Matthew Breiza wrote that in the face of Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, the transatlantic community must gain a foothold.
Matthew Bryza is the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs of the United States
Just as the Biden administration warned that Russia may invade Ukraine “as early as 2022”, Russia’s large-scale military build-up along the Ukrainian border reminds people of the Kremlin’s determination to prevent its former princes from taking root in Europe. The transatlantic community must stand firm to avoid repeating the strategic mistakes of the past 15 years, when it stood idly by while Russia swallowed large swaths of the sovereign territories of Georgia and Ukraine.
Fortunately, the West has not succumbed to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hybrid war strategy in Ukraine, at least not yet. The United States, France, Germany and other countries condemned Russia’s threatening military deployment, and at the same time reiterated their firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
But how long can Ukraine withstand the storm? Moscow is doing its best to create wedges among NATO allies. Russia’s recent deployment of nearly 100,000 soldiers and heavy military equipment along the Russian-Ukrainian border has made Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky worry that a Russian-led coup might take place against him. These latest developments have occurred after Moscow has continued to exert economic pressure on Kiev for many years. First, it used the NordStream 2 pipeline to Germany to bypass Ukraine, thereby depriving Kiev of its transit revenue and gas supply. Secondly, Russia is suing Ukraine in a British court because Kiev was forced to provide Ukraine with an unpaid Russian loan, while Moscow put pressure on Ukraine’s economy eight years ago to intimidate it not to sign a contact agreement with the European Union.
With political, legal, and economic austerity, Moscow is trying to hijack this claim by accusing the Ukrainian army of “shooting first” when the Donbass separatists fired Russian artillery with the active support of the Russian army. The Kremlin also used the word “hysteria” to condemn Washington’s resolute response to Moscow’s move to Ukraine, and it also claimed that Ukraine was “not a real country.”
Fortunately, the Biden administration is working hard to counter Moscow’s false narratives. As U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Brinken emphasized in Riga on Thursday, “We also urge Ukraine to continue to exercise restraint, because once again, the Russian script claims to provocation what they have been planning to do.”
Moscow deployed the same script to Georgia before it invaded Georgia in 2008. At the time, President Putin tried to legitimize popular uprisings that could threaten his own rule in Russia and prevent the democratically elected government of Georgia from resolving the separatist political conflict between Abkhazia and Abkhazia. South Ossetia. Most importantly, Putin hopes to eliminate the transatlantic aspirations of 85% of Georgians who see their country’s future in NATO.
These interconnected goals triggered Moscow’s mobilization of armored vehicles, which secretly entered Georgia in June 2004 and were hidden in the forests of Georgia’s separation from South Ossetia. Russian officials at the time strongly denied that Georgia’s reports of these movements were “hysterical.” Many observers interpreted Russia’s import embargo on Georgian wine and other agricultural products as an understandable response to Georgia’s arrogant President Mikhail Saakashvili’s determination to restore Georgia’s territorial integrity. When Moscow issued Russian passports to residents of Georgia’s seceded areas and then legally recognized their separatist political leaders, senior European and American officials demanded that Tbilisi “exercise restraint.”
Putin executes his mixed war campaign like a clockwork. As Saakashvili increasingly opposed Russian pressure, Putin portrayed the Georgian leader as a provocateur and had a considerable influence. Because NATO officials were extremely worried that Georgia would drag Russia into war, German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked the then US President George Bush from pushing Georgia on the path to NATO at the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008. The former US president recently referred to Bucharest’s failure as his greatest foreign policy regret. He admitted that Putin will not risk invading Georgia if Georgia receives NATO’s support.
To this day, many Westerners still accuse Georgia of firing first in August 2008. But it was Russia that allowed the separatist militias in South Ossetia to shoot over the heads of Russian “peacekeeping” forces, which provoked the shooting. The Georgian army fired back, which inevitably meant firing on Russian soldiers.
With Washington following up on the Biden-Putin summit, and the European Union worrying about its refugees on the border with Belarus and Russian gas supplies, transatlantic communities must now show determination. Although Washington must ignore Putin’s warning that additional US military assistance to Ukraine is his red line, the new German government can block the NordStream 2 pipeline by following the instincts of the Green Party. We can no longer appease business interests by softly stepping on Russia’s aggression in eastern Europe.
