The supply of sophisticated arms to Ukraine and the crippling sanctions on Russia have failed to halt Vladimir Putin’s aggression
The ‘Battle for Donbas‘ and the devastated port city of Mariupol have again highlighted the urgent need for peace — the only unraveller of the intertwined egos of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden, which are prolonging the suffering of war-ravaged Ukraine.
Hours before Putin declared on 21 April that Mariupol was “liberated” and ordered the military to block, not storm, the Azovstal steel plant — where thousands of Ukrainian forces, defenders and civilians are holed up — “so that not even a fly can get through”, Ukraine called for unconditional talks with Russia.
“We’re ready to hold a ‘special round of negotiations’ right in Mariupol. One on one. Two on two. To save our guys, Azov (battalion), military, civilians, children, the living and the wounded. Everyone. Because they are ours. Because they are in my heart. Forever,” Ukraine’s chief negotiator Mikhailo Podolyak tweeted proposing talks “without any conditions”.
Soon, Ukrainian presidential adviser David Arakhamia said on Telegram: “Mykhailo Podolyak and I are ready to arrive in Mariupol to hold talks with the Russian side on the evacuation of our military garrison and civilians.”
Sadly, as peace increasingly resembles a mirage, Ukrainians are being systematically slaughtered by the Russian military, Putin’s ‘foot soldier’ — Ramzan Kadyrov, the dreaded ‘Butcher of Chechnya’ — and his marauders, and the President’s Wagner Group, private mercenaries notorious for gory war crimes in Libya and Syria.
Biden’s tactics of checking Putin’s self-aggrandisement and dashing his fantasy of restoring the lost Soviet pride by unleashing a torrent of astonishing sanctions and increasingly weaponising Ukraine have embarrassingly spluttered on the West’s face.
Putin is unstoppable and doesn’t plan to wrap up the operation anytime soon. Rustam Minnekayev, the acting commander of the Central Military District, said on 22 April that Russia intends to take complete control of Donbas and southern Ukraine, according to Interfax and TASS news.
“Control over the south of Ukraine is another way to Transdniestria [a pro-Russian separatist region in Moldova and bordering Ukraine], where there is also evidence that the Russian-speaking population is being oppressed,” Minnekayev said at a meeting in Sverdlovsk.
The next day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the invasion is just the tip of the Russian iceberg of capturing other neighbouring countries.
Zelensky’s fears aren’t unfounded. Ukraine fears that Transdniestria, which is militarily controlled by Russia with the presence of 1,500 troops, could open a new front in the southwest. In fact, analysts had warned of the risk in March.
“If the conflict escalates beyond Ukraine, Moldova is one of the places that ranks highest on the list,” Adriano Bosoni, director of analysis at risk management firm Rane had said. The chances of Putin recognising Transdniestria, which is governed by his man, cannot be ruled out.
Peace was never given a chance
The stance of the US and Europe was flawed from the very beginning — without considering the contingencies of a Russian onslaught despite credible intelligence on the ground, they didn’t give a chance to peace.
As Putin amassed his military on the eastern and southern borders of Ukraine, and Belarus to the north, his primary demands for ending the stalemate were no North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) membership for Ukraine and a freeze on the military bloc’s deployment of troops and weapons on its eastern flank. But the US continued to send more troops to NATO nations.
Biden’s hypocrisy was reprehensible: He neither hinted at reconciling with Putin and pulling back from the precipice by halting NATO’s eastward expansion and banning Ukraine’s entry into the alliance nor committed membership of the block to Zelenskyy.
A few days before the Russian invasion, the US warned that an attack was imminent — yet Europe and Washington decided to forgo peace and supply sophisticated arms to Ukraine. Biden even ditched Ukraine in the long run by refusing to supply MiG-29s from a NATO country despite the Polish offer.
As Putin’s tanks, bombers, copters and artillery pounded and flattened military bases and later civilian buildings in Ukraine, peace was the first casualty — mangled and crushed with the West funnelling more anti-tank Javelin and anti-aircraft Stinger missiles into the former Soviet republic.
The West, especially Biden, didn’t make overtures to Russia despite Zelenskyy saying in an interview with ABC News way back in March that he was no longer “begging” for a NATO membership and ready to talk about the future of the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
While NATO would rejoice in a Russian rout, Ukrainians are suffering with thousands of them dead and millions displaced. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1,417 Ukrainians were killed and 2,038 injured till 2 April. Another 1,504 were killed in the Russian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk regions. On 12 April, Mariupol’s mayor estimated about 21,000 civilian deaths.
Weaponising Ukraine has failed
Replenishing Ukraine’s rapidly depleting stock of arms and ammunition has failed to stall the Russian aggression. The latest US arms package of another $800 million — including 155 mm Howitzers, 40,000 artillery rounds, 200 M113 armoured personnel carriers, 11 Mi-17 helicopters, Switchblade 300 and Phoenix Ghost drones and 100 armoured multi-purpose vehicles — totals approximately $3.4 billion worth of armed American assistance to Ukraine since the 24 February invasion.
The Battle for Donbas, intended to fully capture the southeast regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and connect them with the captured Crimean Peninsula via a land bridge to bolster its military, means continuously replenishing the Ukrainian armoury as it will deplete faster.
Unlike the strategic and tactical advantages the Ukrainian military had in the urban centres attacked initially by Russia, it will be exposed to the monstrous Russian armour and artillery on the flatland of Donbas.
After the disastrous bid to capture Kyiv and other cities in the north, caused by a disjointed attack lacking cohesiveness and plagued with improper supplies and logistics, Russia has launched an all-out offensive under brutal Army General Alexander Dvornikov, the commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, who now leads the Russian campaign in Ukraine.
Moscow has concentrated 76 battalion tactical groups, which typically comprise air defence, armour, tactical vehicles, artillery, helicopters, engineering and logistical support, in Donbas, which will ensure better coordination and logistics.
The bigger concern is that the US is exhausting its weapons reserves — it has supplied around 33 per cent (7,000) of its Javelins and 25 per cent (2,000) of Stingers to Ukraine despite Germany and Sweden supplying the next-generation light anti-tank weapons Panzerfaust 3 and Carl Gustav to Zelensky.
Sanctions have failed to deter Putin
In a multipolar interdependent world, imposing sanctions is considered a non-risky, highly preferred weapon short of a military intervention to stop an aggressor. However, the barrage of coercive economic measures, led by the US, against North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria hasn’t forced these nations to relent.
According to the Centre for a New American Security, economic curbs are effective only in 40 percent of the cases — Putin’s recalcitrance in the face of the tsunami of sanctions, including against his daughters, is the evidence of their ineffectiveness.
In fact, Russia has been weathering economic storms since 2013 when the US sanctioned 18 Russians following the death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and following the annexation of Crimea and the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in Donbas in 2014.
Similarly, Iran has been battling debilitating sanctions since 1979, when 42 Americans were taken hostage in Tehran, but has refused to budge in its undeclared war against the “Great Satan”.
The devastating ripples of the sanctions are already visible. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has slashed global growth to 3.6 percent in 2022 and 2023, 0.8 and 0.2 percentage points lower than projected in January. “… economic damage from the conflict will contribute to a significant slowdown in global growth in 2022 and add to inflation,” it has said. “Beyond 2023, global growth is forecast to decline to about 3.3 per cent over the medium term.”
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Food Price Index averaged 159.3 points in March, up 12.6 per cent from February.
The Cereal Price Index was 17.1 per cent higher in March as Russia and Ukraine collectively accounted for almost 30 percent of global wheat and 20 per cent of maize exports in the last years. “The expected loss of exports from the Black Sea region exacerbated the already tight global availability of wheat,” the FAO said. The Vegetable Oil Price Index jumped 23.2 per cent as Ukraine is the leading exporter of sunflower seed oil.
The IMF warned how the “war-induced commodity price increases and broadening price pressures have led to 2022 inflation projections of 5.7 percent in advanced economies and 8.7 percent in emerging market and developing economies”.
Push for peace only way ahead
A peace treaty between Putin and Zelenskyy is the only way out of this grisly morass with Biden putting the ludicrous American ambition of NATO’s expansion in Europe to a screeching halt.
Peace still stands a chance despite the intransigence of Biden and Putin before the quagmire turns into an abyss. The Russian leader has said that peace talks with Ukraine have reached an “impasse” but he hasn’t ruled out a compromise. Biden calling for Putin’s removal or terming him a “war criminal” will only exacerbate the situation, not stop the bloodbath.
***
Also Read
Does road to end the war in Ukraine run through Delhi?
The Ukraine crisis: How India stands to gain from its neutral stance going forward
As Putin plays Russian roulette in Ukraine, Indian diplomacy treads a fine line
Putin’s Ukraine war: Early military lessons for India from the Russian invasion
How Russia-Ukraine conflict has complicated the already complex geopolitics
***
An immediate return to the negotiating table with Biden and Putin leading peace talks in the presence of France, Germany, China and other stakeholders has a higher probability of success in ending the war than stocking up Ukraine’s weapons inventory and slapping more sanctions on Russia, which will prolong the agonising pain of Ukrainians and further hammer the global economy.
A halt to NATO’s expansion and freeze on troops and weapons on its eastern border, no alliance membership for Ukraine or other Russian neighbours (Finland or Norway) and assuring Russia that the West has no imperialistic ambitions in its bordering countries concomitant with an assurance from Putin of not repeating another Ukraine-like misadventure should be the fulcrum of a peace initiative.
America’s repeated insistence on NATO only being a defensive alliance lacks ballast and only cements Moscow’s concerns that the block threatens Russia. With its neighbours, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland in the NATO fold, Russia’s fears sound legitimate. Every time an F-35 II Lightning takes off from Lithuania or Estonia, the Panther’s roar only amplifies Russian fears of an imperialistic NATO hovering on its borders.
The devastating NATO missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which reduced the countries to incinerated rubble, are completely contrary to the US claims of the defensive nature of the bloc.
Instead of widening the chasm between developing countries on the Russian side and the developed world backing Europe and the US at the United Nations (UN), a concerted effort to, at least, lay the foundation of peace is imperative. More UN members would support a push for peace rather than an indefinite bloody entanglement.
The writer is a freelance journalist with two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. The views expressed are personal.
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,
India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.