Putin's Power Play: Why Russia Holds Most of the Cards in the Ukraine Crisis
10/21/14
James W. Carden
Security, Foreign Policy, Energy, Ukraine, Europe, Russia, United States
And why the situation might go from bad to worse.
Reports out of Milan regarding last Friday’s much anticipated meeting
between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Petro
Poroshenko indicate that little progress has been made toward resolving
the nearly yearlong Ukraine crisis. This, given the broader political
currents at play in Europe, is unsurprising.
To
begin with, Mr. Poroshenko has, for all intents and purposes, lost the
military battle over the Donbas in resounding fashion. While his bloc
leads in the polls ahead of next Sunday’s
parliamentary election, Poroshenko faces a number of other challenges,
not least of which is a collapsing economy (some estimates have the Ukrainian economy shrinking by 10 percent this year) and a burgeoning populist backlash over the government’s handling of the crisis.
So what we saw play out in Milan is more or less a repeat of the last Putin/Poroshenko meeting that took place in Minsk on August 26, because the same logic applies. Mr. Putin, as I wrote then,
is always going to be the party—regardless of whether he is facing
sanctions or a chorus of international condemnation—who will be playing
the stronger hand in negotiations with Ukraine. Yet as we approach
November, his hand is even stronger, as the crisis begins to transform
from a military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine into a
confrontation between Ukraine and Europe over the supply of Russian
natural gas. Ukraine serves as the transit point for 50 percent of
EU-bound Russian LNG, and Ukraine’s siphoning off of LNG bound for
southeastern Europe, which led to Russia cutting off the supply in
January 2006 and January 2009, is still fresh in the minds of European
leaders.
Read full articlehttp://nationalinterest.org/feature/putins-power-play-why-russia-holds-most-the-cards-the-11506
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