Despite official support declared by the U.S. and European leaders, Ukraine has been suffering from Russian aggression for ten months now, oftentimes unbeknownst to an international community that seems to have lost interest in the struggles of the eastern European nation.
A false impression has been created that diplomacy – namely, western sanctions, the U.S. and European condemnation of Russian aggression; and September’s Minsk ceasefire agreement between Ukraine, Russia and pro-Russian separatists – is working. There is plenty of evidence to show that the military conflict is far from settled, with deaths occurring every day, including the brutal massacres of civilians.
Only on January 24th, at least 30 civilians died and about 90 people were wounded in rocket attacks on a residential area in the port city of Mariupol, Ukraine. According to The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), as well as various eyewitnesses, the rockets came from rebel-held areas. The United Nations Human Rights office estimates that fighting in Ukraine’s eastern region, Donbass, has taken more than 5,000 lives and left more than 10,000 wounded in the past nine months.
Despite the sanctions in place against Russia, and the possibility of more on the way, the west still appears somewhat ambiguous. With Ukraine been criticized for lack of reforms and little to no results in fighting corruption and upgrading its institutes, the fact that the country is at war with a much stronger and very manipulative adversary has often been downplayed. As if the International Monetary Fund, and European and the U.S. officials continue to pretend that Russia hasn’t really started a war in the heart of Europe, it is not threatening international peace and order, and the separatist conflict is a diplomatically manageable dispute, the problem will eventually go away.
Evidence points to the fact that Russia, and it’s president Vladimir Putin (his various arguable motives for a continuous conflict aside), is not interested in deescalating the aggression and will not stop backing the rebels in Ukraine. NATO continues to detect heightened Russian involvement in Ukraine’s East, and reports an increase in Russian military activity in European airspace.
Following a NATO Chiefs of Defense meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania on January 22, NATO’s top commander, U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, said: “So the situation in Ukraine is not good right now. I think basically we have a ceasefire in name only. The number of events and the number of rounds fired and the artillery used across the past few days match some of the pre-ceasefire levels.”
Breedlove also said there are Russians inside of Ukraine, enabling the Russian-backed forces there, although he refrained from providing numbers. He stated there are Russian forces on the Russian side of the border capable of crossing over, and Russian-backed forces and rebels in Eastern Ukraine continue to be resupplied by Russia.
Ukrainian authorities estimate 9,000 troops backing separatist rebels in the east of the country, with Moscow denying involvement.
Local residents walk past Soviet-era sculptures outside an apartment building damaged by shelling in... [+]
Last week, in addition to the deadly GRAD rocket attack in a residential area in Mariupol, two other shelling incidents that killed civilians took place in Donetsk region: a bus stop shelling in the center of Donetsk took the lives of 13 civilians and injured two dozen, and the shelling of a bus full of civilians at a government checkpoint near the town of Volnovakha killed 13. Ukrainian authorities and international observers blame the attacks on Russian rebels, while Moscow blames the escalated violence on Ukraine.
“Weapons, ammunition, fuel and lubricants keep arriving from the territory of the Russian Federation,” Anti-Terrorist Operation’s spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on January 28. ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ is the official term the Ukrainian government uses for the conflict, avoiding the implications of calling the Russian invasion a war, only recently declaring a “state of emergency” in the country’s South-East but not yet imposing martial law.
The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, run by separatists, have not been officially recognized as terrorist organizations, and Russia is far from being named as a state sponsor of terrorism (although Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University, argues here that by now Russia meets all the necessary criteria to make the US Department of States list)
The west remains committed to staying on the diplomatic path. During his State of the Union address last week, American President Barack Obama spent only a few moments discussing Russia: “We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small – by opposing Russian aggression, supporting Ukraine's democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies.” Obama added that America stands strong and united with its allies, while “Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters.”
Europe, united on the surface in its sanctions and concerns about Russian aggression in Ukraine, is still in disarray. Greece’s new government, lead by the far-left Syriza party that’s lashing out against the EU position on Russia, is another confirmation of Europe’s lack of unity. The new Greek prime-minister, after visiting Moscow in May 2014, accused Ukraine’s democratically elected government with no radical parties in it, of associating itself with fascism, echoing Russian propaganda.
Deliberately generating conflict inside the European Union and manipulating public opinion, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine is only a part of Russian strategy that interferes with the western diplomatic approach to end its hostilities in Ukraine. Since the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula a year ago, Russia has been openly terrorizing its neighboring countries by flexing its military muscle, along its border with EU countries. It’s been bullying post-Soviet states for years, seizing Georgia’s northern territory in 2008 and forming frozen conflict zones.
Meanwhile, the Russian Duma is looking into a proposal to condemn the reunification of Germany in 1990, which, according to the proposal’s author, was performed without popular vote. Though far-fetched, such suggestions are just an example of how far off Russia will go to revise or distort history.
On Tuesday Barak Obama and Angela Merkel reportedly once again expressed their concerns over the conflict escalation in Ukraine and agreed (once again) that Russia should be held accountable. With Obama firmly against military confrontation with Russia and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, and Europe very softly unified politically, Ukraine – trapped between the need to please the west’s demands for a diplomatic solution and the increasing urgency to fight off tanks and rocket launchers – is left, arguably, alone to confront its aggressor.
