Andrew Butko
"Victory Day," a military parade in Donetsk organized by pro-Russian forces in the Ukraine, May, 2017.
The Trump Administration’s December announcement that it had agreed to sell lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine came as a surprise, particularly given its usual reluctance to confront Russia. Russia reacted negatively, as would be expected. After all, the weapons sold by the U.S. will be used against Russian tanks and troops.
More than 10,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed since the start of the conflict in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine in March 2014, and more than 1 million civilians have been displaced. And there has been no sign of the conflict abating, despite both sides signing a new Minsk peace accord in early 2015. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which facilitated the Minsk talks, set up a special mission in Ukraine at the beginning of the conflict to monitor activities and encourage dialogue. The mission reported an average of more than 1,000 ceasefire violations during the month of January 2018. And January was not a particularly busy month at the front line.
More than 10,000 soldiers and civilians have been killed since the start of the conflict and more than 1 million civilians have been displaced.
In one of his ‘wouldn’t it be great if we all got along’ tweets, Trump said Russia could help “solve” Ukraine. This supports the Kremlin’s narrative, which portrays Russia as concerned observers of a neighbourhood civil war. Russia managed to participate in the Minsk Peace Accords as mediators rather than combatants, and that’s why Trump talks about enlisting their help. In fact, the war would end tomorrow if the Kremlin decided to pack up and go home.
The conflict is best categorized as a Russian invasion of a neighboring sovereign state. What they describe as a civil war was entirely instigated, directed, paid for, and resourced by Russia. Putin’s so called “tractor-drivers” and “miners” in Ukraine who are attacking people there with Russian tanks and rocket launchers, in fact have a larger standing army than most European countries.
We know this partly through intelligence agencies and partly through the work of organisations like Bellingcat and Euromaidan Press. Bellingcat is an open-source digital journalism website staffed by a cohort of journalists, academics and volunteers. Using photographs posted on various social media sites, in combination with satellite imagery and street view images from Google Earth and Yandex Maps, they are able to pinpoint the coordinates of where photographs were taken––a technique they’ve used with success while covering Russia’s involvement in Ukraine.
Their work has helped identify the various types of firearms that Russian troops have funneled into eastern Ukraine. The weapons in play include the Buk anti-aircraft system that was used to shoot down the Malaysian airliner MH17, something that the Kremlin continues to deny.
The conflict in Ukraine would end tomorrow if the Kremlin would pack up and go home.
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins told The Progressive, “It's important to understand this wasn't just a few tanks and soldiers being sent over, but entire units equipped with a range of armoured vehicles, artillery, rocket launchers, and surface to air missile systems, supported by hundreds of artillery attacks launched from positions inside Russia against positions in Ukraine. When you understand this, the circumstances surrounding the downing of flight MH17 are less extraordinary. Sending a Buk missile launcher to Ukraine was business-as-usual for Russia. The only unusual thing about it was it ended up shooting down an airliner.”
Despite Russia’s displeasure, the weapons provided by the Trump Administration will not tip the conflict in Ukraine’s favour. They may not even make it to the front. Any push from Ukraine is almost guaranteed to lead to Russian troops and weaponry pouring into the Donbas in even greater numbers. And the Kremlin will continue to go to great lengths to maintain its tactic of ‘plausible deniability’––a strategy best exemplified by Putin’s 2015 decree to make the deaths of Russian soldiers in peacetime a state secret.
Despite the apparent disincentive to escalate, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug of the special mission to monitor Ukraine stated that both sides “are preparing to ramp up the conflict rather than ending it.”
Sanctions brought so far by the United States and the European Union have hurt Russia, but not enough to change their behaviour. And the Trump Administration has shown little appetite for extending sanctions.
Progress is further complicated because the Ukraine government of Peter Poroschenko is not seen by all as a reliable partner. Poroschenko, an oligarch who made his fortune in chocolates, was elected as president in 2014 to bring about the changes promised by the Euromaidan Revolution. Despite receiving many millions from the E.U., the U.S. and the IMF, he has not delivered on significant legislation to clean up high-level corruption and reform the judiciary.
There are many in Ukraine who are sceptical of the will of either side to bring the conflict to a swift and peaceful conclusion. Sergiy Rachinsky of the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy told The Progressive, “The U.S. sale (of weapons) is well-meant, but it supports the regime, not the Ukrainian people. America should refocus on supporting the liberalisation of Ukraine.”
America could also focus on maintaining and intensifying the pressure on Russia to do what was promised in the Minsk Accords: withdraw troops and weaponry and return control of the border to Ukraine. The United States, after all, has a responsibility towards Ukraine. As co-signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum the U.S. vowed to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Another signatory? Russia.
Brendan Oswald is a freelance writer and educator based in Slovakia.