Jacques Serais and Gauthier Delomez
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4:03 p.m., February 22, 2022
Failing to have been able to avoid this situation, Emmanuel Macron and the European Union take sanctions. Vladimir Putin’s Russia on Monday evening recognized the independence of two Russian separatist territories in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, and deployed troops there to “maintain peace”. In response, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday suspended the use of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, linking Germany to Russia, and the EU is preparing to impose other “massive and robust” sanctions. If these are often mocked for their inefficiency, in the program South Europe Tuesday, the geopolitician Cyrille Bret explains why, according to him, it is “indispensable” to sanction Russia.
Prevent the Russian army from reaching Kiev
“If Russia had not been subject to sanctions since 2014, it would already be in Kiev,” said the researcher associated with the Jacques Delors Institute at the microphone of Romain Desarbres. “Sanctions are essential for Europe to be able to weigh against Russia, because the Russian Federation only understands the balance of power, not necessarily military, but also economic, diplomatic, political, media, in cyber space”, continues the lecturer at Sciences Po Paris.
Among the sanctions imposed on Tuesday morning, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson decided to punish five banks and three Russian oligarchs. For its part, the European Union wishes, for example, to prohibit Moscow’s access to its markets and financial services. “These sanctions are essential”, insists Cyrille Bret. “Imagine, if Europe did not take one today (Tuesday), when Russian tanks have officially just, for the first time, crossed the border of a sovereign and independent state, that would mean that it approves of Russian policy in Ukraine”, analyzes the director of the Eurasia Prospective site on Europe 1.
Why Russia is interested in two Ukrainian territories
However, sanctions alone are not enough, according to the geopolitician. “We must also keep a possibility of increasing diplomatic and economic pressure if Russia were to venture beyond the territory it claims to protect, that is to say the self-proclaimed illegal separatist republic of Donetsk and Lugansk “, he says in the show South Europe.
From now on, Cyrille Bret evokes “three possible scenarios” for the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. “The worst-case scenario is if Vladimir Putin goes all the way to Kiev. be in the use of nuclear weapons”, warns the geopolitician. A scenario “more optimistic, that of restraint”, can take place if Russia is satisfied with its latest statements, continues Cyrille Bret.
Finally, the lecturer underlines a last possible scenario: “Russia can transform the small Sea of Azov, which separates Lugansk and Donetsk to the east of Crimea. This would allow Russia to establish territorial continuity between it and Crimea, which the Russian Federation has already annexed to the very south of Ukraine.” And for the geopolitician, this last scenario would lead to “terrible fighting on a coastal line of several hundred kilometers between the Russian army and the Ukrainian army, therefore a real war of very high intensity on the territory of Ukraine. “