Ukraine: the big picture, by Sackerson

PM Johnson said a month ago https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38005282 that President Putin had committed a war crime by bombing innocent civilians. Why would Putin put himself so clearly in the wrong with his aggression towards Ukraine?

He has rightly earned our condemnation but securing a legal judgment against him is a different matter. Following the International Criminal Court’s ruling that the annexation of Crimea counted as an armed conflict with Ukraine, Russia withdrew from the ICC in 2016 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38005282 ; but then, the US itself rejected the ICC’s jurisdiction in May 2002, ahead of Congress’ October vote giving President Bush the discretion to attack Iraq. Peace is of no account when sovereign nations adopt an à la carte approach to the rules-based international order.

What could Putin’s motives for the invasion have been?

An appeal to Russian nationalism? One of the reasons for Putin’s continuing domestic support is that he cultivates the mythos of protector of his people, and according to Article 69 (3) of his revised Constitution of 2020, that includes ‘compatriots living abroad… exercising their rights, ensuring protection of their interests and preserving all-Russian cultural identity.’ https://rm.coe.int/constitution-of-the-russian-federation-en/1680a1a237 In Article 79, the statement ‘Decisions of international bodies, taken on the basis of provisions of international treaties of the Russian Federation in their interpretation that contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation shall not be executed in the Russian Federation’ means, says Russian political analyst Elena Galkina https://bylinetimes.com/2020/03/11/the-true-goals-of-putins-new-constitutional-amendments/ , that ’The Kremlin wants to show that regardless of the decisions of any international authorities and courts, it will consider the [Crimean] peninsula a part of Russia.’

Defence? Putin has been referencing the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis since 2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-idUSKCN1QA1A3 , when Washington withdrew from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty#US_withdrawal_and_termination . The US nuclear missiles at Izmir, Turkey (removed in 1963) were 1,500 miles from Moscow; Kyiv is a thousand miles closer. President Zelenskyy is now, at last, talking about accepting Ukrainian neutrality and non-nuclear status https://www.ft.com/content/c5aa8066-715d-43dd-8a3c-b6907d839a36 ; this could potentially save us all from the horrors of nuclear war; yet surely no major nation would be so lunatic as to provoke Russia into using its weapons of last resort?

Resource wars? Ukraine, whose citizens are the poorest in Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita , is rich in agriculture and minerals. That said, Ukraine is a vast country and much harder to hold than to invade, as the Russians are discovering; and Russia is already the world’s biggest exporter of wheat and boasts huge mineral reserves of its own. That is not to say that the West is not tempted, and finance plays its part: Professor Prabhat Patnaik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabhat_Patnaik argues that the IMF, once simply an international rescue-bank, is now used to enforce ‘investor-friendly’ economic restructuring on the borrower https://peoplesdemocracy.in/2022/0306_pd/imf-connection-ukraine-crisis ; in Ukraine’s case this entailed reforms such as cutting spending on education and health and slashing the gas price subsidy to its consumers. Patnaik claims that the IMF deliberately loaned more than Ukraine could ever repay, so paving the way for taking land and mineral resources in lieu; it will end, he says, by turning Ukraine into Greece and the economy will be smashed as masses emigrate for better pay abroad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDkkGvKtlVg .

There is, perhaps, an even bigger picture, in which geography is key.

Locally, assuming negotiated peace is possible, Lt Gen Riley has sketched out a possible end position here https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/if-ukraine-rejects-a-deal-there-could-be-much-worse-to-come/ : Russia to control the Donbas (including the western coast of the Azov Sea), Crimea (plus its water supply from the Dnieper) and a land corridor linking the two. It would be a partition akin, say, to the creation of South Sudan in 2011.

However – and this is not to defend Russia’s actions - foreign minister Lavrov sees his country as embroiled in the implications of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. He refers to ‘the United States’ desire – which has been much more manifested by the Biden administration – to come back to a unipolar world’ http://thesaker.is/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrovs-interview-with-rt-moscow-march-18-2022/ and says ‘the West has repeatedly attempted to stall the independent and autonomous development of Russia.’ http://thesaker.is/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrov-leaders-of-russia-management-competition-moscow-march-19-2022/

The development he mentions has a maritime dimension. Until the Soviet Union collapsed, the Black Sea was very largely a Red lake, except for the shores of north-eastern Greece and northern Turkey. Since then, EU/NATO has gradually encroached and if we look at the map and visualise both Ukraine and Georgia within the fold (still under consideration), Blue is certainly crowding what is left of (what was once) Red.

Russia has long been working on strengthening its facilities in the Black Sea. The Sochi Olympics served a dual purpose: in 2014 America’s The Nation magazine https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/what-did-sochi-get-51-billion-highways-railroads-and-lot-white-elephants/ scoffed at Putin’s $51 billion dollar ‘white elephants’, missing the greater potential of the new Sochi airport, and of the development of the ports there, at Novorossiisk (in preparation for oil and gas shipping https://tass.com/economy/718145 ) and at Port Kavkaz - which faces Port Crimea across the Kerch Strait, the two linked (road and rail) since 2019 by Russia’s Crimean Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge , Europe’s longest. South Stream, the planned undersea gas pipeline to Bulgaria, jinking through Turkey’s zone to avoid Ukraine, had to be scrapped because of political fallout from the Crimea annexation, but it is clear that the Black Sea is a hugely important trade nexus for Russia.

The Sea of Azov is also a keystone in Russia’s plans for growth and it is likely no coincidence that Ukraine’s hardest-line regiment is named after it. Until 2014 the Sea was jointly controlled by Russia and the Russophile eastern Ukraine. The River Don empties into it, and is connected to the Volga, which flows into the Caspian, by the Volga-Don Canal, which strains to accommodate modern shipping needs. One proposal is/was for a vast  Eurasia Canal linking the Caspian to the Azov and so on to the Black Sea; in 2007 Kazakhstan’s President Nazarbayev enthused that the canal ‘would make Kazakhstan a maritime power and benefit many other Central Asian nations as well’  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasia_Canal#Recent_developments ; an alternative Russian plan is to widen the Volga-Don Canal. Either way, a hostile Ukrainian force on the western shore of the Azov would again pose a threat to Russian trade and prosperity in the area, and indirectly to long-term plans for a Eurasian trading bloc such as Damir Ryskulov’s 2008 dream of a Trans-Asian Corridor of Development https://en.paperblog.com/trans-asian-corridor-of-development-russia-s-super-canal-to-unite-eurasia-734226/ .

It could be argued that Russia has been provoked into a hot-headed, deeply wrongful act, one that any empowered independent tribunal would condemn, by an outdated geopolitical policy originally aimed at containing the spread of Communism.  The mystery is why the US continued to foster China’s ascendancy after the Soviet collapse; Professor John Mearsheimer https://www.mearsheimer.com/ , who in 2015 blamed America for the Ukraine crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 , sees this as a ‘colossal strategic blunder’ https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/U.S.-engagement-with-China-a-strategic-blunder-Mearsheimer , saying we should settle with Putin and ‘pivot’ towards Asia.

Is it not time to stop the war, care for and compensate its innocent victims and negotiate a fresh approach to international relations that allows for peaceful global economic growth?