DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis April 18, 2014, 7:37 PM (IDT)
Russian flags fly in Donetsk
US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have developed a template for “de-escalating” international crises in a way that avoids US military intervention. The formula was first unveiled in the pact they concluded in September 2013 for disposing of Syria’s chemical weapons. Two months after this, the duo went into action again for the interim nuclear accord for Iran.
Kerry believes that the same recipe will work eventually for an Israeli-Palestinian final accord. It is a dish with three main ingredients: a slick-sounding compromise that the US and Russian can more or less live with; a gloss over the real elements at issue between them; and a deal that goes over the heads of the prime movers involved in the conflict. By the time the dish they cook up goes sour, the two diplomats have moved on to the next crisis.
This dynamic was repeated in Geneva Thursday April 17 for the three-point formula hammered out by the US, Russia, the EU and the Ukraine for assuaging the Ukraine crisis. Its key stipulation required all protesters to vacate the buildings they have illegally occupied and lay down their arms.
No sooner was the deal in the bag, than it faced insuperable impediments.
One of the pro-Russian separatist leaders Denis Pushkin called a news conference in Donetsk Friday to announce that Russia “did not sign anything for us.”
If illegally occupied buildings are to be relinquished, he said, then the “illegitimate government” should vacate the presidential administration building in Kiev. Pushkin also pointed out that the central government had not pulled military forces back from Slavyansk, one of the 10 cities in which pro-Russian separatists had seized public buildings.
The provisional Ukraine government has seized on the Geneva document to transform the humiliating outcome of its armed operation against the pro-Russian militias last week into a political gain. Although most of the soldiers of the Ukraine special force defected to the opposition or turned tail, government spokesmen were saying Friday that they would give the protesters a few days to remove themselves from the buildings they seized.
The warning was hollow. For one thing, the Kiev authorities don’t command the strength to force their will on the regions of East and South Ukraine and, for another, the separatists will stay put until the “illegitimate” government evacuates central Kiev, if that is what Moscow tells them to do.
Washington and the European Union responded to this impasse by calling on Moscow for steps to “de-escalate” the situation. The Russians believe they have taken the first step already by making sure that by Friday morning no armored personnel carriers and armed militiamen were to be seen.
This does not mean that the weapons are not hidden away nearby ready for use.
In any case, the West wants Russia to make the running and is threatening “more costs” if it does not comply.
President Barack Obama commented Thursday: “My hope is that we actually do see follow-through over the next several days, but I don’t think – given past performance – that we can count on that.”
President Vladimir Putin, during his Q&A session from the Kremlin, stressed Russia’s right to use military force in Ukraine if deemed necessary.
Russian troop concentrations have not moved back from the Ukraine border.
Russia and the West are therefore as far apart on a consensual solution for the Ukraine crisis after the carefully worded Geneva accord as they were before.
DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources say that the West is again misreading Putin and his motives. The Russian president feels that in the past two years, he has gone more than halfway in meeting Obama on two issues of vital importance to the US president: Iran and Syria.
He agreed to work with the Obama administration to achieve détente with Tehran and a negotiated accord for Iran’s nuclear program. Washington presents this as an American breakthrough. Putin believes that these goals would have been unattainable without Russia’s quiet intercession with Tehran to smooth the way.
Although their understanding was kept under close wraps, Putin is convinced that it was the key to Washington’s approval of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a US concession adamantly withheld from the Islamic Republic by all of Obama’s predecessors in the White House
This understanding also meant that both powers overlooked the door they had opened to possible Israel military action for curbing Iran’s nuclear program, given the international latitude Tehran won to move its nuclear plans forward.
The Russian leader also considers that by permitting Lavrov to join Kerry for a Syrian chemical disarmament pact last year, he gave the US president a much-needed ladder for climbing down from his commitment to deploy military force against Bashar Assad. Obama in return let Assad stay in power. The outcome of this trade-off was the strengthening of the radical Iran-Syria-Hizballah alliance.
That Kerry-Lavrov pact has not held water either. In the last few weeks, our sources reveal that Iran has begun sending the Syrian army new types of chemical substances that are not covered by that pact.
For Putin, the Iranian and Syrian arenas are poles apart from Ukraine in the sense that the former are far from Russia’s borders, while Ukraine is its back yard and of immediate concern to its national security. On this , Putin will make no concessions.
He is now looking past the angry rhetoric emanating from Washington and Europe and waiting to see if the Obama administration acts to make the government in Kiev offer real concessions for the sake of the broad national dialogue stipulated in the Geneva accord to work.
So far, there is no sign of flexibility in Kiev. And so the pro-Russian militias in Donetsk and the rest of eastern Ukraine will hold their ground – even in the face of the US threat to exact more “costs” from Moscow.
With the strategic Crimean peninsula in his pocket and no visible Western gains in Kiev, Putin feels he can afford to persist in a posture of confrontation.
It is not enough to be gratified to see the Obamination humiliated in the geopolitical arena by these events. It is also not enough to be gratified by the advances of the Russian Federation. There are historical forces at play here.
Crimea, for example, is properly the domain of Russians, at least and deserves autonomy, at least from Ukraine. There is also a historical precedent for East Ukraine to be autonomous, at least.
And also, and more importantly, there are historical issues in play in Israel as well. For Israel to assume the role of a serious player in the geopolitical arena is simply delusional. It is a natural delusion born of constant attention from an obsessive Jew hating international community. The attention that Israel gets has nothing to do with the natural influence that Israel has at its disposal.
Even so, the existence of Israel has geopolitical reverberations because its resurrection dramatically confronts a false narrative that has sustained a global order that looms threatened. The Russian Federation benefits from the erosion of this false narrative, but it too has sought sustenance from it. Less than the West, but enough to threaten Israel as well. Russia has yet to demonstrate that it can be as friendly to Israel as the US, even while US friendship has proven to be less than what it has always tried to appear to be.
Friendship with the Russian Federation might not be as bad as friendship with the US has been. But it might not be any better. Israel is going to best positioned if it takes a stand more like Serbia: neutrality, and a delicate sense of proportion, history and diplomacy. Of course Israel is more threatened than Serbia and faces more threats daily. These are a first concern over diplomacy with a world poisoned by Jew hatred.
ArnoldHarris Said:
I do not want to see any negative influence from either West or East on Israel. There is no country in the world including a superpower or/and major powers who cold be successful without having alliances/friends.
Do you think non-western countries are better for Israel than the western ones (exclude some western countries who may not support Israel)?
the phoenix Said:
I was not suggesting an alliance with russia but merely an explotiation of the EU and Obama being embroiled with time, energy and focus of their troubles in europe and asia. Perhaps they will not be as quick to damage their relations with Israel or pandering to the useless pals, when they are in their own mess. Like how the GCC give the pals lip service now while seeking Israel’s help on Iran.
@ bernard ross:
1. When we say ‘Israel’, then obviously, this is to mean, the current GOI. Or, as we know, the ‘policy’ of the goi is not so much one of intent, but more of ‘how will it look ‘…
That being said, I think it is pretty much A GIVEN that current ‘leadership’ will continue to absorb whatever insults humiliations and blows are hurled by the black bastard.
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2.seeing the phony black bastard humiliated, gives me a tremendous pleasure, though, I still don’t think that is enough. ( I believe the punishment for treason is the gallows)
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3. A true nationalistic goi that is willing to jettison this PATHETIC alliance with this phony ‘staunchest ally’, is what is needed (IMO).
An alliance with putin’s Russia, would be ‘Ahlan wa’sahlan’ BUT let us not forget for a moment, that all alliances are transitory and they reflect the interests at that moment in time.
Is this a green light for an attack; is it an agreement for the major powers to stay out of direct intervention and allow the proxies to war it out?
1st round: the macho bear= 1 and the feygele=0
In such a humiliating result the victor usually proceeds to pound his opponent into the ground. I do not expect to see Boris the Bear to lower his goals. I expect him to keep those uppercuts going and to give the bloodied loser a chance to grasp the ropes with each blow. Each Vlad blow will likely be accompanied by an offered “face saving” alternative for the loser to back down. The loser will likely keep grasping for that alternative. Vlad plays a much superior game of chess compared to the
buffoons. There is no match.
Israel must find a way to avoid being the victim of Obama’s frustrating losses to Vlad. Israel has a choice between exploiting the opportunities for gain or being the whipping boy in the pecking order and the lower loser. The opportunity is to get out from under EU and Obama pressure by exploiting their weakness and focus on Vlad and China.
@ NormanF:
I see the Russian borderlands issue the same way you do, NF.
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In my case, I want Russia to win this protracted struggle. Russia and the Chinese are the only force in the world that, when strong enough, can impel the USA to shrink its pretensions of worldwide rule and let the American people re-establish the plain and simple republic established by the forefathers of this country and maintained as such until the late 1890s, when American imperialism began taking itself too seriously for our own good.
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The Russian re-assemblage of their western borderlands will not stop with a breakup of Ukraine. I think future targets certainly will include Lithuania, which has been causing trouble for Russia ever since the collapse of the USSR regarding Russian access to their Kaliningrad oblast, which is Russia’s sole ice-free port on the Baltic coastlines.
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Their ultimate goal however, is nothing short of the breakup of NATO, which I think will occur the first time one of the NATO member countries refuses to undertake military commitments that plainly threaten Russia. It will take a while, but Russia one day will regain control of the three Baltic states and overland access to their kindred Orthodox Christian south slavic states in the Balkan peninsula.
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Is there opportunity here for Israel? I surely think so, in that any action that shrinks the influence of the West over Israel and the Jewish nation is good for Israel.
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Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Russia is not going to sacrifice its vital national interests out of fear of future Western sanctions. For Russia, ensuring a non-aligned Ukraine is at the top of its list. And its willing to do whatever is necessary to attain it. A Ukraine that aspires to join NATO is a red line for the Kremlin. That is why a mutually acceptable outcome to the crisis will remain elusive for the foreseeable future.