Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Russo-Ukrainian War

The Russo-Ukrainian War started with the Crimean Crisis in 2014, when Russia invaded and annexed the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine, and includes the War in Donbas, where Russia encouraged and supports a separatist uprising.

  • European Military Support for Ukraine Dries Up

    Dutch self-propelled howitzer
    Dutch self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000 takes part in a military exercise in Sweden, October 2018 (Ministerie van Defensie)

    For the first time since the Russian invasion in February, European countries did not pledge additional weapons to Ukraine in July.

    The German Kiel Institute, which keeps track of countries’ humanitarian as well as military assistance to Ukraine, reports that the United States is providing €25 billion in weapons, in addition to €20 billion in humanitarian and financial support. European countries, including the UK, are giving less than €10 billion in arms.

    Christoph Trebesch, who leads the team in Kiel that compiles the data, calls it “surprisingly little considering what is at stake.” He compares the €10 billion for Ukraine to the €750 billion Europe, excluding the UK, spent to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

    I have a story in the Netherlands’ Wynia’s Week about Europe’s waning support for Ukraine. I’ll translate the highlights. (more…)

  • Recommended Reading on the Russo-Ukrainian War

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has entered its fourth week. Russian forces have made limited headway, according to Western assessments. Russia has failed to take major Ukrainian cities and is instead shelling them from a distance, causing enormous destruction to property and unknown casualties.

    In Mariupol alone, which has been surrounded by Russians attacking from Crimea in the west and the Russian puppet republic of Donetsk in the north, officials report 2,500 dead.

    More than three million Ukrainians, out of 44 million, have left the country, according to the UN. Almost two million fled to Poland.

    Chernihiv, close to the border with Belarus, has been without electricity, heat and water for almost three weeks. Suburbs of Kiev were cut off from heat and water this week.

    Russian forces have progressed farthest in the agricultural Kherson Oblast in the south, reaching the east bank of the Dnieper River that cuts Ukraine in half.

    Here are the most insightful takes on the war I’ve read this week. Click here for my previous recommendations. (more…)

  • Which Countries Still Support Russia, and Why

    Vladimir Putin Jair Bolsonaro
    Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil pose for photos in the Planalto Palace in Brasília, November 14, 2019 (Palácio do Planalto/Marcos Corrêa)

    Vladimir Putin has few allies in his war against Ukraine. The democracies of East Asia, Europe and North America are against him, and have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions. Almost the entire rest of the world has condemned the invasion.

    A few countries are reluctant, or have outright refused, to take a stand. I asked the Atlantic Sentinel‘s China, India, Israel and South America experts to explain why. (more…)

  • Recommended Reading on the Russo-Ukrainian War

    Vladimir Putin dramatically escalated his war in Ukraine a week ago, attacking the country’s major cities Kharkiv and Kiev and expanding Russian control of Ukraine’s Black Sea coast out of Crimea.

    So far the least successful Russian offensive has been in the Donbas. Possibly because the Ukrainian soldiers there are its most battle-hardened. Or maybe the Russian attack from the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk was only meant to pin those Ukrainian forces down.

    Russian troops have entered the northern suburbs of Kiev, streaming down from Belarus. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his government remain in the city, once home to three million.

    The United Nations estimates that 660,000 Ukrainians have fled. More than half made their way to Poland. The Polish government says 50,000 Ukrainians are arriving every day. Hungary has taken 90,000 refugees. Hundreds thousands more are internally displaced.

    The European Union has banned Russian flights and state media, and in an historic first is providing €500 million worth of weapons to Ukraine. Large Western companies, including automaker Daimler and the oil and gas giant Shell, are pulling out of Russia.

    I haven’t been writing daily analyses of the war, because there are others who do that much better. Here are the sources I recommend. (more…)

  • Putin Invades Ukraine. How Far Will He Go?

    Russian tanks
    Russian T-72 tanks conduct military exercises in Chebarkul, April 24, 2017 (Russian Ministry of Defense)

    Russia has invaded Ukraine from three sides, attacking from Belarus in the north, its own territory and the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Russian-controlled Crimea in the south.

    Explosions were reported in many Ukrainian cities on Thursday, including Odessa on the Black Sea, suggesting missile attacks from Russian navy ships.

    Russian soldiers took control of an airbase as well as the sealed-off Chernobyl nuclear power plant north of Kiev. Tanks were spotted on the outskirts of Kharkiv, where residents are spending the night in underground metro stations. Fighting is ongoing in Mariupol across the line of control from the Donetsk People’s Republic Russia — but no other country — has recognized as independent.

    Ukraine reports 57 fatalities. The United Nations estimates that 100,000 Ukrainians have fled. (more…)

  • Finlandization Is Not an Option for Ukraine

    Motherland Monument Kiev Ukraine
    Motherland Monument in Kiev, Ukraine, December 20, 2018 (Unsplash/Rostislav Artov)

    Since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War almost eight years ago, self-proclaimed realists in the West have peddled the same solution: “Finlandization”.

    Like Finland (and Austria) during the Cold War, Ukraine would be allowed closer economic integration with the rest of Europe but not NATO membership.

    I doubted this was a solution then, and everything that’s happened since should have put the notion to rest. Ukrainians don’t want to be Finlandized. Vladimir Putin wouldn’t be content with a neutral Ukraine. (more…)

  • Don’t Fall for Putin’s Propaganda About Ukraine

    Vladimir Putin
    Russian president Vladimir Putin listens during a meeting in Voronezh, August 5, 2014 (Kremlin)

    With Russia possibly on the verge of escalating the Donbas War, it’s worth repudiating Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine.

    This summer, Putin explained at length why he believes Russia and Ukraine are inseparable. His is a selective version of history that is illuminating insofar as it reveals Russian attitudes toward Belarusians, Ukrainians and other Slavic peoples in Eastern Europe; it’s not an excuse for denying Ukrainians their right to self-determination. (more…)

  • Breakthrough Unlikely at Normandy Four Meeting

    For the first time in three years, the “Normandy Four” are due to meet in Paris on Monday.

    This negotiation format, consisting of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, brought about the Minsk I and Minsk II ceasefire agreements in 2014 and 2015. Even though their implementation was incomplete, the Normandy Four was still seen as a somewhat successful example of multilateral cooperation.

    Its usefulness may have expired. Experts doubt the upcoming meeting will accomplish much for the simple reason that neither Russia nor Ukraine is ready to capitulate. (more…)

  • Ukraine Might Be Better Off If “Little Russia” Did Secede

    Kiev Ukraine
    Apartment towers in Kiev, Ukraine (Unsplash/Nik Shuliahin)

    Separatists in the southeast of Ukraine have declared a new country: “Little Russia”.

    The announcement by Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, amounts to little, argues Gwendolyn Sasse of Carnegie Europe.

    She points out that leaders in Luhansk, Ukraine’s other breakaway region, have distanced themselves from it. Russia, which otherwise backs the Donbas uprising, hasn’t voiced support either. And the local population doesn’t want independence. A survey conducted earlier this year found a majority in favor of remaining in Ukraine. Only a third want to join Russia.

    Yet it might be better for Ukraine if the region does secede. (more…)

  • Russia’s Stealth Invasion of Ukraine

    It appears that the Russian invasion of Ukraine that I have feared since March has now begun in earnest, with the opening of a new front in the vicinity of Mariupol on the shores of the Azov Sea and a major counterattack in Luhansk Oblast leading to the retreat of Ukrainian forces from positions they have occupied (in some cases) since before the June ceasefire. This separatist counteroffensive has generated a lot of discussion among analysts and commentators about whether the forces attacking Novoazovsk and Mariupol belong to regular Russian units or irregular forces, as part of an effort to determine whether or not these new developments amount to a Russian invasion or just a new escalation by separatist forces.

    I would argue that the specific provenance of the fighters involved doesn’t actually matter very much in this context. There is no doubt that the forces attacking in the south, near Novoazovsk and Mariupol, came directly from Russia, not from territory already controlled by the separatists farther north. To do so, they had to be allowed through the border by Russian border guards.

    Furthermore, there is also no doubt that they are using weapons and equipment supplied by the Russian government, since they are no longer even trying to claim that the equipment they are using was captured from defeated Ukrainian forces.

    In these circumstances, why does it matter which specific people are sitting in the tanks? (more…)