The Ukraine Freedom Support Act, if implemented, will certainly endanger the Minsk agreements by pushing Ukraine towards a military solution, argues Dmitry Babich
In its relations with Russia, the Obama Administration seems to have adopted ‘good cop-bad cop’ tactics. Days after the US Senate passed the so-called Ukraine Freedom Support Act, authorising $350 million in military aid to Ukraine, Secretary of State John Kerry came out with the most peaceful and reassuring statements since the beginning of the year. In Mr Kerry’s words, “The sole purpose of the anti-Russian sanctions was to restore international norms” and these sanctions could be “lifted depending on the choices that president Putin makes”.
Almost in the same hour, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, “Mr Obama would be ready to sign the resolution on Ukraine into law before the end of the week.” The only logic that can be seen here is the logic of pressure. “The American side obviously expects Mr Putin to be more pliable in a situation when ruble is under such pressure; they think that they won now”, Yevgeny Minchenko, the head of the Moscow-based International Institute for Political Expertise, said. This kind of attitude may explain the self-assured tone of the State Department’s spokeswoman, Ms Jen Psaki.
“Russia has a choice. There are specific steps they can make to implement the Minsk protocols…That’s in their power, and if they do that, obviously that will have an impact on the actions we take”, Ms Psaki told reporters in Washington. There are, however, two problems with this ‘good cop-bad cop’ strategy of pressure. First, it is still not clear what Russia has to do in Ukraine for the sanctions to be lifted. Second, the belligerent Ukraine Freedom Support Act, if implemented, will certainly endanger the Minsk agreements even more by pushing Ukraine towards a military solution and also unlawfully limits Russia’s foreign trade.
The Act includes clauses on providing Ukraine ‘anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, crew weapons and ammunition; counter-artillery radars, tactical troop-operated surveillance drones.’ This is not the full list of items to be purchased for the earmarked $350 million in war aid, but it is certainly enough to make Ukraine a second Afghanistan in the middle of Europe.
The Act also authorises the President to use sanctions not only against Russia’s defence industries, but also against ‘companies worldwide that make significant investments in particular unconventional Russian crude oil energy projects.’ All of these (indeed, illegal and absurd) sanctions may be lifted, however, if, as the Act says, if Russia is proclaimed by Mr Obama to have ‘ceased directing, supporting, or financing significant acts intended to undermine the peace, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, including through an agreement between the appropriate parties’.
This is certainly not a legal language, but a language of propaganda (‘undermine the peace’). In translation to a simpler popular terms, the US Congressmen want Russia to give up on more than three million people in eastern Ukraine, who don’t want to have anything in common with the new regime in Kiev (which obviously has killed the majority of the more than four thousand casualties of the civil war in Ukraine); the US Congressmen also want Russia to deliver to Georgia several hundreds of thousands of Abkhazians and South Ossetians (who defended their sovereignty in three wars) plus the restive region of Transdniester in Moldova.
How can this be feasibleIJ Well, this is not feasible independent of Russia’s wishes or actions, since the people in the east of Ukraine don’t want their lives to be controlled by the newly established Ukrainian nationalists from ‘other’ regions of Ukraine in Kiev. People in the east of Ukraine have already lost thousands of lives in a civil war forced on them by exactly that very Government in Kiev, whose consent German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants for the new elections in the rebellious Donetsk and luhansk regions.
The result is a stalemate. Unfortunately, the anti-Russian lobbyists of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act, headed by Robert Menendez, do not meet much opposition at home (only five congressmen voted against the bill). Throughout his career (libya, Syria, now the ‘return’ of the American operations in Iraq), Mr Obama has shown himself to be irresponsible enough to sign that bill. It won’t lead to peace Ukraine. It will create another Afghanistan in the center of Europe.
(Views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not reflect the official position of Sputnik)