Russians cross the Rubicon

Wednesday 23rd February, 2022

The western bloc may have thought that its rhetoric, threats and other intimidatory tactics would help browbeat Moscow into coming to terms to the planned enlargement of NATO into Ukraine, and withdrawing its troops, but the Russians have forged ahead, and President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree declaring two Ukrainian regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, independent entities. The US, the UK, the EU and their allies have decried Russia’s military incursion, and imposed sanctions; they have refused to recognise the independence of the two regions. No such retaliatory action will deter Russia, much less make it undo what it has done. The Russians have crossed the Rubicon.

It is wrong to invade countries, or promote secessionism, and Russia should have acted with restraint. Similarly, Ukraine should not have become a party to the western strategy to ‘encircle’ Russia. The question is whether the US, which has taken up cudgels for Ukraine and condemned Russia, would have acted differently if its enemies had sought to set up military bases close to its borders. The US has bombed populous cities into oblivion, engineered bloody military coups and killed millions of people in wars in other countries to protect its interests, hasn’t it? Some of those who are defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity have a history of breaking up countries. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, former Sri Lankan ambassador to Russia, in his column published on this page today, points out that they readily recognised independence declared by Croatia and Slovenia, thereby causing the breakup of Yugoslavia.

This world is full of injustices; it has never been a civilised place. It is governed by the law of the jungle. Big powers act according to their whims and fancies, and the UN has become a big joke. The weak have to grin and bear it, and many of them have become pawns in the games that powerful nations play to dominate the world, Ukraine being the latest victim.

Sri Lanka also made the mistake of antagonising its big neighbour by getting too close to the US. India, an ally of the socialist bloc at the time, retaliated by creating conditions for deploying its troops here on the pretext of peacekeeping. It however stopped short of doing what Russia has done in Ukraine—recognising the independence of the areas controlled by separatist terrorists; it did so for its own sake, given the secessionist tendencies in Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka has not yet recovered fully. Today, the US and India are inseparable allies and even giving Sri Lanka lessons on accountability and human rights!

It will be a huge mistake for Ukraine to confront Russia militarily, expecting the US to have its back. Washington has already dispatched several consignments of weapons to Ukraine, according to media reports, but it is only wishful thinking that the latter will be able to halt the Russian military juggernaut. There will no foreign boots on the Ukrainian soil to fight the Russians, who cannot afford to lose a war close to their borders, and therefore will go all out to win it, regardless of the consequences.

It has been argued in some quarters that the Ukrainian crisis could have been resolved if the US had agreed to a deft compromise like the one that helped bring about a peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The US could have helped obviate the Russian incursion if it had compromised on the NATO expansion with Russia agreeing to pull back its troops, but now it is apparently too late. However, efforts to de-escalate the conflict must be redoubled to avert a humanitarian disaster.

Western sanctions will no doubt hurt Russia, which however is strong enough to withstand them, but they are bound to make other economies scream for no fault of theirs. Sri Lanka is a case in point. Oil prices have already surged owing to the Ukrainian crisis, and they will take a heavy toll on the pandemic-hit global economy.

The focus of the self-proclaimed world leaders, at this juncture, should be on saving lives and straightening up crumbling economies to prevent a steep rise in poverty and hunger, but unfortunately they are busy furthering their military and economic interests amidst the worst-ever global health emergency.