22.02.2022 – 18.45 – With the recognition of the two self-proclaimed Ukrainian separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk by Vladimir Putin‘s Russia tonight (the familiar theme of Donbass, a region Russia wants under its influence), the difficult peace process in the region that began after Russia’s intervention in Crimea has finally become history, and we have to start all over again. The disappointment already expressed by Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, the Franco-German (de facto) couple at the helm of the EU, is enormous: Twice in just a few days, the German Chancellor, who had proclaimed signs of openness, has been contradicted by the facts, and the same is true for Macron, after phone calls “even until two in the morning” (according to Putin in his speech to the Russian Security Council today) and the prospect announced this morning of an extraordinary summit between Russia, the EU and the United States, which will now most likely be brought forward. The clock in the history of European peace goes back to 1983, the last time a crisis of this magnitude (albeit without conventional conflicts and tanks, but with fingers on the launch buttons of strategic missiles) actually threatened. It was the time of Ronald Reagan, when the Soviet Union was the ‘evil empire’ for the loquacious US president, and little was understood of the US and its intentions beyond the Iron Curtain at the time, except that it scared the Russians. The Western bloc repeatedly warned Russia against recognising the separatist regions, pointing out that it would force diplomacy into a secondary role. But for days the Duma, the Russian parliament, had been urging Putin to take this step, and that he would forget under pressure from Biden’s United States on the street was highly unlikely, even unrealistic.
Europe is afraid at this moment: to say it is back in 1945, in World War II (of which millennials and digital natives know little or nothing: Neither the last great conflict nor its legacy is studied in depth at school or is part of their baggage or interests them) is in all likelihood an exaggeration (after all, the media pressure from the “hawks” and especially from the UK has already been very high in recent days: at least as far as the statements of Liz Truss, Boris Johnson’s foreign secretary, and Vladimir Putin are concerned, it is almost easier to call the latter a pacifist). However, the danger of a serious destabilisation of Europe itself, already tested by more than two years of restrictions due to the coronavirus, is very great and cannot be ignored. A war in Europe would at the very least mean the worsening of the already severe post-pandemic economic crisis, the freezing of many economic initiatives, a huge energy crisis and a humanitarian drama of great proportions. Vladimir Putin (who, it should be remembered, is not alone: he can count on the support of China, which the EU itself, between a contradiction, a just cause and a mistake or underestimation, has urged him to do) has stated that he believes Ukraine’s accession to NATO was decided some time ago, despite French and German appeasement, and that Russia’s concerns about the security of its borders were completely ignored. This – whether or not Kiev should be admitted to the Atlantic Alliance – ultimately remains the crucial question: Russia believes that since 1991 NATO has de facto failed to honour the guarantees given both explicitly and in the secret pacts signed between the states after the fall of the Berlin Wall, despite the clause that provides for the admission of a new state to NATO only if, if it brings a real benefit to the mutual security of the other members and not just because of a political decision (and one can wonder what real benefit in terms of security the accession of the Baltic states or Ukraine, already in a war that never ended, could bring to Europe, if not in terms of natural and economic resources; which, however, are a different matter and are also of interest to Russia). Decreed Anglo-Saxon documents published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel would show that the Russians are not wrong on this point and that what they call “encirclement” has indeed taken place despite the guarantees given and taking advantage of the weakness of the disintegrating Soviet Union: “We are now in the crosshairs of NATO missiles”, says Putin, and this is a fact, although Russia, weakened compared to forty years ago and unable to win a direct military confrontation with NATO, has enough missiles (of the latest generation at that) to retaliate and wipe out our homeland. Jens Stoltenberg, the former centre-left prime minister of Norway and secretary-general of the alliance since 2014, says: “NATO member countries decide who goes in, not Moscow”. He is a ‘hawk’ (just as Enrico Letta seems to be a ‘hawk’ today with his motion to convene the Chambers of Deputies), and it can be said without fear of contradiction that the citizens of the member countries have known little about the logic behind these decisions for several years and have been invited to comment. War (or rather ‘defence’: every war action west of Central Europe since 1990, including the bombs on Belgrade, is now a ‘peace mission’ because we are ashamed to say ‘war’ even if it is a war) has rarely been a matter for citizens in history, and today it is even less so.
And in Ukraine? What is being said there, how is what is happening there experienced? To find more in-depth information, one has to break away from the Western media, go to those who observe us from the outside and from further away, and turn to the East, to the Arab press, to the Korean, Japanese and Indian press. And that is not easy, because the languages are difficult and you have to know at least a little English to be able to read translations. Only twenty per cent of Ukrainian citizens would consider the information from the Western press to be true and an invasion by the Russians to be likely, according to Al Jazeera, which reports the results of a recent poll conducted in Kiev and the surrounding region by the independent Gorshenin Institute. The majority of people living there simply do not believe Putin will invade, despite the 150,000 troops Western estimates have lined up on the border, and that conflict is inevitable. Of the 20 per cent who think war is possible, only 4.4 per cent are already sure it will happen: 62.5 per cent do not believe the invasion will happen in the near future. According to Korea Economic, an Asian daily newspaper (the crisis is also discussed in the Korea Herald mainly from an economic point of view and in terms of possible effects on the markets), a large part of the 44 million Ukrainian citizens see their country as a pawn in a big geopolitical game between Europe, Russia and the United States. A game in which Russia would seek to achieve a prestigious outcome through military pressure, and the US would gladly join in to distract from problems at home, such as Biden’s declining popularity and Trump’s attacks, and to enable speculative stock market action. So if Ukrainians do not like Russia, they do not like the US, and there is no trust in the West. To the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers preparing to defend their country, the prospect of conflict seems a threat but not a certainty, and they see little difference between the situation today and one that has dragged on since 2014, and as far as NATO support is concerned, in the end there probably will not be any. In this terrible picture, Russia is supposedly gaining great advantages thanks to the confusion and uncertainty that is spreading among European countries: Vladimir Putin seems to care little about the sanctions, partly because these post-2014 sanctions have not weakened Russia as many expected, but have actually strengthened it in some productive areas. At the end of January, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the West of “stirring up panic by saying that tomorrow there will be war: How much will it cost our country? This was followed by accusations against the US media (not the Russian media) of “spreading fake news based on Pentagon and White House reports”. So each of the two sides – Russia and NATO, where NATO stands for the United States and it is a dilemma that has been dragging on for a long time for Europe – is playing to its own advantage at the expense of Ukraine. And the human drama of those who are already afraid and leaving Ukraine itself is beginning to emerge: first and foremost, the oligarchs and the richest businessmen who have left in a big way over the last two weeks on specially hired charter flights and private jets. Friuli Venezia Giulia is home to some 5,600 Ukrainians, just under 5 per cent of the regional population and a testament to the conflict of eight years ago; residents from the Russian Federation are far fewer, just over 900.
[Roberto Srelz]
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