The war in Ukraine has intensified after Russian President Vladimir Putin recognised, on February 21, the two breakaway Republics, Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine and ordered his troops to enter there for "peacekeeping duties".
Heavy shelling has spread to key cities of Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv. The response of US President Joe Biden announcing new sanctions on February 22 on the two Russian financial
institutions, its sovereign debt and five Russian elites have been weak. Biden is under considerable pressure from the US Congress and others to provide urgently needed military supplies and other support to the pro-West government in Ukraine.
Putin's demands that Ukraine and other former Soviet states should never be admitted into the NATO, and its troop deployment rolled back from Eastern and Central Europe to 1997 positions have been rejected by the US. Putin has announced a "special military operation for demilitarisation and denazification" of Ukraine (implying that the Nazis now occupy Ukraine). He wants to have a decisive influence on the Ukrainian government, a demand not acceptable to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has stated that Ukraine would fight back. According to some polls, more than 60 per cent of the Ukrainian people want a closer association with the West than Russia.
Putin has chosen the timing of this confrontation carefully after preparing his country for it over several years. The US is occupied with an all-encompassing rivalry with China. Crude oil and gas (Russia's main exports) prices are high. Russia has accumulated $630 billion of foreign exchange reserves and has achieved self-sufficiency in food production. Putin has devoted more expenditure to modernise his military, reduced Russia's external debt to 25 per cent of its GDP and diversified his trade partners, reducing dependence on Europe. The sanctions imposed by the US and Europe do not pose an immediate risk to Putin as the US is unlikely to hit Russia's energy exports or exclude her from the Swift clearing system. That would threaten billions of dollars in payments to the Russian creditors in Austria, France, the Netherlands and other European countries.
Putin's aggression challenges the US-led security architecture in Europe. He has called America-led West an "empire of lies", stating that Russia tried to reach an agreement with the NATO countries for 30 years on "equal and indivisible security in Europe", but was met with only "cynical lies and blackmail" from them. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the NATO outreach to much of Eastern Europe, the Americans had started believing that a much weakened Russia would never have the power to disturb the US-led political order. A few years back, in 2014, US President Barack Obama had called Russia a "regional power". Most European countries had subcontracted their security to the US, rejoicing the newly obtained peace and prosperity. Now all those hopes appear untenable.
The US is again faced with the spectre of two fronts war for which it is hardly equipped. Its defence expenditure during the last decade declined by about 10 per cent whereas that of Europe increased by a mere 14.4 per cent. In contrast, that of Russia went up by 30 per cent, and China's more than doubled. US President Biden had stated earlier that he would not send the American troops to fight for Ukraine though it would provide arms, economic and other support to her. Putin saw this statement as a sign of Biden's continuing weakness, ambivalence and lack of commitment to the security of Eastern Europe.
President Putin is a Soviet nostalgist and wants to resurrect Russia's old sphere of influence. He has stated that modern Ukraine was created entirely by communist Russia after the 1917 revolution, and the Ukraine government has now taken a hostile stance towards her. Putin is willing to progressively escalate and destabilise Ukraine till it accepts Russia's demands.
He believes that the US would not go for a full-scale war with Russia, which is its peer in military terms and would ultimately ask the Ukraine government to accept Russia's main demands. It is unclear if the US and Europe would gather the resolve to go to war for Ukraine. The smaller countries near Russia, such as Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Poland are worried whether Putin would stop at Ukraine or go beyond to resurrect his old East European empire. They are asking the NATO countries to deploy more troops in their countries.
The US-Russia rivalry is already causing concern to its Asian allies and partners, who are worried that the US would now not project a strong response to counter China's continued aggression in East Asia, particularly the Taiwan Strait. China is happy at the turn of events and is quietly watching the Western response and analysing how it could learn from the Russian playbook in confronting the US in East China.
The above conflict poses multiple difficulties for India. Russia has been India's traditional security partner and provided about 60 per cent of India's military equipment, including newer generations of weaponry and technologies which no other country offered her. Given China's continuing belligerence against India with the deployment of more than 50,000 troops and hi-tech weapons on its northern borders, India can hardly ignore its security needs. India is an important part of the Quad (with the US, Japan and Australia), which is playing an important role in resisting China's aggression and hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region. India also can't ignore the violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and other countries in the region.
The continuing confrontation between the US and Russia will have a damaging impact on the global politics and economy complicating the resolution of several global problems and regional conflicts in East Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, augmenting energy prices and of other commodities and harming international trade. It is India's hope that the parties to this conflict will agree to de-escalate the situation and pursue a negotiated solution, which meets the legitimate interests of all countries.
(Yogesh Gupta is a former ambassador)