Vladimir Putin engages in test of will over Ukraine

mangaloretoday.com /NDTV

Moscow, March 03:  President Vladimir Putin has left little doubt he intends to cripple Ukraine’s new government, forcing it to make concessions or face the de facto partition of areas populated predominantly by ethnic Russians, from the Crimea to Odessa to the industrial heartland in the east.

 

That strategy has been pursued aggressively by subterfuge, propaganda and bald military threat, taking aim as much at the United States and its allies in Europe as Ukraine itself. The pivotal question now for Kiev and Western capitals, is how boldly Putin continues to push his agenda, risking a more heated military and diplomatic conflict.

So far, the Kremlin has shown no sign of yielding to international pressure - but it also has not taken the most provocative step yet, openly ordering Russian troops to reinforce those already in Crimea and expand its incursion into southern or eastern Ukraine.

Asked on Sunday about President Barack Obama’s suspension of preparations to attend the Group of 8 summit scheduled for June in Sochi - along with Canada, France and Britain - Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, replied cuttingly and dismissively. "It’s not a minus for Russia," he said. "It will be a minus for the G-8."

Putin has yet to make public remarks on the crisis in Ukraine, leaving his ultimate goals uncertain and unpredictable. Yet with a strategy aimed at blunting the impact of a popular uprising that sought to push the country away from Russia and deepen ties with Europe, Putin has already left the fledgling government disorganized, discredited and forced to compromise on terms that would keep the country firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence, especially regarding the Crimea peninsula.

The Kremlin’s pledge to protect compatriots in Ukraine from suppression of a Western-minded majority mirrors Russia’s role in other disputed territories of the former Soviet republics over the years, including Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Those two breakaway regions of Georgia survived in a diplomatic limbo after the collapse of the Soviet Union with overt and covert Kremlin pressure until war erupted in 2008 and Russia routed ill-prepared Georgian troops.

Russia brushed aside strong warnings from the United States and others at the time and recognized them as independent countries - and paid little price for it in the long run. Putin appears to be calculating again that Russia is too important for other countries to respond more forcefully, despite warnings like those by Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday that the United States would consider an array of sanctions that could include freezing assets and travel of senior officials here.