defend Ukraine.
“Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine not to be part of Europe, and he is succeeding in doing so,” Republican Senator John McCain said in a television interview on Sunday.
For Putin, who denies sending troops and weapons to east Ukraine, the map of Russia and its “near abroad” is more comforting than a year ago.
Crimea has been reclaimed, and Ukraine’s drive to join Europe’s mainstream and possibly Nato seems more problematic now that Moscow has shown how far it will go to prevent this. Russian-speaking east Ukraine has not become part of Russia, but is now more in Moscow’s sphere of influence than Kiev’s.
Russia also dominates South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions of Georgia. Moscow recognised their independence after a five-day war with Tbilisi which Russia won in 2008 and has held sway there ever since.
Moscow signed a border agreement with South Ossetia last week, a move which Tbilisi said moved Russia closer to annexing the territory, and forged a “strategic partnership” agreement with Abkhazia last November.
Further afield, Russian forces have been deployed as “peacekeepers” in the Transdniestria region of Moldova since intervening to back separatists more than 20 years ago. These may or may not be patterns for Putin to follow although the same Kremlin adviser, Vladislav Surkov, has a role in policy-making for the Georgian regions as well as for Ukraine. Destabilisation of Ukraine, making it impossible to govern and take into Nato, may be preferable to conquering it.
Some Western officials see Putin’s ambitions in other parts of the former Soviet Union.
British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said last week Putin posed a “real and present danger” to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Union’s executive European Commission, said Russia was redrawing the map of Europe by force.
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Russia was “undermining international diplomacy and multilateral institutions - the foundations of our modern global order.”
Putin is challenging what he sees as US hegemony and a world order shaped around Washington’s interests, where he believes the United States sets certain standards for others but does not adhere to them itself.
But more is at stake for Putin and Russia in Ukraine than in any other former Soviet republic: he says he sees it as one nation with Russia and the cradle of Russian civilisation.
A report released by the EU Committee of Britain’s House of Lords signalled the European Union had not grasped this in the buildup to the crisis, identifying a “catastrophic misreading” of the mood in the Kremlin.
Sergei Karaganov, head of Russia’s independent Council for Foreign and Defence Policy think-tank, also believes the West got it wrong after the Cold War ended by failing to understand Russia’s concerns over Ukraine, and particularly that it might join Nato.
The consequences, he says, include a turn towards a strong leader in Russia and disenchantment with Western-style democracy and values.
But, like Putin, he says policy changes must come from Europe - not from Russia - to reduce the chances of conflict.
His comments underline that, a year since the overthrow of a Moscow-leaning president in Ukraine that culminated in the separatist rebellions in the east, the gulf between Moscow and the West is as dangerously wide as ever.
“After winning the Cold War, the whole of Europe is losing it now,” Karaganov wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper last week. “And it is entering the next phase of international relations disunited, again on the verge of confrontation or even a major war.”
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