Ukraine Revolt/Civil War News, Reports, Data, etc.

Dannhill said:

I think this is actually a very fair arrangement for both sides since EU has found so much problems and accusations of Russia being an undependable gas supplier without bothering to consider why Russia has to cut the gas flow moving through Ukraine and which Kiev has been doing pretty serious sipping from.
And EU will not have to live in fear of being held hostage to by Russia since they will now buy their gas from Turkey, a fellow NATO member country. So it's pretty much all in the family. (snigger)
Of course Turkey is the big winner here and they will make a lot of money selling to EU. Russia will wash their hands of politiking headaches.

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The

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of the Donetsk city airport by separatists in eastern Ukraine could prove a ‘game changer’ in the conflict in that country. The airport as such is not strategically important but its loss testifies to the separatist side having the upper hand militarily and that cannot but sap the morale of the Ukrainian forces and erode the credibility of the pro-western government in Kiev.

Different meanings will be read into the development. However, at the core of it all remains the extent of any Russian involvement – and, if so, what could be Russia’s intentions? The European Union [EU] foreign ministers are due to meet on Monday to discuss relations with Russia.

The EU is a house divided on how to deal with Russia, and there is a point of view that the latest offensive in eastern Ukraine could be a pressure tactic by Moscow to compel the EU – Germany, in particular – to roll back the sanctions. The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said while addressing the European parliament on Thursday that the EU must discuss how “we could think of restoring, partially, options and instruments for cooperation on [the] rule of law and the judiciary with Russia.”

In diplomatic and political terms, the developments in eastern Ukraine would mean that the ball is in the EU court now. To be sure, Kiev lacks the military clout to regain the lost territory in eastern Ukraine, and the government forces may even find it difficult to hold on to the current frontline against an all-out rebel offensive (should that happen.) On the other hand, the rebel forces have augmented their military capabilities, thanks to the relative lull on the battlefield in the most recent months.

If the rebels press ahead with the offensive (which seems unlikely as of now), it might deal a mortal blow to the prestige of the government in Kiev and would even destabilize Ukraine. Clearly, the EU finds itself between the rock and a hard place. One option will be to ease sanctions on Russia and get Moscow to prevail upon the rebels to come to the negotiating table. But then, Germany (and the United States) will have to take a call.

The alternative course open will be to slap more sanctions against Russia and to shift to a confrontational path, but that is fraught with grave dangers of an outbreak of war in Europe, since Moscow has shown unambiguously that sanctions cannot and will not force it to reset its compass, as vital national interests are at stake.

In the final analysis, Russia finds the current politico-military stalemate unacceptable — whereby, it underwrites the economy of the separatist-controlled enclave of Donbas (which has been discarded by Kiev and is of no particular strategic value to Moscow), while the West is incrementally promoting Ukraine’s westward drift and is showing no definite signs of an easing of the sanctions against Russia in a near future, and at the same time, the US is using the

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to make military deployments in eastern Europe and the Baltic states, closer to the Russian borders than at any time in the post-cold war era.

In sum, what is unfolding is an incredibly complex spectacle of coercive diplomacy. A ‘frozen conflict’ in Ukraine does not suit Russia, and Moscow demands an overall settlement to end the crisis. That is the bottom line. Meanwhile, Moscow would expect that the saner voices within the EU would assert to ease the sanctions and bring all sides to the negotiating table. If the West wouldn’t dismantle without preconditions the punitive sanctions, Russia would be left with no choice but to take recourse to ‘politics by other means’.

Quite obviously, Moscow anticipated the developments in eastern Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin took a

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of the high-powered Security Council in Moscow on Friday with the main focus on the latest developments in eastern Ukraine, hinting, again, that a ‘Normandy format meeting’ is highly desirable. Moscow would hope that now that the separatist side has shown again that they have the upper hand on the battlefield, the West will be more inclined to negotiate.

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– January 17, 2015

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