Washington and NATO allies decry atrocities around Kyiv by withdrawing Russian troops; gird for global fight against authoritarianism
(Originally published April 5 in “What in the World“) The Administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is repeating warnings that Russia’s pullback from Kyiv is merely a pause before a new offensive. But instead of taking Kyiv, the theory is that Russia is now pursuing a more limited goal of cleaving off the Russian-speaking, breakaway provinces of the east and creating a land corridor to Crimea in the south. Some might argue that this has been Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal all along.
Indeed, many have suggested these more limited territorial concessions—along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s offer of non-NATO neutrality—might be the way to end the war. But Biden instead keeps cranking up the rhetoric of regime change, suggesting Putin be tried as a war criminal without giving any indication of how he intends to apprehend him. France and Germany have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in response to evidence Russian troops executed Ukrainian civilians in areas they controlled around Kyiv.
Zelensky is now using the alleged atrocities to continue shaming the West into escalating aid to Ukraine. On Sunday, he accused France and Germany of appeasing Russia in 2008 by offering Ukraine membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but no pathway to join.
Others suggest that as long as Putin is in power, Russia will continue to be a source of instability in Europe and the rest of the world, the antagonist in a global contest between democracy and authoritarianism. Putin is using 20th century weaponry to fight a 19th century war of geopolitical influence against a 21st century Western view of a rules-based world.
To Moscow and China’s Communist ideologues, however, that rules-based world is one based on rules set in Washington that has been creeping eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union to contain Russia by steadily adding nations in Eastern Europe to its anti-Russian military alliance, NATO.
As if to prove them right, NATO is responding to the resurgent Russian threat by fortifying a base across the Danube from Ukraine in the former Soviet satellite Romania. One of Putin’s initial demands before invading Ukraine wasn’t just that Ukraine be made neutral, Crimea ceded and the eastern provinces in Donbas be given autonomy, but that NATO roll back its military presence in the former Soviet eastern bloc. Putin may secure Ukraine by force, but in doing so has only increased Russia’s insecurity.