lunes, 5 de mayo de 2014

lunes, mayo 05, 2014

Puzzling question over Ukraine’s latest offensive

May 2, 2014 11:07 am

by Gideon Rachman
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The Ukrainian government’s decision to launch an offensive to re-take the city of Slavyansk from Russian-backed separatists marks a shift both in rhetoric and in strategy. In recent days, the noises coming from the government in Kiev has been rather defeatist. On Tuesday, the acting Ukrainian president Oleksandr Turchynov said that his government’s forces were “unable to take the situation in the (eastern) region under control.” Speaking to me in Kiev yesterday, Arseny Yatseniuk, the interim prime minister, said that Ukraine had been placed in a “trap” by Russiain which any Ukrainian effort to take on the separatists (or “terrorists” as Yatseniuk calls them) could be used as an excuse for full-scale Russian military intervention. Nonetheless, Kiev has decided to take the risk. The question is why?

The main reason for going on the offensive seems to be a fear that – if Kiev failed to act – it would create a self-fulfilling prophecy of loss of control of the East. Russian-backed separatists would be emboldened to grab more administrative buildings and even whole towns. And the general population, regardless of their preferences, would begin to accept that Kiev’s writ no longer applied in the East. President Turchynov’s statements on Tuesday had also sparked criticism in Kiev, where political opponents had accused the government of being weak and defeatist. Indeed some Kiev residents I spoke to this morning felt that the government had made a mistake by simply moving on Slavyansk – and should have launched a broader assault on separatists in the East.

If the Slavyansk operation is successful, that broader assault may yet happen. But the government has started its operations there, believing that Slavyansk is the nerve-centre of the Russian-backed operation to wrest eastern Ukraine from the Kiev government.

The risks of the operation are obvious. Ukrainian officials are frankpossibly too frank – about the limitations of their forces, which are relatively poorly-paid and equipped. The big fear is that the Ukrainian assault will now be used as an excuse for Russian peacekeepers” to pour across the border – in what would effectively be a Russian invasion. If that happens, it may happen in the next week or so, in the run-up to May 9th, which Russia commemorates as the day the USSR triumphed over fascism.

The Ukrainian government’s hesitation up until now may also reflect the conflicting pressures the government is under from its western allies. The German government in particular has been putting the Kiev authorities under intense pressure not to go on the offensive. This reflects both innate German caution and the fact that four of the OSCE hostages being held by separatists in Slavyansk are Germans. The Americans, by contrast, have been urging the Ukrainians to assert their authority in the east.

These tensions between the American and German approach may not be on open display, as Chancellor Angela Merkel meets President Barack Obama in Washington this Friday. But they are just beneath the surface – and the Russian government will be doing its utmost to widen any split between the US and the EU.

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