I read the front page of my local financial newspaper this morning with a mixture of sadness and disbelief. Sadness for the people of Ukraine and what they now must be going through and disbelief that 'the world' thinks it can stop Putin. The time for stopping Putin has long past, in fact it past years ago when 'the world' watched on as Putin invaded Crimea.

The ONLY people that can stop Putin is his own Security Council or the people of Russia.

If you look at the body language of the Russian Security Council members in a recent 'discussion' with Putin, you can be pretty sure that they are not going to stop him.

The Security Council meeting lasted for 90 minutes at which around two dozen senior officials presented reports to Putin during the meeting and was broadcast on all major Russian TV channels. It was supposedly live, however there are serious doubts about this, Putin interrupted various presentations and was visibly bored.

As for the Russian people . . . it's possible but unlikely. Too much polonium-210 floating about, 'random' shootings, prison sentences and disappearances.

As for 'the world' this is really a European issue, albeit with global implications. Putin has been pushing back on NATO's expansion ever since it started to expanded - the latest additions being Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

NATO and Russia - a brief history

The story of NATO and Russia goes back to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 and the period of economic and political instability. In 1993 a US State Department representative noted that: 'No matter how nuanced, if NATO adopts a policy which envisions expansion into Central and Eastern Europe without holding the door open to Russia, it would be universally interpreted in Moscow as directed against Russia.'

In 1997 Boris Yeltsin had this to say at a press conference with Bill Clinton in Helsinki: "We believe that the eastward expansion of NATO is a mistake and a serious one at that."

The same year NATO and Russia signed the "Founding Act" on mutual relations, cooperation, and security, and the NATO-Russia Council was founded in 2002, both of which were intended to boost cooperation. 

In 1999 NATO carried out an aerial bombing campaign against Russian ally, Serbia, during the Kosovo war. Putin was elected president in December the same year. The former mid-ranking KGB officer who got his start in international activities at the secondary posting in Dresden, in what was then East Germany, had finally secured the top job. (You might like to read my earlier article about Putin here).

In 2008, now as Prime Minister, Putin had to deal with war on Russia southern flank, as Georgia, led by the westernising Mikheil Saakashvili, commence an air and ground assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia. Remember this? Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia while part of Georgia were effectively independent statelets that sought closer relations and financing from Russia, which maintained 'peacekeeping forces in both regions under the mandate of the UN. Are you starting to see a pattern here yet?

Throughout 2008 NATO had been floating the possibility of Georgia joining and intensified cooperation with Ukraine.

In 2013 and the start of 2014 the Ukrainian revolution occurred. This led to the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych and his government by the parliament in February 2014, during which Yanukovych fled the country to Russia. As part of this Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula. The Europeans and US instituted sanctions against Russia in response.

A few years later in May 2018 Putin opened a 19-kilometre-long road bridge linking the annexed Crimean Peninsula with Russian territories across the Kerch Strait at a cost of US $3.7 billion. The bridge, can carry up to 40,000 cars a day and a railway bridge was completed at the end of 2019. Handy for tank and troop transports one might think.

Putin, oil and greatness (or something else)

The map below shows the oil and gas pipelines from Russia across Europe.

Over the 2000-2010s Putin has seen a dramatic rise in Russia's oil and gas resource extraction along with a significant rise in revenue from these sources. Western Europe has become increasingly dependent on Russia's oil and gas to fuel their economies, heat the homes of their citizens and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Between 2005-2009 there were a number of disputes between between a Ukrainian oil and gas company, Natfohaz Ukrayiny and Russian gas supplier Gazprom, over natural gas supplies, prices, and debts.  Russia claimed Ukraine was not paying for gas, but diverting that which was intended to be exported to the EU from the pipelines. Ukrainian officials at first denied the accusation and then admitted to retaining some for Ukrainian needs. The dispute reached a high point in January 2006, when Russia cut off all gas supplies passing through Ukrainian territory. this had flow on impacts throughout numerous Western European countries.

In 2009 a Stockholm court of arbitration ruled in Gazprom's favour. As a result Russian started diverting gas from the Ukrainian pipelines via Turk Stream and Nord Stream, which is why the Nord Stream 2 pipeline comes into play in relation to the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Russia's oil and gas is needed by Western Europe and while it can be replaced over time from other sources – the Qatar, USA, Australia and elsewhere – this will take more time than usual given the supply chain challenges COVID has imposed on international shipping, let alone locked-in supply contracts.

Putin made it clear at Monday's Security Council meeting (if you can call it a meeting), that "If Ukraine were to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia,"

Why now?

Putin has given clear indications for years that he was extremely concerned about Ukraine joining NATO. The fiction that the 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border as well as in Belarus and Crimea in the south were there for exercises and then peacekeeping reminds me of Hitler's narrative in relation to Poland before invading . JD Bindenagel, a former deputy US ambassador to Germany, told DW that he believes NATO's mistake was not so much the actual enlargement, but with not taking seriously the Russian view that it had been betrayed.

To be clear, none of what I am writing is to support what Putin has done in the past and is doing right now. I am trying to provide context to why Putin is acting now and how the West is pretty much unable to 'do' anything about it.

One last thought

Most might not be aware that Putin honeymooned with his first wife, Lyudmilia Shkrebneva, in the Ukraine, first driving to Kyiv, touring Moldova, then Lviv (western Ukraine), Nikolayev and finally Crimea, staying in Yalta.

Perhaps Putin harbours some fond memories of the country and the places they visited. OR perhaps he would like to have his version of the post World War II Yalta Conference when Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met in the second of three conferences to discuss the reorganisation of Europe and Germany?

This time it might be Biden, Macron and Putin. Stranger things have happened.

Caption: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in February 1945 to discuss their joint occupation of Germany and plans for postwar Europe.

 

* Some additional reading if you're so inclined.

The New Tsar, The rise and reign of Vladimir Putin, Steven Lee Lyers

Putins' Kleptrocracy, Who owns Russia, Karen Dawisha

The Oligarchs. Wealth and Power in the New Russia, David E Hoffman

https://www.dw.com/en/nato-why-russia-has-a-problem-with-its-eastward-expansion/a-60891681