, put out a similar statement on Friday urging people who are not in the military or “operating social and civilian infrastructure” to leave for Russia.
While Moscow and Kyiv have long offered wildly different narratives in the conflict, the call for some 700,000 people to flee the region and seek safety in Russia was a dramatic escalation. It remained unclear how many people were actually leaving the country.
Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has claimed that Ukraine is committing “genocide” in the eastern Donbas region and his ambassador to the United Nations has compared the government in Kyiv to Nazis.
On Friday night, reports of a major car bombing in the region and other attacks were broadcast across Russian state media. It was hard to independently verify the reports as access to Western journalists is severely restricted in the secessionist territory.
Social media was flooded with contradictory accounts and images that could not be immediately verified.
Some pictures posted online showed people lining up at cash machines, suggesting mass flight, while a Ukrainian official sent a video from what he said was a traffic camera in Donetsk, which did not show bus convoys or any signs of panic or evacuation.
Earlier in the day, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said that Russia was looking for a pretext to attack Ukraine and exploit the deep tensions in the eastern region of Donbas.
“Starting several weeks ago, we acquired information that the Russian government was planning to stage a fabricated attack by Ukrainian military or security forces against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian-speaking people in separatist-controlled territory, to justify military action against Ukraine,” he wrote, adding that international observers should “beware of false claims of ‘genocide.’”
— Valerie Hopkins, Marc Santora and Michael Crowley
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Putin has already weakened Ukraine’s economy.
Image
The sea port in Odessa, Ukraine, on Thursday.Credit…Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
KYIV, Ukraine — Without outright declaring war or taking action that would trigger the harsh sanctions promised by the West, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, has once again succeeded in destabilizing Ukraine and making clear that Russia could wreck the country’s economy.
The evacuation announced last week of American, British and Canadian citizens has led to panic. Several international airlines have stopped flights into the country. Russian naval exercises in the Black Sea have exposed the vulnerability of Ukraine’s critical ports for commercial shipping.
And as for real estate?
“The number of requests is fewer and fewer every day,” said Pavlo Kaliuk, a freelance property broker in Ukraine’s capital, who used to sell and rent properties to clients from the United States, France, Germany and Israel. In November, when Russia first began posting troops along the country’s border, the deals quickly dried up.
The anxiety coursing through Kyiv is exactly what Mr. Putin hopes to achieve, according to Pavlo Kukhta, an adviser to Ukraine’s minister of energy. “What they want to do is the equivalent of winning the war without firing a single bullet, by causing massive panic here,” Mr. Kukhta said.
Timofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former minister of economic development, said his institution has estimated that the crisis has already cost Ukraine “several billion dollars,” just in the past few weeks. War or a long siege would only worsen the situation.
The first major blow came Monday when two Ukrainian airlines said they were unable to acquire insurance for their flights, forcing Ukraine’s government to create a $592 million insurance fund to keep planes flying. On Feb. 11, London-based insurers had warned aviation companies that they would be unable to insure flights to Ukraine or those flying above its airspace. Dutch Airline KLM, which had a plane shot down above territory controlled by pro-Moscow Ukrainian rebels in 2014, responded by saying it would halt flights. Germany’s Lufthansa said it was considering a suspension.
But the American response to the crisis has also infuriated some people, whether by creating panic with alarmist warnings of an imminent invasion or the decision to evacuate some embassy staff from Kyiv and set up a temporary office in the western city of Lviv, close to the border with Poland.
“When someone decides to move the embassy to Lviv, they must understand that such news will cost the Ukrainian economy several hundred million dollars,” David Arakhamia, the leader of the governing Servant of the People’s Party, said in a television interview, adding: “Every day we count the losses of the economy. We can’t borrow in foreign markets because the rates there are crazy. Many exporters refuse us.”
— Valerie Hopkins
The U.S. says Russia’s troop buildup could be as high as 190,000 in and near Ukraine.
Image
Personnel and equipment at the Kursk training area in Russia on Monday.Credit…Maxar Technologies/Via Reuters
The United States said on Friday that Russia had likely amassed as many as 190,000 troops near the borders of Ukraine and inside the separatist regions in the country’s east, significantly raising its estimate of Moscow’s troop buildup as the Biden administration tries to persuade the world of the imminent threat of an invasion.
The assessment was delivered in a statement by the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, calling it “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War.”
“We assess that Russia probably has massed between 169,000 and 190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine as compared with about 100,000 on Jan. 30,” the statement read. “This estimate includes military troops along the border, in Belarus and in occupied Crimea; Russian National Guard and other internal security units deployed to these areas; and Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine.”
Russia has characterized the troop buildup as part of routine military exercises, including joint drills with Belarus, a friendly nation that lies along Ukraine’s northern border, close to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. Those drills, which involve Russian troops from hundreds of miles to the east, are scheduled to end on Sunday.
Moscow has also announced large-scale drills in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and naval war games involving amphibious landing ships off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, raising fears of a possible naval blockade.
The new U.S. assessment came after Ukraine called for an emergency meeting at the O.S.C.E., of which Russia is also a member, to demand Russia explain the buildup. The 57-nation body requires member states to provide prior warning of and information about certain military activities.
Russia has said the troop deployments do not meet the organization’s definition of “unusual and unscheduled military activities,” and has declined to provide answers.
U.S. estimates of Russia’s troop deployment have been rising steadily. In early January, Biden administration officials said that Russian forces numbered around 100,000. That figure grew to 130,000 in early February. Then, on Tuesday, President Biden put the number at 150,000 — with brigades typically based as far away as Siberia joining the force.
— Shashank Bengali
The New York Times latest report on the Biden administration’s prediction that Russia will invade Ukraine some time over the next week.
The EU will continue to live at the expense of the US taxpayer for it benefits the EU and the militaro-industrial complex.
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