The West Corners Russia at its Peril

 Henry Srebrnik, [Halifax] Chronicle Herald

When the Soviet Union collapsed, more than 20 million ethnic Russians found themselves stranded in former Soviet republics in the Baltics, Central Asia,, Moldova, and Ukraine. They were all now suddenly independent states.

These new countries had chafed under Soviet rule from Moscow, and – understandably -- would not have been unhappy if these Russians left.

The new rump Russian Federation looked at these parts of their former empire as the “near abroad,” and -- also understandably -- tried to help these compatriots as much as possible.

In the first few decades after the USSR collapsed, much of the world sympathized with Moscow’s worries about these people, who had now often become the objects of discrimination and harassment.

But no more. Today, Russia’s involvement in the Russian and Russophone parts of eastern Ukraine is seen as simple imperialist aggression. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of four partially occupied regions -- Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia -- in eastern and southern Ukraine was put in motion after a humiliating battlefield defeat drove the Russian Army out of another province, Kharkiv, in early September and the Ukrainian advance appeared to be gathering force.

Moscow then organized referenda in these regions, which found that more than 95 per cent of voters there wanted to join Russia. This is a highly suspect level of support, of course. But though we can’t know the actual numbers, they were probably not insignificant. 

The Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as they called themselves, had made it clear after 2014 they wanted no part of Ukraine, but are being told by Kyiv they are Ukrainians, like it or not.  

Prior to the current war, there had already been eight years of combat and conflict between these pro-Russian separatists and Ukraine government forces.

Up until Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion, residents of these disputed territories were considered pro-Russian separatists. However, as the Ukraine military began liberating these regions, they are now being called “collaborators” by Kyiv.  

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine maintains that Kyiv will continue the fight to expel the Russian Army from all of Ukraine, regardless of whether Moscow calls parts of the country Russia.

Canada, the United States and other NATO allies have poured weapons and munitions into Ukraine, and the superiority of those weapons over Russia’s arsenal was witnessed in the recent counter-offensive.

However, Ukraine’s success leaves Vladimir Putin with just his nuclear deterrent. And the Kremlin signaled that when Russia annexation is complete, any further military action by Ukraine in those regions could be seen as an attack on Russia itself.

The Russians can’t just take blow after blow from a Ukrainian military that is effectively the spear of NATO while not being able to retaliate against the Western alliance as a whole and not just its de facto member Ukraine.

Does this frighten the West? I don’t think so. Washington believes it can survive a limited nuclear attack and then crush Russia, becoming the world’s only military and economic “hyperpower.” 

What I find strange is how little opposition there has been in western countries to a developing war with Russia. There was plenty of leftist pushback during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was really a world power, one with the aim of spreading Communism around the globe. 

Although there seem to be no protests in Canada, the spectre of nuclear Armageddon drove American anti-war activists to the streets in a Week of Action organized by the Peace in Ukraine Coalition in late September.

They hosted anti-war events in Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Madison, Boston, and many California cities, including San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. 

With President Joe Biden asking Congress for another $13.7 billion for Ukraine, $7.2 billion of it earmarked for weapons and military training, activists delivered letters in opposition to their Congressional representatives.

If Biden’s request becomes law, military analysts say it would bring this year’s total for Ukraine to $67 billion, and the amount allotted for weapons, military training and intelligence could surpass $40 billion.  

Partners in the Peace in Ukraine Coalition condemn the Russian invasion but argue there is no military solution to a war that, they contend, was provoked by the same neo-conservatives responsible for the disastrous U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Through successive administrations, the voices for a unipolar world in which the U.S. dominates led to the expansion of NATO, a nuclear-armed military alliance, from 12 countries after the fall of the Soviet Union to 30 countries, including some that border Russia, like Poland, or were Soviet republics: Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. 

In addition to the expansion of NATO, they cite other issues that led to the war: American support for the 2014 ouster of Ukraine’s democratically elected but Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych, and years of arms shipments to undermine the 2015 MINSK II peace agreement.

That accord, signed by Russia and Ukraine, was designed to end the civil war that followed the 2014 coup and has left an estimated 14,000 people dead in Ukraine’s industrial Donbas region.

How will the war in Ukraine end? With nuclear annihilation? A decades-long war of attrition? Neither is a palatable solution. The sooner peace negotiations begin, the better.