The most tense video call of Joe Biden’s almost 11 months in the White House has resulted in a warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin: the United States prepares with its European allies “strong economic sanctions” in case Moscow increases its pressure about Ukraine. Brussels has also warned Moscow that any further aggression will lead to serious trade retaliation by the EU, potentially seriously damaging the Russian economy. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has anticipated a “robust escalation and expansion of the current sanctions regimes”.
The meeting between Putin and Biden began in an atmosphere, however cordial, with Putin on the other side of the line, at the end of a long wooden table in his residence in Sochi, a resort town on the Black Sea coast. In the background, there were tensions, in an increasingly red-hot tone between the West and Moscow due to the crisis on the border with Ukraine. Washington believes that Putin is preparing a military operation with 175,000 soldiers for early 2022, an extreme that he denies. Russia, for its part, demands guarantees that Kiev will not join NATO and that Ukraine will not launch an offensive to regain the disputed territory since 2014 in its confrontation in the Donbas with pro-Russian separatists. The meeting has lasted for just over two hours.
The US leader has expressed to Putin his deep concern about his attitude in this crisis, according to a statement from the White House, and has called for an “immediate de-escalation” in the conflict and “a return to diplomacy.” It has reiterated its support for the “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” of Ukraine. With the idea of sending soldiers to the border scrapped, Biden has warned of severe economic sanctions that would include preventing big Russian banks from converting rubles into dollars and other currencies. The Bloomberg agency has reported that Washington is considering restricting investors from buying Russian debt. And also the reinforcement of the eastern flank of NATO if that attack on Ukrainian soil occurs, according to a senior official of his Administration announced on Monday. The relationship between the two powers is at levels of tension typical of the Cold War.
From Russia, the Kremlin reports that both Putin and Biden have authorized their teams to maintain contact on sensitive issues. According to Moscow, the conversation – “open” and “professional” – has mainly addressed the stalemate in the implementation of the Minsk accords, the failure of which was blamed by Putin on Kiev’s “destructive line”.
The Minsk II agreements were signed in 2015 in the Belarusian capital by Moscow, Kiev and the OSCE, mediated by Germany and France. Unlike Minsk I, this pact was closed in the middle of the separatist offensive with the support of artillery and Russian armored brigades. The Ukrainian government, then led by Petró Poroshenko, accepted a constitutional reform to grant more autonomy to the region in exchange for regaining control of the Donbas border with Russia. But nothing has been accomplished these six years.
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“The Russian side has proposed to lift all accumulated restrictions on diplomatic missions, which could help normalize other aspects of bilateral relations,” said the Kremlin press service.
Putin has stressed to Biden that Russia is interested in obtaining the assurance that NATO will not expand eastward or deploy weapons in its neighboring countries, and has also stressed “the importance of the full implementation of the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” , the 2015 Vienna International Agreement on Iran’s Nuclear Program. According to the Kremlin, both leaders share that their dialogue must continue taking into account their special responsibility to maintain security and stability in the world.
Since 2014, the EU has adopted a comprehensive battery of punishments against Russia in retaliation for the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean territory. But it has avoided a brutal break in trade relations and has kept open channels of communication with the Putin regime, especially through German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The possible invasion of Ukraine, however, would mark a turning point, which would also coincide with the arrival in Berlin of a new government much tougher with Moscow.
Von der Leyen has denounced “Russia’s military movements and their massive build-up along the eastern border of Ukraine”, as well as “the blatant attempt to intimidate the reformist government of Moldova.” The president of the Commission considers it essential “to protect democracies against these cynical geopolitical power games.”
Von der Leyen’s words, delivered during the annual meeting with the EU ambassadors, came almost at the same time as the virtual meeting between Biden and Putin. And they showed the Union’s alignment with the positions defended by the US president, who before and after the meeting was coordinated with the main European powers (Germany, France, Italy and, outside the EU, the United Kingdom).
Ukraine’s entry into NATO is an old aspiration that dates back to the Bucharest Declaration of 2008. However, Moscow considers that country to be part of its area of influence. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned this Sunday that his organization “remains vigilant” in the face of the Russian military escalation on the Ukrainian border and that any aggression “will have consequences.”
Ukraine’s integration into NATO, however, seems very remote. Alina Frolova, former Ukrainian Defense Deputy Minister and director of the StratCom Ukraine Strategic Communication Center, explains by phone to EL PAÍS that “in Kiev there are no expectations of this; there is no progress in a long time, even with the support shown by Stoltenberg ”. However, Frolova does not believe that the West has abandoned them. “The United States has sent arms and has shown that it maintains its commitment. The UK, too. It is not a question of number of forces, but of political demonstration ”. According to this expert, the Russian warning “is a global threat, not only to Ukraine” and would thereby seek “a great agreement, a distribution of areas of influence” between powers.
On a possible Russian deployment in the Donbas, Frolova insists that Moscow has so far not recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk despite having delivered more than half a million Russian passports to its inhabitants, and that all its actions have been masked, “Such as the shipment of weapons to the Donbas, the recent crisis of migrants in Belarus or the provocations in Crimea.” But at the same time, the war started without giving credibility to the threats. Now there is the deployment in Crimea, on the borders, the declarations of [el presidente bielorruso, Aleksandr] Lukashenko … On the ground, the situation seems very serious, “he adds.
They are also expectant in the separatist area of Donbas. One of its most popular commanders, Alexandr Jodakovski, has stated on the Telegram channel where he posts his reflections that “from a local issue we have passed to the expansion of NATO and the red lines that Biden will not recognize. I mean, we go back to 2014, when we said that this was a war between Russia and the West. “
There are all kinds of opinions in Russia about Putin’s order. Mikhail Kasiánov, prime minister during his first term and current leader of the liberal Parnas party, defended on Twitter the so-called “nuclear package” of sanctions that Washington prepares in the event of conflict. “It will surely stop him. There will be no war, or else Russia will go back 30 years, “said the politician about measures that would put the Russian economy in a bind when its national currency continues to sink at 74 rubles the dollar (35 before the war in 2014) and the central bank admits that it does not have the tools to control inflation that is dangerously close to double digits because it is due to the supply problems that the entire planet suffers.
Possible effects on the arrival of gas to Europe
The EU has so far hardly exploited its ability to hit the Russian economy. The blacklist of sanctions includes 185 senior Russian officials or businessmen and 45 companies. But Europe is still the main energy market for Russia’s exports and Berlin even pushed the doubling of the Baltic gas pipeline (Nord Stream) to facilitate the direct and faster arrival of Russian gas to Germany and therefore to the EU. The commissioning of the second gas pipeline (Nord Stream II), however, has been paralyzed by a regulatory issue raised precisely in the heat of the growing tension on the Ukrainian border.
A Russian attack could give the finishing touch to an infrastructure that has already been completed, but which is rejected by many EU partners, as well as Ukraine. Berlin has defended the project tooth and nail, given its dependence on Russian gas, but at the same time it already has other suppliers such as Norway and the Netherlands, which cover almost 40% of German consumption.
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