Ukraine Unravels Again

Anna Nemtsova checks in after President Poroshenko cancelled a short-lived ceasefire with Russian-backed separatists on Monday night. His government is now talking about sealing the entire border:

As fighting continues in the east, including within the city of Donetsk, Ukrainian authorities understand that a conventional Russia invasion remains possible, which would represent an escalation of the covert tactics now in play between the Russian army and local militants. Andiy Parubiy, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on the television show Freedom of Speech: “We understand that it can happen at any monument, on any night.” Despite Tuesday’s presidential phone call to discuss de-escalation, Ukrainian authorities prepared for a more serious military operation to re-enforce the troops fighting in Luhansk region, snug against the Russian border.

Leon Aron doesn’t see what choice Poroshenko had but to end the ceasefire, given the “cat-and-mouse game” Moscow is playing:

Pro-Russia forces attack symbolically high-value targets (e.g. an airport, or an administrative building); Kiev attempts to retake the locations; Russia condemns the efforts as the “killing of peaceful civilians” and demands that Kiev “stop attacking its own people”; Kiev declares a unilateral a ceasefire; Vladimir Putin voices support for “a peaceful resolution of the conflict that would take into account the wishes of the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine”; the rebels “ignore” his calls and continue to shoot down Ukrainian planes and helicopters; the ceasefire collapses.

Confronted with a horrible moral choice of ceding sovereignty over its own land or engaging in violence trying to reclaim them, Kiev has chosen the latter. It is hard to see how any government would have acted differently under the circumstances.

There are signs, however, that Putin is unwilling to escalate the situation further:

Some experts say Putin faces internal opposition from pro-war forces who think he should be more assertive in supporting east Ukraine’s beleaguered rebels. “Everybody wonders why Putin isn’t using troops [to back the rebels],” says Sergei Markov, director of the pro-Kremlin Institute of Political Studies and a frequent Kremlin adviser. “But Putin does understand how hard the war is, and wants to do what he can to preserve peace.”

Alexei Makarkin, director of the independent Center for Political Technologies, says that Putin’s recent shift toward a negotiated solution suggests that he recognizes that Ukraine has slipped out of Russia’s sphere of influence forever, and that he must try to salvage what he can of Moscow’s badly shredded relationship with the West.

The Bloomberg editors blast European leaders for not standing up to Putin:

They had set an ultimatum for Putin on Friday: Rein in Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine and agree to seal the border by Monday or face “significant restrictive measures.” The deadline arrived, Putin ignored it and … EU leaders agreed today to think about it. Some European countries, apparently, thought the situation in eastern Ukraine remained too uncertain to make a decision. If so, they’re playing right into Putin’s hands. …

Putin knows the likelihood of the EU imposing meaningful economic sanctions is low — so long as he doesn’t launch an outright invasion of Ukraine. To show Putin he’s wrong, the EU needs to follow through on its ultimatum by sanctioning Russian corporations and other well-defined economic targets, thus demonstrating its willingness to go further. So far, the EU has yet to give Putin a reason to take its threats seriously.

But James Carden argues that Ukraine’s new association agreement with the EU was a mistake that will only exacerbate tensions, and that the US is foolish to stand behind it:

Because of the specific foreign-policy and security protocols embedded within the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, and because NATO membership usually follows on the heels of EU membership, the agreement will further exacerbate the “security dilemma” vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine and NATO. And so we can expect Russia to respond in a number of ways, some of which we have already seen in its anticipation of the coming of the Agreement: Russia will align more closely with China; Russia will move to destabilize parts of eastern and southern Ukraine; Russia will increase military and defense spending; Russia will likely move to strengthen the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Russia will likely attempt to add a political and security dimension to the Eurasian Union.