At dawn this morning the situation in Ukraine became critical. Putin began what was essentially an invasion by launching missiles at various military and government targets in the country and quickly threatened Western governments should they attempt to intervene.
The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, responded by talking boldly about defending his country. But without more help Ukraine could soon no longer exist as an independent country, and may once more be a satellite state managed from Moscow.
But the question here is does any of this matter? How important is Ukraine to us in the UK and do we need, as a leading member of NATO, to get involved?
A lot depends on the USA, the UK, France and Germany and their respective leaders, all of whom may not be seen as strong by the Russians and the their President.
President Biden is considered weak and with no appetite for conflict, not only by Russia, but by the NATO leaders and his own people. A YouGov poll in January showed that 60% of US citizens thought Biden a weak leader. Few think he will take the fight to Putin.
We no longer have Merkel in Germany who was seen as solid and dependable. Instead we have the untried and untested Herr Scholz. French President Macron seems to have Putin’s ear, and appeared to be the best chance of a diplomatic solution. After all, his talks on Feb 20th led to Putin agreeing a conditional summit with Biden. As for PM Johnson here in the UK, for all of his rhetoric he is unlikely to be seen as someone with any credibility after recent headlines.
That said, Johnson has been talking a good fight, and some would say he has to. This has two possible reasons behind it. The first is self-preservation. If he can distract enough people to back his position on Ukraine it might just be enough to tip the balance back in his favour. The second is that he actually understands the importance of Ukraine as an independent nation.
The problem is do we, the British, understand why Ukraine matters and what the implications of a Russian invasion are?
Major gas pipelines that connect much of Russia to Germany and Eastern Europe run through the Ukraine and the Black Sea. Germany gets as much as 20% of its natural gas from Russia through those pipelines. Russia would therefore have more control over the geographic length of those supplies and therefore the supply of natural gas to much of Eastern Europe.
A Reuters article on Feb 18 argued that Russia is also a major exporter of key commodities including aluminium, cobalt, nickel, zinc and copper. Disruption of these supplies – as well as of natural gas due to further sanctions or war over Ukraine – would cause major price increases across Europe, the UK and the USA, as well as impacting Russia itself.
As a Guardian article by Simon Tisdall on Feb 12 outlines, Putin is calling for NATO borders to return to Soviet era positions. But to do so would expose the whole eastern flank of Europe and would affect the security of Western Europe including the UK.
The invasion of Ukraine warns us that Putin is likely to continue to take Russia down a path that threatens the sovereignty of other nations. The fact that NATO and the EU are on his doorstep makes Putin uncomfortable; as does the increasing democratisation of the former Soviet republics at a time when he seeks to widen the Russian sphere of influence.
A Russian-dominated Ukraine would mean one long and almost continuous border with Russia across Europe’s eastern flank. Poland becomes threatened and the EU itself comes under pressure. Then NATO begins to look very weak.
Putin’s concerns are in many ways legitimate. The fact that the Russians see NATO and its expansion as a threat should be accepted. That said, those nations that have left the Soviet Union have the legitimate right to conduct their own affairs as they wish, whether that means forming alliances with Russia or with NATO or NATO-aligned nations. All three should be possible, also for Ukraine, regardless of past history.
Putin told the world he did not want to invade Ukraine, despite the fact that he took back control of Crimea in 2014 and has been implicated in the separatist unrest in Eastern Ukraine.
And then today happened. The consequences of allowing Putin to annexe Ukraine are too dire for us to allow that to happen. We need our leaders to stand firm and defend Ukraine with any means possible or we are in for a long era of fighting on many fronts. The consequences will take decades to resolve and millions of lives will be lost. So yes Ukraine matters, in both the long and short term.
If Russia is able to annexe Ukraine without a fight, Iran will look at the USA and NATO as weak. That puts Israel at risk. China will conclude that there will be no real opposition to any plans it has to take Taiwan, or to expand its interests into Africa and the South China Sea.
Stop Putin now and that sends out a strong message. Let him get away with it and we will come under much more pressure, not only from Russia but from any number of other nations who see such land grabbing as legitimate.
On Feb 8th US Democratic Party Bernie Sanders wrote in the Guardian, “We must do everything we can to avoid war in Ukraine.” The general thrust of the piece was that as trust had to be rebuilt between Russia, the USA and Europe, the macho rhetoric coming from Washington and London would only fan the flames. He also argued that increasing sanctions would affect the poor.
Sanders warned that war would lead to the loss of life on both sides, and release floods of refugees into neighbouring states, before calling for all to “work hard to achieve a realistic and mutually agreeable resolution.”
But this clearly is not possible whilst Putin remains in charge in Russia. And sanctions won’t only affect the poor, they will not stop tanks.
Instead we need strong leaders who will stand up and be counted, and who will stop those who say this has nothing to do with us.
We also have to reject Putin’s argument that he has a right to create a buffer of ‘neutral’ – meaning pro-Russian – states between Russia and the rest of Europe. Each nation should and must have the right to decide with which nations it will ally.
One of the causes for the Crimean War in the 1850s was the expansion of the then Russian Empire, which added to the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The threat then was to trade routes across to India and China. Those routes are still important today.
The idea that Putin can just walk into another sovereign state at will is unacceptable. Parallels can and must be drawn with Hitler’s invasion of the Sudetenland in 1938, then part of Czechoslovakia. The UK tried a policy of appeasing Hitler and it did not end well.
How many other former Soviet states need to fall before the West acts? A a leader like Putin will always have another excuse for their next target.
Today’s invasion already means many lives will be lost. But acting now in a determined way may mean those losses are less than they otherwise would be.
Now is not the time for a government to be risk averse. It is time to act. Ukraine matters, because democracy matters, and freedom matters, not just for the Ukrainians but for everyone.
