War drums beat louder as Blinken visits Kyiv

(CN) — Ahead of decisive talks with Russia's top diplomat, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken touched down in the powder-keg Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Wednesday in a show of NATO support in the face of a possible Russian invasion.

Blinken's visit added more fuel to a combustible situation between Russia and Ukraine as these two deeply corrupt former Soviet states with a common Slavic Orthodox Christian history veer dangerously towards war.

For the past year, Russia has slowly added some 50,000 troops to the 50,000 troops already stationed in the border areas of Ukraine, a strategically key country of about 43 million people lying between Russia, the Black Sea and the European Union and NATO states of Poland and Romania.

Blinken is in Europe to meet with allies ahead of talks on Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Russia is demanding the United States cease its efforts to bring Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO military pact. The U.S. and its allies have called such demands a non-starter, teeing up a showdown with Russia.

Russia denies it has any intention to invade Ukraine, but Western intelligence services and military analysts believe Russia's deliberate and covert military buildup may lead to an imminent large-scale invasion of eastern parts of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has written and spoken about Ukraine and Russia as being historically united and he argues that the West is seeking to destabilize Russia by intervening in Ukraine. There are fears that he may try to partition the eastern and Black Sea coast regions through a multipronged attack from different fronts against a relatively weak and inexperienced Ukrainian army made up largely of conscripts.

These regions are home to much of Ukraine's Russian population, which has suffered discrimination in recent years as Ukrainian politics have become dominated by anti-Russian ultranationalists who see in the Kremlin a continuation of the dreaded Soviet state.

Anti-communist sentiment runs high in Ukraine, where the Communist Party has been banned and where neo-Nazi militia groups are widely supported. A subject of heated debate – and violence – is Ukraine's rehabilitation of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator accused of massacres. In 2010, he was given the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine, a move that remains legally contested.

The troubles in Ukraine go back to the 2013 Maidan Revolution, a popular uprising in Kyiv that turned bloody when unknown snipers opened fire and killed at least 50 protesters in the Maidan Square on Feb. 20, 2014.

The protests culminated with the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader who had angered many Ukrainians by backtracking on a trade and cooperation deal to bring Ukraine closer to the EU and instead wanted closer economic ties with Russia. Yanukovych also rescinded the posthumous award to Bandera.

The ouster of Yanukovych led to Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade and annex the Crimean Peninsula to safeguard a key Russian naval base on the Black Sea. Next, armed conflict erupted in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine as pro-Russian forces sought greater political autonomy from Ukraine. That conflict continues to simmer and rage with more than 14,000 civilian deaths and about 734,000 people displaced from their homes.

Ceasefire talks moderated by France and Germany faltered and the Kremlin, ever more angry over stalled negotiations and NATO's growing armaments shipments to Ukraine and military training, may be at a point where it sees an invasion of eastern Ukraine as its only strategic option.

This conflict, then, is propelled both by NATO's expansion into Russia's historic lands and by Putin's dreams of reconstituting the old Russian empire.

If war breaks out, it could have devastating consequences for Europe and recast the region's security framework, already tottering as the U.S. seeks to reposition its strength away from Europe to the Asian theater and the EU boosting its military spending in an effort to gain a seat at the table of a world being shaped by superpower conflict.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, shares a word with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

In the past two years, the clash between Ukraine and Russia has intensified under the watch of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a television comedian who came into office promising to end the Donbas conflict.

But instead of seeking a compromise with the Kremlin, Zelenskyy has taken an ever more bellicose approach.

“Zelenskyy takes a pretty hard turn in 2020,” said Michael Kofman, a Russia military expert at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington, in a video analysis.

Kofman said Zelenskyy chose to take this path after he found no appetite in Ukraine for compromise with Russia over Crimea and the Donbas war. The Ukrainian president further angered Putin with moves to arrest Viktor Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian politician, and instituting bans on pro-Russia media. Zelenskyy has welcomed NATO funding and its military buildup in Ukraine.

“The bigger picture conversation, yes, is about obviously NATO enlargement,” Kofman said. He said Russia sees NATO using Ukraine as a “de facto NATO member.”

It remains far from certain that Putin will order an invasion of Ukraine, a move that would lead to casualties, a refugee crisis and the ostracization of Russia from the Western-backed international banking system.

Kofman said the political calculations of the Kremlin are a mystery, but he did not rule out an incursion based on Russia's military moves around Ukraine and the possibility that the Russian public can stomach a bloody conflict involving a region so interwoven with its history.

“I don't know if the Russian public sees a military operation in Ukraine as an operation abroad akin to something like Syria or Nagorno-Karabakh or Kazakhstan,” he said.

In Kyiv, Zelenskyy and Blinken further cemented their ties. For months, American politicians, military staff and experts have been coming to Kyiv.

“I am tempted to say the last thing that you need is another visitor, because I think Kyiv may be the most popular destination in the world right now,” Blinken said. “But I did want to return, and in fact President Biden asked me to do so.”

Blinken told Zelenskyy that Biden wants to “reaffirm to you, to your colleagues, and to all of our Ukrainian friends the support that the United States has for Ukraine, and to affirm that now as ever it is up to Ukrainians and no one else to decide their own future and the future of this country.”

He accused Russia of applying “relentless aggression” ever since the Maidan uprising.

“We’ve made it very clear to Moscow that if it chooses to renew aggression against Ukraine, it will mean that it will face very severe consequences,” Blinken said.

However, NATO and the U.S. have not committed to sending troops to Ukraine in the event of war but instead levy heavy sanctions against Russia and kick it out of Western-backed international banking systems. In response, Russia is working with China to build up alternative financial systems. Russia is already heavily penalized by sanctions, but it has found ways to work around them and its economy remains relatively stable.

Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to the U.S. for its military support and he said Ukraine is on the path to joining NATO.

“Your visit is very important to us, your visit personally,” Zelenskyy said. “This underscores once again the strong support for Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty from the United States.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau

Categories / Government, International, Politics

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War drums beat louder as Blinken visits Kyiv

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