Russia has already split the united front of the Western countries
We live in an amazing historical period that will definitely go down in the history textbooks as one of the turning points in the 21st century. The world order that emerged after World War II, the creation of the United Nations, and the defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War is crumbling. Right before our eyes, attempts are beginning to shape the rules of the new world order, and, what surprised many, it is Russia that sets this trend.
Western countries perceived this move by Russia as aggression and tried to present a united front to prevent the implementation of its goals. However, today we can already state that this united front did not last long.
On December 15, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry handed over draft agreements on security guarantees between Russia and the United States and NATO to US Deputy Secretary of State Karen Donfried, which some experts and media outlets dubbed an "ultimatum". As a matter of principle, Russia wanted to receive a written response to its proposals. A little later, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden held telephone conversations, and in January 2022, a number of meetings of Russian diplomats with representatives of the United States, NATO and the OSCE were held.
On January 26, US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan sent a written US response to Russian security proposals to our Foreign Ministry, and a little later a response was received from NATO. Two days later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in an interview with four Russian radio stations, explained that the US response contains constructive proposals for negotiations on minor issues, but ignores Russia's main demand not to expand NATO to the east.
On January 30, during the “Sunday Time” program on Channel One, Lavrov explained that the Foreign Ministry has now sent an official request to the NATO and OSCE countries with an urgent demand to explain how they intend to fulfil their commitment not to strengthen their security at the expense of the security of others, and if they do not intend to elucidate this, then explain why.
On February 1, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during a telephone conversation with Lavrov, repeated the position previously voiced by the United States, which ignores the main demand of Russia. In addition, after the call, Blinken posted a message on Twitter: "We’re committed to preventing a conflict that is in no one’s interest but ready to impose severe costs if Russia further invades Ukraine."
The Russian Foreign Ministry's commentary on the results of this conversation indicates that the West is trying to completely forget about the key principle of indivisibility of security. The Russian Foreign Minister told Blinken that this topic will not be mixed up, and Russia will "focus on an honest conversation and an honest explanation of why the West does not want to fulfil its obligations or wants to fulfil them exclusively selectively in its favour."
On February 2, the Spanish newspaper El País published the text of the US and NATO responses on security guarantees sent to Russia. Some liberal journalists were quick to rejoice at the US proposals to discuss with Russia options for deploying weapons on the territory of Ukraine. However, on the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a conversation with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, stressed that the United States and NATO ignored Russia's principled proposals.
He expressed exactly the same position a day earlier, speaking in the Kremlin after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, separately emphasising that one cannot strengthen one's security at the expense of others. The same thesis was reflected in the joint statement of the leaders of Russia and China of January 4, 2022 on international relations entering into force in a new era.
The fact is that this principle of the indivisibility of security in Europe was enshrined in the declaration of the OSCE Istanbul Summit in 1999 and the OSCE Astana Declaration in 2010, and the leadership of the participating countries pledged to implement this principle. However, since then, there have been several "waves of expansion" of NATO without taking into account the security interests of Russia. That is precisely why Lavrov said in his interviews that in the course of negotiations with Western countries, Russia has nothing to concede.
Given Russia's insistent desire to receive a written response from its "Western partners" on the issues raised, it can be assumed that the Foreign Ministry will prepare a detailed, legally verified document outlining all the norms of international law violated by the West in ignoring Russia's interests.
The publication of this document will be the basis for Russia to reconsider its relations with Western countries and, possibly, even withdraw from some treaties or even organisations that do not ensure Russia's security. The very fact that agreements with Western countries cannot guarantee anything gives Russia the right to form its own security contours without regard for its "Western partners".
Meanwhile, the collective West is working out options for possible sanctions against Russia for its "probable aggression" against Ukraine. Back on December 7, while testifying in the US Senate, Deputy Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland explained that in the event of Russian aggression against Ukraine, it is planned to isolate Russia from the global financial system with all the ensuing consequences for Russian business and the population. She repeated this thesis on January 30 in an interview with NBC.
However, as reported by the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Western countries have abandoned the idea of disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international payment system. In the US, they were quick to comment on this news, saying that this option has not been completely excluded.
In addition, the United States initially considered the option of restrictions on the supply of Russian energy resources. Representatives of the State Department even evaluated options to compensate for the lack of Russian gas supplies for the European market. As a result, Germany opposed the fact that the package of sanctions includes measures against the Russian energy sector. The German Federal Commodity Agency estimates that Germany's energy dependence on Russia was 64% in 2020.
The leader of the EU, Germany, was the weakest link in the anti-Russian front of Western countries. Commenting on the EU's lack of unity on sanctions against Russia, in an interview titled "Either we stop Putin's imperial dream, or it will be a nightmare for the EU", Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki criticised Germany for evasive statements about refusing to send weapons to Ukraine.
The response of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to the reproach for the lack of arms supplies and the words from Ukrainian Ambassador Andrey Melnyk about Germany's historical responsibility to Ukraine is characteristic. Baerbock explained that Berlin has a special responsibility not only to Kiev, but also to all countries of the former USSR.
The German magazine Spiegel reports that the German Ambassador to the United States, Emily Haber, has informed Berlin that the United States is beginning to view Germany as an "unreliable partner" because of its reserved position on the issue of Ukraine. This is a good time to remind the reader of the agreement between the United States and Germany that was concluded in the summer of 2021, where the United States assigned Germany a central role as an ally in Europe. Now the American media and some congressmen present Berlin as the main brake on sanctions against Russia.
Of course, for the sake of completeness, it is worth mentioning the episode with the President of Croatia. Zoran Milanović said on January 25 that if the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalates, the country will withdraw its military from the NATO contingent in the region. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković called the president's words nonsense and apologised to Ukraine, for which he received a "Ukrainian agent" label from the president.
Also, amid reports that NATO is considering the possibility of creating new combat units of thousands of people in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia, the Hungarian Defence Minister Tibor Benkő said that Hungary has a sufficient number of national armed forces, so the deployment of additional NATO units on its territory is impractical.
The most scandalous episode in the context of the collapse of the united front against Russia is a report made by CNN that a telephone conversation between US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky "did not go very well”.
A CNN journalist shared information from an anonymous Ukrainian official, which said that Joe Biden warned the president of Ukraine about the imminent invasion of Russia and the possible looting of the capital Kiev. Vladimir Zelensky, in turn, asked his colleague to reduce the intensity of rhetoric, as panic messages are hitting the Ukrainian economy. Later, officials on both sides disavowed this information as false.
The very situation with the controversial CNN report can tell us about the internal struggle between conditional "hawks" and "doves" inside the White House administration. The fact is that CNN has always taken the side of the Democratic Party and would not have "leaked slippery information" discrediting the country's leadership, which consists of representatives of the democratic party, if it had not received a separate order on this issue.
The information announced by CNN no longer looks implausible after the comment of Ukrainian President Zelensky on January 29. When asked by a Sky News reporter whether Ukraine is trying to downplay the threat of an invasion from Russia in order to save its economy, Zelensky replied that from his side the degree of danger looks different, since the country has been under threat for 8 years, and the economy is really suffering.
Politico magazine tried to attribute the situation to translation errors. In a survey of native Ukrainian speakers, Politico found that there is no direct translation in Ukrainian for the English word “imminent" - the closest word to "neminuche", which most accurately corresponds to "no matter what” or "inevitable".
However, this does not accurately convey the meaning of the English word. So when the Biden administration says “imminent”, Zelensky hears US officials actually saying: “The invasion will happen no matter what.”
To put it bluntly, the Ukrainian leadership clearly does not want to "go to the devouring of the Russian bear", as is expected in the West. Although the central Western media prepare their audience for this scenario. To roughly understand the level of Western propaganda, one can watch the video of Anatoly Shary, as he participated in the program "on Russian aggression" on one of the European channels. As a result, his interview in this program was not shown at all, as it went beyond the Russophobic message of the audience.
One can also watch a program on the French TV channel "FRANCE 24" with the participation of the former Russian ambassador to France Aleksandr Orlov, where he alone, speaking against 3 interlocutors and the host, tries to explain the position of Russia, and in response they say about the Russian president as a chauvinist and imperialist of the 19th century.
In the United States, the narrative that "Russia is an aggressor" and can invade Ukraine at any time is promoted at the level of the White House. US congressmen after a secret briefing held at the initiative of the State Department and the Pentagon, tell reporters that the situation in Ukraine “is the most significant threat in Europe since 1945”, and they are “almost certain” that a "Russian invasion" is about to happen.
On February 3, representatives of the Pentagon and the US State Department accused Russia of preparing a provocation to justify the invasion of Ukraine. The level of extravagant hysteria in Washington has already reached the point that in an interview on NBC, the head of the State Department, Antony Blinken, even had to explain to an assertive journalist why the United States has not yet imposed sanctions on Russia, because the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to deceive the United States was obvious to it.
However, in my opinion, we should not worry too much about possible Western sanctions. The old global world system is being destroyed. This crisis is a systemic one (a phasic one in another interpretation), not a cyclical one, so the West itself is least prepared for this transformation, and states with a greater share of autarky will have an advantage.
Many people do not believe in such a development of events, but they are simply trapped in the old patterns of perception of reality. The easiest way to break at least one of these patterns is to realise that some US cities now have partially empty store shelves and rationing for food sales, almost like in the USSR of the late 80s. Across Europe, there are regular protests against the savage isolation measures, which escalate into mass riots.
Even with the toughest sanctions, Russia won't be stuck behind the Iron Curtain for long. Because after the current systemic crisis, the foreign policy situation will be different in just one election cycle in the West – four years.
This is probably why Russia has made its demands for security guarantees as public as possible, providing European counter-elites with arguments to put pressure on the ruling elite. Because after the hysteria around the "Russian aggression" subsides, and the energy crisis will not go away, and relations with Russia will have to be somehow adjusted.
Already in the current conditions of coronavirus restrictions and the energy crisis, social tensions in European countries are very high and it will not be easy to convince the population to "tighten their belts" for the sake of Ukraine. For example, on January 29, several thousand people protested against the increase in energy prices, blocking the entrance to government offices of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo.
Some in the West already suspect that economic connectivity in the world will backfire on them in the event of "tough sanctions" against Russia. The New York Times published an article saying that US sanctions against Russia could go on an escalating spiral and become a threat to the entire global economy.
The Hill was concerned that sanctions against Russia may affect the well-being of Americans. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas futures in the United States on January 28 rose by 72%, which is a record for the entire history of observations since 1990.
Euronews reported that due to rising energy prices, in January 2022, more than 35 million Europeans will not be able to heat their homes this winter, they will have to choose between paying for heating and buying food.
Even in Britain there is the fear that the conflict in Ukraine may affect the food security of the island. In addition, the January 2022 edition of The Guardian predicted that due to the upcoming 30% increase in electricity prices, 6 million households (about 20%) in the UK will be in energy poverty, the highest level in 26 years. However, the other day it became known that electricity prices in Britain from April 1 will increase not by 30%, but by 54%, and if sanctions are imposed on the Russian fuel sector, then prices will rise even more.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley calculated that if the situation around Ukraine worsens, the price of oil may jump to $150, and then the GDP growth rate in the world in the first half of the year may be reduced to 0.9%, with expectations for growth of 4.1%. Under this scenario, inflation could almost double to 7.2% instead of the projected 3%. This will force the world's central banks to tighten monetary policy even more, which will lead to a further reduction in GDP.
Thus, as can be seen, even without "aggression", Russia was already able to split the united front of Western countries on the issue of sanctions. Probably, if the promised sanctions are really imposed, this front will continue to fall, as in the conditions of the energy crisis, some European countries will agree to bilateral agreements with Russia even without much regard for the United States. In this regard, we can say that the Russian leadership very subtly calculated the moment of impact. As well as the fact that the whole country has been preparing for this for a very long time. But, as we know, patience in danger is boldness.