Global News Insider

Source of photo: AP

The escalation of tensions in the Donbas region has continued this week. Both Moscow and Washinghton are sending their warships into the Black sea. The United States notified Turkey that two U.S. warships would sail to the Black Sea on April 14 and April 15. These only confirms the high level of nervousness between the two countries. Russia according to the Western and Ukrainian sources has accumulated some 40 000 soldiers near the border with Ukraine, the highest number of troops there since the beginning of the conflict in Donbas in 2014. Such behaviour of Moscow leads many in the Western countries to believe that Russia is trying to provoke Kiev or it may even try to rage a war with Ukraine in order to annex the separatist republics of Doneck and Luhansk.

On Tuesday, April 13, the Russian defense minister Shoigu confirmed that Russia is conducting military exercise on its western borders in response to the NATO provocative actions in countries bordering Russia. But as we mentioned in the previous article, Russia is not interested in the rapid change of the status quo in Donbas and calls on Ukraine to strictly follow the Minsk Package of Measures in order to solve the Donbas issue. Against this backdrop, it is unlikely that Russia feels the need to quickly change the situation in the region by sending its troops to the borders of Ukraine. On the other hand, it seems that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy needs to fulfill his promise made during his presidential campaign on Donbas, but during his two years in office nothing has really changed in this war-torn region. For Zelensky this is a signal that active measures should be taken. As the report by OSCE special monitoring group in the Donbas region shows, the violations of ceasefire are reported on both sides of the conflict (Ukrainian government forces and the forces of separatist republics). According to these reports, both parties are violating the ceasefire and redeploying its troops. Ukrainian army is very active in installing of antitank mines along the remarkation line. Furthermore, Ukraine has also been quite active in mowing tanks, artillery or other military installation in the region. Western and Ukrainian medias neglect this information mentioned in the reports of OSCE and they accuse only the separatist republics and Russia of military movements. But the truth is, that neither party is fully innocent. But why Biden called Putin yesterday?

All NATO countries have consistently reaffirmed their tough stance towards Russia recently. The defense ministers of NATO during their February meeting at the NATO headquarters in Brusselds reaffirmed the readiness of NATO allies to strongly detter Russia. “Russia has increased its pattern of repressive behaviour at home and aggressive behaviour abroad,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. We also should not forget that NATO member countries are going to conduct a large scale military exercise Europe DEFENDER 2021, including Ukraine, and they even do not hide the fact that the military exercise is conducted to work out possible military confrontation with Russia. The unprecedented accumulation of Russian troops along its borders with Ukraine may be Moscow’s response to the threat posed by recent events. NATO’s consistent anti-Russian rhetoric, the deployment of new NATO troops in the Baltic states, military cooperation between Ukraine and NATO member Turkey (including the purchase of Turkish military drones that have already been used in the Donbass region) along with the growing risks of a possible resume of the conflict in the Donbas, which could at any moment escalate into a large-scale conflict near Russia’s borders: this is a rather long list of threats that Russia is no longer ready to ignore. As the aggravation in relations between the US and Russia reached its peak, the US President decided to call Putin to prevent a worst-case scenario. The problems between Russia and the United States have piled up to the point that the only way to move forward is to meet in person and discuss the red lines between the two countries. This, in particular, is the main message that Biden wanted to send to Putin yesterday. At the same time, it is a signal to all interested parties that neither the United States, nor Russia is ready to fight each other in a large scale war.