Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Ukraine

  • 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…)

  • 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…)

  • Russian-Ukrainian Gas Deal Is a Trilateral Victory

    Kiev Ukraine
    Skyline of Kiev, Ukraine, January 15, 2015 (Sergey Galyonkin)

    Russia and Ukraine have agreed to secure the flow of natural gas into Europe for the next five years. A deal between the two countries satisfies the economic needs of all three parties involved. Russia guarantees the export of its gas, Ukraine continues to benefit financially from transiting the gas, and the EU receives a steady supply of gas for the immediate future.

    Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, will pipe 65 billion cubic metres of gas into Europe in 2020. The amount will fall to 40 billion over the next four years. The agreement mentions the possibility of extending the contract by another ten years upon maturity.

    Ukraine will receive up to $7 billion in transit fees, which would be around 5 percent of its national budget.

    An agreement has not (yet) been reached on direct gas supplies to Ukraine. For the time being, it only stands to benefit financially.

    Naftogaz, the Ukrainian gas company, will also receive $2.9 billion from Gazprom in overdue transit payments following an arbitration court ruling in Sweden. In return, Ukraine has agreed to drop $12.2 billion in additional legal claims. (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…)

  • Three Challenges for Ukraine’s Sitcom President

    In Ukraine, a sitcom is turning into reality as Volodymyr Zelensky becomes the sixth president in the country’s post-Soviet history.

    Before running in this year’s election, Zelensky starred in the political comedy Servant of the People, where he portrayed an ordinary teacher who had become president of Ukraine. His character’s attempts to fix the country run into strong opposition from corrupt oligarchs.

    As president, Zelensky’s challenge will be much the same: defeating the oligarchs who have so far blocked reform in addition to managing Ukraine’s relations with Russia and building a political support base of his own. (more…)

  • Fetishizing Victimhood: From Poland to America

    Poland’s ruling nationalist party has coined the awkward term “Polocaust” to describe the country’s suffering in World War II. At least one minister wants to dedicate a separate museum to the 1.9 million non-Jewish Poles who lost their lives in the conflict.

    This comes after the government criminalized blaming Poles for the Holocaust and referenced its 123 years of partition by Austria, Germany and Russia when called out by the EU for illiberal judicial reforms.

    Poland, according to the Law and Justice party, has only ever been a victim — until it came to power and restored Polish pride.

    It is no coincidence that Law and Justice is popular in the eastern and more rural half of the country, where people have long felt marginalized by the Western-oriented liberal elite.

    Nor is the party’s victim-mongering unique. (more…)

  • Why the West Is Willing to Overlook Corruption in Ukraine

    Petro Poroshenko Donald Tusk
    Presidents Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Donald Tusk of the European Council shake hands in Brussels, February 12, 2015 (European Council)

    After the bungled arrest of Mikheil Saakashvili, a former president of Georgia and governor of Odessa, Leonid Bershidsky argues it is clear the West has backed the wrong man in Ukraine.

    Saakashvili enjoys little popular support but had been trying to reinvent himself as an opposition leader by campaigning against corruption in President Petro Poroshenko’s government.

    Protesters freed Saakashvili from a police van on Tuesday after he had been dragged from his apartment in Kiev by security forces. (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…)

  • Rutte Persuades EU Leaders to Rule Out Membership for Ukraine

    Other European leaders budged to pressure from the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte on Thursday to explicitly rule out future EU membership for Ukraine.

    Rutte hopes the concession, together with assurances from the EU that is not committed to Ukraine’s defense, will be enough to persuade lawmakers at home to save an economic and security pact that Dutch voters rejected in a referendum in April.

    Going into the European Council meeting in Brussels, Rutte warned that pulling out of the association agreement would be a “gift” to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Russia invaded Ukraine when the former Soviet republic was on the verge of signing a treaty with the EU in early 2014. It annexed the Crimean Peninsula and continues to prop up an insurgency in Ukraine’s southeastern Donbas region. (more…)

  • Rutte In Bind as Parties Balk at Endorsing Treaty Fudge

    Mark Rutte
    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte is received by Jan Peumans, the speakers of the Flemish parliament, in Brussels, October 15, 2015 (Vlaams Parlement)

    Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte failed to convince other parties on Friday to support his attempts to amend the Netherlands’ ratification of a European association agreement with Ukraine, despite warning that withdrawing from the accord could trigger instability on Europe’s eastern border.

    “This is bigger than the Netherlands alone,” Rutte said at a news conference.

    The leaders of the Christian Democrats, liberal Democrats and Green Party were not impressed.

    Rutte needs their support because the two ruling parties do not have a majority in the upper chamber of parliament. (more…)

  • How Culture Keeps the Russians and Ukrainians Steps Away from War

    Vladimir Putin
    Russian president Vladimir Putin lights a candle during a visit to the Saint Sergius of Radonezh Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo, December 8, 2014 (Kremlin)

    The Ukrainian civil war has been easy enough to fall off the world radar; with headline-grabbing terrorism striking the heart of Europe, Donald Trump running his irrational mouth and the EU rendering itself asunder, the conflict in Donbas, the eastern province now split away from Kiev’s central control, seems like a whisper of a war we’d all forgotten about.

    Now reports are abounding that Moscow is deploying large and powerful military units both within Donbas and in annexed Crimea. It all began with accusations that Ukrainian special forces had slipped into Crimea to bomb a highway full of officials. True or not, it resulted in a deployment of tanks and artillery on both sides of the de facto border. Worry emerged that both sides might begin blowing one another up.

    While the Russians don’t seem keen on an all-out battle, and neither do the Ukrainians, the whole mess bears examination. There are essential truths to learn, both for Russia and Ukraine and the wider world. (more…)