As was stated in the February 25th editorial in this newspaper, Guyana’s position on Russia’s diabolical invasion should be clear: we support international law as it applies in this instance, we support Ukraine’s rights as an independent state, we support its right to territorial integrity, and we support democracy.
Which is why it is baffling that Takuba Lodge’s statement on Thursday evening on the invasion did not mention Russia. That could hardly have been an oversight and could conceivably have been a nod to the long-existing ties between President Putin and influential elements of the PPP/C administration. Nonetheless, the omission was reversed shortly after. It must however be clear to the government and the people of this country that there can be no wavering on Russia’s bloodthirsty folly in Ukraine and President Putin’s direct role in it. This is particularly so as there is no telling what adventurist behaviour Mr Putin might conceive of in America’s backyard and particularly in this region.
Further, Mr Putin cannot be taken at his word ever again. He is not a man that you can do business with. For weeks he menaced Ukraine with thousands of troops and heavy armour on its border with Russia and later in Belarus. For weeks he and his administration officials denied vehemently that there was any intention to invade Ukraine. For weeks he falsely claimed that Kyiv had undertaken atrocities in Donbas until he finally uncoiled his reprehensible attack against Ukraine and its people in the largest assault of its kind on European soil since the end of World War II in 1945.
It is left to be seen if the global revulsion at the invasion of Ukraine and crippling sanctions including the severing of access to the global interbank system SWIFT will deter Mr Putin. A remarkable coalition has evolved across countries and sectors and has seen actions ranging from Germany’s declaration to massively increase defence spending to the European Union decision for the first time in its history to supply weapons to a country at war to British Petroleum’s move to forfeit its 19.75% stake in Russian oil giant Rosneft at a cost of US$25b to Elon Musk making the internet available again in Ukraine via his company’s Starlink satellite.
However, the signs yesterday were not hopeful. First, in what would be seen as offensive and insulting, Russia proposed talks with Ukraine in Belarus from whence one of three invasion forces originated.
Mr Putin also ordered his military command to put nuclear-armed forces on high alert, an alarming and unjustified escalation in the context of Russia’s egregious invasion and the fact that Ukraine no longer has Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Speaking on state television yesterday, Mr Putin said “As you can see, not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension – I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well – but also the top officials of leading NATO countries allow themselves to make aggressive statements with regards to our country”.
Mr Putin had previously referred to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal in a speech prior to the start of the invasion on Thursday, saying Russia’s response to any country that tried to hinder the operation would be immediate and carry “consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”
It prompted an appropriate retort from France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian the same day who said that when making such threats Mr Putin should remember that NATO too was a nuclear alliance.
It has been increasingly clear that Mr Putin’s sole motivation in this invasion is to capture Ukraine by force and bring it back to the fictional fold of Russia notwithstanding Kiev’s own history of existence and ambitions for statehood stretching all the way back to 1710.
The arguments that have made rounds here in certain circles that Russia feels threatened and that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastward expansion must be to be blamed hold no water and are escapist views which risk obscuring the essential truth that Mr Putin’s maniacal and duplicitous behaviour is on full show and is now completely responsible for the loss of hundreds of innocent lives at latest count with around half a million Ukrainians mainly women and children already having fled their homes for Poland, Moldova and Romania.
This argument about encirclement of Russia cannot be considered as credible considering its vastness and military capacity for defence including its formidable nuclear arsenal. Throughout the Cold War, Mutual Assured Destruction remained the doctrine that prevented any consideration of nuclear war or largescale aggression not withstanding Mr Putin’s cavalier heightened alert yesterday.
Why should NATO not have expanded? Since its formation in 1949 it manifested a completely defensive posture. There is no point during the Cold War at which the Soviet Union or Russia or any of its defenders could point to offensive intent or conduct by NATO. Its limited bombing of Serbia in 1999 came as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians after both China and Russia blocked UN intervention. NATO’s successful navigation of the Cold War era created the conditions for expansion as the doctrine of collective defence protected its members from Iceland to Turkey. That Warsaw Pact members escaped the jail that they were in during the Cold War for NATO membership underlines ultimately the aspirations of Central and Eastern Europe to be rid of the spectre of invasion by the Russian Bear and now its Soviet aspirations in the mindset of Mr Putin. It must not be forgotten that it was Soviet Russia that brutally crushed risings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 and kept a lock on freedoms in other Warsaw Pact countries via a coterie of cruel dictators.
There was never a commitment by NATO not to expand eastwards. The matter was not on the agenda when German reunification was being discussed in 1989, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed. This was confirmed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in an interview in 2014 where he said “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either.”
In the “Two plus Four” negotiations for a reunited Germany in 1990, East Germany and West Germany and the four World War II allies — the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — agreed that no NATO soldiers may be stationed on the territory of the former German Democratic Republic. In compliance, only the German army operates there today.
It has been further established that Russian President Yeltsin had sought a commitment in 1997 from US President Clinton that there would be no incorporation of former Soviet Republics in the Atlantic alliance and he was told by Mr Clinton, as it was later revealed in declassified White House documents: “I can’t make commitments on behalf of NATO, and I’m not going to be in the position myself of vetoing NATO expansion with respect to any country, much less letting you or anyone else do so…NATO operates by consensus.”
Had NATO been disbanded one could only begin to imagine the chaos and anarchy that would have been wrought by Mr Putin in central and eastern Europe and the Baltics when he was so inclined. Threats were last week issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry to Finland and Sweden over suggestions that they may now be inclined to seek NATO membership.
While NATO and key Western leaders could have been more solicitous of genuine Russian concerns during the expansion period even that discussion blurs the reality today that Mr Putin is not so much occupied with putative Russian security interests as he is with sating his imperial ambitions for more territory as evidenced by his war on Georgia in 2008 and his seizure of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine is just the latest stop, perhaps the grandest miscalculation of his KGB-philosophy presidency, and if not stopped in its tracks will lead to a disintegration of the security architecture of Europe and mind-boggling implications for global stability.
The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian people and their President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to this Mephistophelian invasion must be given every support until Mr Putin ends this offensive and withdraws his forces.
