Ukraine crisis creates bad will between Nato and Russia

MUNICH - The Ukraine crisis is creating a new atmosphere of mistrust between Nato powers and Russia.

Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen i and US secretary of state John Kerry criticised Russia’s conduct in Ukraine and in the former Soviet region more broadly at the Munich Security Conference, a yearly gathering of European and US security chiefs, on Saturday (1 February).

Rasmussen indicated that Russia’s recent deployment of missiles and air force units in Belarus and Kaliningrad is designed to draw a line around Ukraine and other former Soviet states.

He said: “I become concerned when I hear of the deployment of offensive, not defensive, but offensive weapons systems.”

He added immediately afterward: “Ukraine must have the freedom to choose its own path without external pressure.”

Speaking on the same panel, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov complained of EU and US diplomats’ “incitement of increasingly violent street protests” in Kiev.

He said the Belarus and Kaliningrad deployments are linked to the US installation of anti-ballistic missile systems in the region.

Visibly annoyed, he made a thinly veiled threat against the TV station, Euronews, over its reporting on Ukraine. Noting that it recently cited leaked information that Ukrainian activist Dmytro Bulatov was “tortured by Russians,” he said: "I would be very cautious about leakages, even from such a respected channel as Euronews, where Russia has 17 percent of the shares."

For his part, Kerry, speaking shortly later, declined to back down.

He noted the US and the EU have a duty to support the Ukrainian opposition in its struggle against “corrupt oligarchs” and foreign “coercion.”

“The United States and the European Union stand with the people of Ukraine in that fight,” he said.

He also framed the creation of an EU-US free trade zone in terms of giving trans-Atlantic allies more power to defend their values and interests in Ukraine-type situations.

“If we are ambitious enough, TTIP [the free trade pact] will do for our shared prosperity what Nato has done for our shared security … Our shared prosperity and security are indivisble,” he said.

“Don’t underestimate for a second the difference this would make for courageous people like those in Ukraine,” he added.

Meanwhile, EU Council chairman Herman Van Rompuy defended the EU’s handling of the crisis.

“Some people think Europeans are naive,” he said, referring to criticism that the EU’s limited offer of a free trade treaty to Ukraine is no match for Russia’s geopolitical maneouvres.

“[Our] power of attraction brought down the Berlin Wall. Our biggest carrot is a way of life. Our biggest stick: a closed door,” he noted.

The threat of a dramatic escalation was raised last week when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s defence ministry urged him to take “firm steps” to restore order.

Russia also has soldiers in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. But security analysts, such as US expert Mark Galeotti, believe it would never openly intervene in Ukraine. “That’s the kind of thing that would get the Ukrainian military feeling they would have to defend their sovereignty,” he told EUobserver.

The Nato chief and Lavrov said a military clash over Ukraine is out of the question.

Rasmussen noted: “I don’t see a role for Nato in Ukraine. It’s for the Ukrainian people to decide.” Lavrov said we live in “a time when military confrontation in Europe has become unthinkable.”

Some Munich delegates, such as a senior French diplomat, said Rasmussen’s words were unhelpful because they were bound to provoke a harsh response.

But even Russia’s biggest friend in Europe, Germany, voiced concern over future relations.

“If we were to think of a European foreign policy without or against Russia then it wouldn’t have a future. But I want to make it clear it’s also up to Moscow to see and define what they have in common with Europe and to state this commitment publicly,” German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.