L‘Ukraine will return to Russia someday. Vladimir Putin is convinced of this. The Russian president does not support the independence of his big neighbor to the south. In an article published in July, he writes: “Russia, Ukraine, one people. “ The worrying Russian military posturing along eastern Ukraine must be appreciated in the light of the convictions thus displayed. And not otherwise.
Putin scored points. The deployment of its forces on the edge of Ukraine’s Donbass region, controlled by secessionists loyal to Moscow, has paid off. Joe Biden conceded to his Russian counterpart the opening of a debate on his grievances concerning Ukraine. The American president suggests that we talk about it between the United States and four other NATO countries, on the one hand, and Russia, on the other. The Kremlin’s starting position is known: Ukraine’s non-NATO membership must be addressed. “Guarantees” written and binding. It’s a ” Red line “ that Putin wants in black and white.
In a “memorandum” adopted in Bucharest in 2008, NATO recognizes the vocation of Georgia and Ukraine to one day belong to the organization. However, it does not set any timetable nor has it opened any accession procedure since. Germany and France are opposed to this enlargement and decisions are taken unanimously. But the Kremlin accuses NATO, especially the United States and Turkey, of overarming Ukraine in a way that threatens Russia. There would be rampant “NATOization”.
Questionable narrative
Putin is faithful to the strategic approach that he has been pursuing since 2000. He intends to come back to what the Russians conceded to the West in the aftermath of the Cold War, “When we were weak”, he said in substance. At the very least, it is a question of preventing an extension of the Atlantic Alliance to Ukraine, this country intimately close to Russia by history, religion, culture, language and so many family ties. In “Kremlinian” jargon, we talk about stopping “The attempt to contain Russia by the Western collective” – which “Collective” is accused of reneging on his post-Cold War promise not to expand NATO.
The problem with this account is that it is questionable to say the least. At the end of May 1990, when neither the USSR nor its military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, had yet been dissolved, President Mikhail Gorbachev was on a state visit to the United States. Its host, George HW Bush, defends the idea that Germany, then in the process of reunification, must remain in NATO. The American refers to the principles adopted during the Helsinki Agreements in 1975 which codified relations between East and West: a country is free to choose its alliances. The next day, at a joint press conference with Gorbachev, Bush said: “We both fully agree that, in accordance with the Helsinki Final Act, the question of alliances [de l’Allemagne] relieved of the Germans. ” Who want to stay in NATO.
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