As of February 23 the world suddenly changed. Not just Ukraine, not just Russia, not just Europe but the entire globe. The egregious miscalculation by President Putin in invading Ukraine means that the systems we take for granted about how the world works will never be quite the same again. It is too early to predict what most of the far-reaching consequences will be, although the immediate ones are all too apparent. Aside from the destruction of Ukraine, Russia’s President has set in motion a sequence of events which will do untold damage to his own country economically, internationally and psychologically, much of which will not be easy to repair, even if over time it can be repaired.
And as for Nato and the West, he has accomplished the exact opposite of what he intended. There was Nato, a kind of amorphous club with no clearly defined mission, which has now acquired a very decided mission. Mr Putin has said that he draws a red line at Sweden and Finland joining Nato, but there they are, present at Nato discussions in the latest crisis finding common cause. They don’t need to join the organisation in any formal sense, they are already co-ordinating with it. For its part traditionally neutral Sweden is to send military arms to Ukraine, which is no doubt why Russian jets were overflying Sweden’s airspace yesterday. And while Turkey has been a somewhat difficult member in more recent times, there was President Erdogan lecturing the Europeans that their initial sanctions on Russia were not stringent enough.
Then there is Europe, full of factional disagreements under normal circumstances, which has now found a common voice, from pro-Putin Victor Orban of Hungary to the nations in the west of the bloc, and from military-shy Germany to Italy, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy and trade. President Putin has succeeded in breaking Germany’s taboo on supplying arms to Ukraine in addition to considerably increasing its defence spending which it has hitherto refused to do. And the Europeans, in some cases at considerable cost to their own economies, have agreed on the kind of sanctions which the Kremlin clearly thought was never on the cards. This applies particularly to the exclusion of seven Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system.
This is not to forget Brexit Britain, which despite its clashes with the EU on Northern Ireland in particular, is working harmoniously with the bloc on the matter of Ukraine. And if President Putin thought the current frictions within the UK on ‘partygate’ and the like would prevent any unity there, he was soon to be disabused. Everyone in the House of Commons – Conservatives, Labour, Scottish Nationalists and Liberal Democrats were on the same page, reading the same text.
Moscow has placed great emphasis on the role of the US, and while it is critical to Nato and in this instance has done everything that is expected of it, President Biden himself has not been so much in the public eye since the invasion began as some other presidents might have been, although his Secretary of State Antony Blinken is regularly on the airwaves. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a populist-style leader, and has not been slow to take advantage of the publicity space provided in the current circumstances, and while EU President Ursula von der Leyen does not fall into that mould, the global public is probably more aware of her because of the role Europe is playing in the crisis.
If there is solidarity across Europe and with the US, there is solidarity with the larger West, including countries like Canada, Australia and Japan. But it does not stop there. What is unique about this situation is how far the world as a whole has condemned Russia’s actions. There has been nothing like it since the Second World War. One hundred and forty-one members of the 193 strong UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s invasion and call for a withdrawal of its troops. Only five voted against, namely Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria. It was an astonishing result, and although there were thirty-five abstentions these included nations which one would have thought would normally have voted with Russia. They included China, of course, which had also abstained during the Security Council vote which Russia had vetoed.
Among the others was one of particular interest to us, namely, Venezuela, which had expressed its support for Russia at an earlier stage. Another surprise abstention was Cuba and Bolivia as well. The entire Indian sub-continent abstained, and where India itself was concerned (it had also abstained during the Security Council vote) the supposition is that owing to the fact it is dependent on Russian military hardware it made it difficult for New Delhi to take a more robust stance.
Prior to the UN vote, all countries represented at a Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva walked out when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke. The exceptions were the Russian representative as well as those from Syria, China, and on this occasion, Venezuela.
As far as this country is concerned, after an initial blunder when Takuba Lodge failed to mention Russia in its first press release, an omission it subsequently corrected, the government has got the right approach. Guyana’s UN Permanent Representative Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett said on Monday that the aggression against Ukraine was a “threat to the region and countries everywhere.” She went on to speak of this government’s grave concern over Russia’s violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and called for the immediate cessation of hostilities.
The preservation of sovereignty and territorial integrity are things Guyana knows more than a little about, and there are no circumstances in which we should be advocating the Kremlin’s cause. Caracas is not of a mind to accept any decision of the International Court of Justice as it relates to our border controversy, but international outrage over what Russia has done in the case of Ukraine would make it very difficult for Venezuela to decide at some point to follow a similar line. It would not help it either that Russia is one of its few allies.
It is most unfortunate that a former president of this land, Mr Donald Ramotar, could write in this newspaper that “Russia’s intervention into Ukraine was a result of the failure to resolve the question of Russian security concerns which w[ere] being debated since 1999 with the US and the Nato alliance.” Leaving aside the careless statements made more than a decade ago about Ukraine and Georgia being welcome to join Nato that haven’t been repeated, it has been made quite clear by Nato countries since then that the two nations could not join the organisation, and would not be ready to do so for many years.
President Putin knew that Europe was divided; Britain had left the EU and had its own issues with the organisation as well as internally; Nato was neither cohesive nor purposeful, having been undermined by former President Trump; the current US President was weak, and his country shown to be so by the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan; and in a general sense the West was in disarray. Meanwhile, he had a critical ally in China. How at this stage could Russia’s security be more under threat than it was some years ago, when there was greater unity in the West?
Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine because he assessed it to be a good time to make a move to bring that nation back into the Russian sphere of influence, and if he succeeded, which he would not, then the Baltic states would be next on the list. He will eventually be able to capture Ukraine’s major cities and occupy at least half of the country, but it will be at tremendous cost and an ongoing guerrilla war with all the bloodshed that entails.
Perhaps the world’s nearly united response in this instance may have as one element the fact that President Putin has brought references to nuclear weapons into the mix. Of course there have been denials that he has any intention of using them, but then he spent months denying that he had any intention of invading Ukraine, and yet that is exactly what he did. The danger is that because he has misjudged everything, including the level of Ukrainian resistance, he is pasted into a corner with no obvious exit let alone a face-saving strategy. He is an irrational autocrat who has been isolated for two years, and is clearly not receptive to any advice contrary to what he believes. The oligarchs are in no position to remove him as his imprisonment of Khodorkovsy demonstrated, and there is no one else in the Kremlin who could do so except the military, and they are not going to.
China is probably not happy with the direction matters have taken; it is not good for the world economy in addition to which it has to take Taiwan into account. It has criticised the use of sanctions, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi was reported as saying that the security of one country “should not come at the expense of the security of other countries”; regional security “cannot be realised through the expansion of military blocs”. This would certainly console the Kremlin. As such, China’s offer to mediate in talks may be the best way to proceed, both to save Ukraine (which has always had good relations with China) and extract Russia from an impossible situation of its own creation. The world for once is almost unanimous in wanting an end to this brutal invasion.
