On February 21, 2022 the wake-up call was rude. After a long, televised rant in which he simply denied the existence of an independent Ukrainian state, the Russian President Vladimir Putin not only recognized the break-away regions in Eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, as “independent states”, but he also wasted no time and decided later that evening to send “peace keeping” troops to those separatist regions who only exist because of his support. In short, once again, Russia is invading Ukrainian territory.
For far too long, Putin got away with anything, from annexing territories in Georgia and later in Ukraine (the Crimea) to targeted killings in London and Berlin, to name just a few “details”. Is this dark period over now?
The President of the European Union Commission Ursula von der Leyen was very quick yesterday to react on Twitter: „The recognition of the two separatist territories in Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the Minsk agreements. The EU and its partners will react with unity, firmness and with determination in solidarity with Ukraine.“
The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later issued a similar statement. The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee wrote on Twitter: “The U.S. and our NATO allies are united in our determination to punish this blatant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”
As for the recognition and now de facto annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk, this does not come as surprise. On February 15, 2022 already, the Russian parliament (Duma) had asked Putin to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. Yesterday, the self-proclaimed leaders of the “People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk”, Denis Puschilin and Leonid Pasechnik, had asked for the recognition as independent states. They will now be occupied by Russian troops and de facto annexed.
President Putin presented himself as the protector of the people in Donetsk and Luhansk although, in reality, he had created and kept the conflict alive in order to have another foot on Ukrainian ground. After a propaganda and cyber war, he had some 60,000 people evacuated from the Ukrainian Donbas region to Russia to have an excuse for an intervention, an invasion.
In a taped interview for the German TV show Anne Will on Sunday, February 20, the President of the European Union Commission Ursula von der Leyen had warned Putin that a violation of the territorial integrity would have severe consequences. She had said that Russia would be cut off the international financial system as well as off goods vital for the Russian economy.
She did not go into specifics but cutting Russia of the SWIFT inter-banking payment system could be such a sanction. Just ending the Nordstream2 project will not stop Putin. As Ursula von der Leyen and Antony Blinken said themselves, a united, strong and swift response by the West is needed.
[Added at 08:34: Russia’s budget depends to roughly 50% on exports of oil, gas and coal. Russia is vulnerable. Inflation stands at 8.7%, the rouble sinks against the dollar. The economic and financial situation of ordinary Russians is difficult. Putin’s aggression is a costly way of diverting attention away from domestic problems. As with the annexation of the Crimea, there may be some nationalist enthusiasm at first, but if many Russian soldiers will be killed, if the economic and financial situation in Russia gets worse because interventionism is expensive, Putin’s war will backfire soon.]
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Putin in 2018. Президент России Владимир Путин во время интервью журналисту американского телеканала NBC Мегин Келли. Photo copyright: www.kremlin.ru (via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons).
Article added on February 22, 2022 at 08:08 German time. Updated at 08:34.
