By massaging 100,000 men at its border with Ukraine, has Vladimir Putin's Russia decided to hit a big blow to stop the inexorable advance of NATO to its borders for 30 years?The maneuver, started in November, worries Westerners, and first of all, the American military intelligence services who see it as an attempted invasion of an imminent invasion.
This brutal pressure from the Kremlin master causes diplomatic frenzy.This week, Russians and Americans will meet in Geneva from Sunday, January 9, before discussions on January 12 between the NATO staff, gathered in Brussels, and that of the Russian military forces.The next day, Russian and Western will come back within the framework of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) while the EU defense ministers will be in seminar in Brest.
During this cascade of meetings, Russia awaits Westerners from the responses to the requirements made on December 17.These treatments for treatments would prohibit the United States from establishing military bases in all non-NATO non-USS countries and even "developing bilateral military cooperation" with these states.
Stop the widening of NATO
Even more important in the eyes of Moscow, all the members of the Atlantic Alliance would never agree to never expand NATO anymore and to carry out any "military activity in the territory of Ukraine and in other countries ofEastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia ".
With these requests made publicly, what is unusual in the felted world of diplomacy, Russia says loud and clear that its security is threatened by 30 years of successive enlargements of NATO, the powerful military alliance between Americans and Europeans bornof the Cold War and the confrontation with the USSR.Moscow makes the possible membership of Ukraine a red line not to be crossed and demands Westerners that they give up militarily supporting the Ukrainian forces which, since 2014, have faced the pro-Russian separatists of Donbass, in the eastfrom the country.To date, the conflict has killed more than 13,000 people.
For Arnaud Dubien, director of the Franco-Russian Observatory in Moscow, “Russia's objective is to force Westerners, and singularly the Americans, with the discussion that she has never been able to obtain since 1991. Since the'collapse of the USSR, the Westerners considered that Russia had no legitimate interest beyond its borders, which it had not been in the chapter in European security affairs.Basically, they thought that everything was natural in enlargement, and that Russia would accept.Now this no longer goes ”.
Question the international order born from the end of the Cold War
Indeed, after the fall of the USSR in 1991, Westerners were quick to expand their military influence beyond the iron curtain.In 1999, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO.Followed in 2004 by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.Since then, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and finally the Republic of Northern Macedonia in 2020, have also become members of the Alliance and benefit from its protection in the event of a conflict with a third country.
L'élargissement de l'Otan vers l'Est de l'Europe, 1991-2020{{ scope.counterText }}{{ scope.counterText }}In just over 20 years, Russia attended the entry into NATO in 14 countries which, in various degrees, were in its sphere of influence for decades.During these years, Moscow also attended, powerless, the military intervention decided by Westerners in Kosovo in 1999. “For the Russians, it was a major strategic break.Especially since it concerned the Serbs, with whom they have a special relationship. ”
In the years following this conflict, Russia gradually came out of the state of economic and military weakness in which the fall of the USSR had plunged it and undertook to stop what it perceives as an unbearable expansionism.In 2008 first, with his military intervention in Georgia to support the pro-Russian separatists of Southern Ossetia and Abkhazie, after the military offensive of the pro-Western government of Tbilissi who tried, by force, to resumecontrol of territories that escaped its control.
Russia does not accept to be rejected on the margins of the continent
Then, in a much more spectacular way in Ukraine, with the annexation, in 2014, of the Crimean Peninsula, which follows the victory of the Maidan Revolution, pro-EU, in kyiv and the dismissal of the pro-Russian president Viktor Ianoukovitch.Since this coup de force, very popular with the Russians, the Kremlin has shown its diplomatic and military striking power far beyond neighboring countries by intervening in Syria, Libya, in the Central African Republic and more recently in Mali.
“The 2014 crisis in Ukraine is a turning point in Russian-Western relations.Many thought, in the West as in Russia, that in the long term, a convergence was inevitable between the European Union during enlargement and Russia.This is over.Today, Russia is seen as an independent pole on the international scene, which is not intended to join an extended Western whole ", notes Arnaud Dubien.
Get a new yalta
Animated by this ambition, Russia thus wants to obtain, during the meetings which will succeed this week, a net commitment of Westerners concerning the requests for membership in NATO made by Ukraine, Georgia, and to a lesser extentby Bosnia and Herzegovina."The Russians demand today that we close the door," concludes the researcher.
A position that they will hammer obstinately while two neutral countries since the end of the Second World War, Sweden and Finland, said, in December, that they would request adhesion to NATO if the Russian soldiers invaded the'Ukraine.
Les pays candidats à l'adhésion à l'Otan et ceux qui pourraient le devenir{{ scope.counterText }}{{ scope.counterText }}In Ukraine, a dangerous show between Westerners and Russians
Beyond the successive enlargements of NATO which contradict Moscow, it is above all the fate of Ukraine that will be at stake during the diplomatic meetings of the next few days.Indeed, France and Germany are not favorable to the entry of Ukraine into NATO which could lead to an open conflict with Moscow.Washington, despite his repeated insurance that he will "respond energetically" to a Russian invasion, probably does not wish more than Europeans to be trained in a war in Ukraine.
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“If the Russians obtain guarantees on moderation of bilateral military cooperation between Washington and kyiv, things can calm down.I do not think that the Russians really expect written guarantees on the non-enlargement of NATO, it is impossible but rather a stop to NATO in Ukraine ”
"You have to hope that things are going on, because the situation can truly become dangerous at the end of January otherwise.The Russians have put the bar very high, it is now a question of credibility for them, they cannot lose face.And they cannot keep their soldiers indefinitely near the Ukrainian border, ”said Arnaud Dubien with France 24.
Russia seeks to divide American and European
It remains to be seen whether Westerners have been ready to give up the military support they have provided by the kyiv government since 2014. And if they will be able to maintain their unity in the face of Russian requirements.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the head of French diplomacy, believes that Russia seeks to divide Europeans and American by favoring dialogue with them."Europeans must be fully involved (in the discussions next week). European security cannot be discussed without their full involvement," he said in front of the Senate on January 5.
The Ukrainian question, which will be the main dish of discussions for the next few days, risks testing the unity of the Western camp because “for the Russians, the discussion is between Moscow and Washington, not with the Europeans or the'Small countries' ”estimates the director of the Franco-Russian observatory in Moscow.
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