A short time later, the bombings began in the cities of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Odessa and Kiev, which quickly spread to a large part of the Ukrainian territory and at the time left more than 70 military installations destroyed and about 100 people dead, mostly soldiers.
Although the president pointed out that “Russia’s plans do not include the occupation of Ukraine”the deployment of troops that included the seizure of the radioactive city of Chernobyl and the seizure of the airport near Kiev could mean something else.
In parallel, this afternoon, in a speech from the White House, US President Joe Biden announced a new battery of sanctions against Russian banks and state-owned companies to limit the country’s ability to do business in the world’s main currencies. . They will be applied against the two largest Russian banks (Sberbank and VTB) and will limit the country’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds and yen.
The measures are added to a package of sanctions from the European Union, among which are the blockade of the purchase of Russian government bonds and a prohibition on the entry of goods from the two separatist territories.
For the time being, there has been no direct response from the major powers regarding sanctions against the Russian head of state, Putin. In dialogue with Ámbito, the international analyst and professor of Geopolitics, Eduardo Martínez, gave his reasons in this regard.
“In any escalation linked to international politics there is always a margin to climb one more step. When they made the first economic sanctions, which included politicians from the Russian Duma or Congress and some Russian economic emporiums, they had also left Putin out and he drew attention, but in reality he has to do with the possibility of having another element to redouble the bet,” he explained.
Currently, both NATO and the main powers that comprise it have room to continue putting pressure on Russia. On the other hand, the decision to advance abruptly over the entire Ukrainian territory limited its room for manoeuvre, considers Martínez. “NATO and the US still have that margin to increase sanctions, while on the Russian side they no longer have it because they jumped 15 steps at the same time and the only way to move is backwards”, something that for the expert is “unlikely ”.
During this afternoon’s speech, the US president announced the sending of troops to Germany, ruling out the possibility of joining the conflict directly. “The US will never send troops that can confront Russia. It will never do it, it did not do it in 45 years of the cold war and it is not going to do it for Ukraine”, considered Martínez and remarked that there is currently no commitment from any NATO country to send troops.
For the expert in Geopolitics, the US, together with Canada, the Czech Republic and Latvia, among others, is limiting itself to selling weapons to Ukraine and applying sanctions to the US, but ruled out that there may be “by no means a NATO troop dispatch to defend Ukraine.” In any case, he advanced that one of the options will be to show “a lot of troop movement, within the borders of the NATO countries to protect the borders.”
Regarding Ukraine’s position in the conflict, he did not hesitate to state that “At the moment Ukraine is alone, that is, it has nothing but the weapons that were sold to it and its own people. There will be no foreign army supporting Ukraine.”
When asked if the US and NATO pushed Ukraine into a confrontation with Russia knowing the difference in power between one country and another, Martínez remarked that prior to the conflict “The US added fuel to the fire all the time, a situation that made France and Germany angry because they opted for diplomatic channels, precisely because they could also be victims of a future problem with Russian gas.”
Beyond NATO’s position, the expert considered that Putin, until a few weeks ago, was “in a comfortable position, because he had one foot in the negotiations and one foot in the pro-Russian separatists.” But the situation changed completely at the moment of recognizing the republics and deciding to invade Ukraine: “he doubled the bet so much that he left no other margin than to receive sanctions and not have anything else to exchange. Within the tragedy where the great powers have encouraged the fire, both Russia and the US, in an excessive way, we must add the absolute solitude in which Ukraine finds itself todaywhere the only thing he receives are letters of support, economic sanctions to his enemy but they not even a troop”.
If weeks ago the international community disbelieved in the possibility of a war, the current scenario casts doubt on any possible hypothesis in the future. What happens from now on is uncertain, but different options are presented. One of them is the seizure of the capital, Kiev, and the departure of President Volodimir Zelensky.
“If they asked me that 48 hours ago I would have said no, but today Kiev is precisely surrounded. Russia’s chance of taking Kiev in one day is clearly there. I think he is going to stop at an earlier step to be able to negotiate,” said Martínez.for whom it is the only thing left to Putin.
Refugees
In just one day, hundreds of thousands of people left the main cities of Ukraine to take refuge in the outskirts and even leave the country. for Martinez “The number of refugees is unthinkable” that can generate the conflict if it continues to escalate. He even explained that countless citizens have already crossed the border from the territories recognized as independent by Russia.
However, the chances for those in the west are even smaller. “Due to their geographical position, the Ukrainians do not have many places left to escape: on the one hand they have Belarus (Russia’s ally), Russia itself, on the other hand Crimea (annexed by Russia), added to the Black Sea. They don’t have much of a chance to get out.”
One of the options that the analyst sees as possible, although not yet concrete, to allow the assistance of citizens and allow the departure of those who wish to leave the country has to do with the intermediation of international organizations. “The option would be that there is an opening of international organizations that can enter, such as the UNHCR,” he said.
The entry of organisms “can only occur through a ceasefire,” he explained, something that according to recent events “I don’t think it will happen.” “The only one that can generate it is Russia and it is not doing it, unless it reaches the edge of Kiev and decides to do it there to negotiate with the authorities the future non-aggression to these republics that it recognizes, in exchange for withdrawing. If it doesn’t do that, it’s directly taking over the status quo, throwing out (Volodimir) Zelensky, and trying to create a pro-Russian government like it was until 2014, which would be absolute madness,” he concluded.
Source: Ambito
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