Carnegie Moscow Center
During the Cold War, both Washington and Moscow actively encouraged, financed, and supported proxy wars across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In the eyes of many influential figures in Moscow, that is precisely what is happening in Ukraine today.
China will study U.S. strategy toward Russia and draw its own conclusions. Its interests are in keeping Russia as its stable strategic hinterland and a natural-resource base.
The Ukraine crisis has ended the period in Russian-Western relations that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has opened a new period of heightened rivalry, even confrontation, between former Cold War adversaries.
Russia is learning to live in a new harsh environment of U.S.-led economic sanctions and political confrontation with the United States.
The Kremlin now sees the U.S. goal as the toppling of the Putin regime. That said, expecting Putin to back off betrays a lack of understanding of the gravity of the situation. It is no longer just a struggle for Ukraine, but a battle for Russia.
The MH17 crisis within the larger Ukraine crisis is likely to lead to the politicization of the conflict.
The leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Borodai and Igor Strelkov, are both Russian citizens who worked for the intelligence services, fought in Chechnya, spent time in Transnistria and worked for the ultra-nationalist newspaper, Zavtra. Putin must know that they have become a toxic liability.
Ukraine’s position as an important transport corridor for Russian gas has resulted in various periods of conflict between Ukraine and Russian-state owned gas companies. But, even though both recognize they will not reach a long-term agreement quickly, one can easily see that the number of disagreements between them is not great. Both realize the need to compromise.
If the investigators’ verdict on the Malaysia Airlines plane crash does eventually fall against Russia, Vladimir Putin will survive politically, but will have to work hard to restore faith in him, and his good fortune.
MH17 may well be a turning point in the Ukraine conflict, but President Putin remains unlikely to back down despite economic pressure from the West. Russians may look back to the summer of 2014 years from now as a game changer.