EU’s error was not recognising Putin’s red line

 

 

Sir, In “Why Europe can’t think strategically” (FT.com, April 3), Gideon Rachman argues, against the British politician Nigel Farage and others, that it is not fair to blame the EU for what happened in Ukraine, that the crisis has been a chapter of unforeseen developments and that it was hard to foresee that, just hours after signing an agreement negotiated by the three EU foreign ministers, President Viktor Yanukovich would order or allow scores of his own people to be gunned down and would then flee.

 

In fact, the agreement mediated by the foreign ministers of Poland, France and Germany was signed at midday on February 21, a full day after more than 60 were killed.

 

An inkling of what would occur on February 20 came soon after the violence of February 18, when more than two dozen, including 10 police officers, were killed. On February 19, Col Gen Volodymyr Zamana, the chief of the general staff and head of the armed forces, who had earlier expressed opposition to declaring a state of emergency and involving the military in the conflict, was fired and replaced by Admiral Yuriy Ilyin, the head of the navy. Also, Oleksandr Yakymenko, the head of the Ukraine Security Service, the SBU, announced the start of an “antiterrorist operation” involving the SBU, the ministry of internal affairs, the ministry of defence, and other agencies. Zamana’s replacement and the “antiterrorist operation” set the stage for what happened on February 20.

 

The EU’s error was not its failure to foresee that President Yanukovich would order or allow scores of his own people to be gunned down; that had already happened before the February 21 agreement was signed. Rather, it failed to understand that, after so many had been killed, any agreement that allowed Mr Yanukovich to remain in office until December, as the February 21 agreement did, would be rejected by the protesters in Independence Square and many others as well. The boos and jeers that greeted Vitali Klitschko when he announced the terms of the agreement in Maidan made it clear that, after the shootings of February 18-20, the agreement was dead on arrival.

 

That said, Mr Rachman is nevertheless right in arguing that the EU never really had a Ukraine strategy. It treated the negotiation of the association agreement as a technical exercise and failed to realise that Ukraine’s movement toward the EU could be and was regarded by Russia as a threat to its national interest and security – not just because it would preclude membership in its customs union and Eurasian Economic Union with other post-Soviet states but because it raised the spectre of Ukraine’s membership in Nato. There were 12 countries to the north, west and south of Ukraine that were controlled by communist parties before 1989 and are now members of the EU; all are members of Nato. Unlike some leaders, President Vladimir Putin doesn’t announce his red lines. But surely, Ukraine joining Nato crosses

 

Article courtesy of THE OTHER NEWS