What’s been the sticking point?

Despite Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky coming to power pledging to bring lasting peace, he has little room to manoeuvre. The Kremlin wants its neighbour’s restive regions to gain an autonomy that would give them an effective veto over major shifts in Ukraine’s orientation – namely, the Western integration backed by a sizable majority of its 41 million population. But granting the regions such powers would be tantamount to political suicide for Zelensky, who’s already struggling to tame the pandemic and meet other promises, such as curbing corruption. Putin, meanwhile, has repeatedly made clear he regards Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO as an existential threat and is demanding binding security guarantees from the West to prevent it from happening. While his goals appear unrealistic, Russian diplomacy seems focused on reaching a deal with the US first, undermining attempts by Germany and France to negotiate a deal.

What else does Russia want?

Russia demanded that NATO withdraw its forces to positions they occupied in 1997 as it set out sweeping proposals for a massive Western pullback in two draft security treaties presented to the US government. Russia and all NATO states that were members in May 1997, before the first eastern European countries were invited to join the alliance, shouldn’t “deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other states in Europe” that were not already in place on that date, according to one of the treaties published on December 17 by the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. The US must also pledge to bar entry to NATO for ex-Soviet states such as Ukraine and Georgia and refuse to make use of their military infrastructure or develop bilateral defence ties with them, according to the second treaty. After Russia’s talks with the US and NATO concluded in January without a clear path forward, an American diplomat said Russia must decide if it’s interested in resolving the standoff over Ukraine or is seeking a pretext to invade.

What’s the fear?

If US warnings of an invasion are borne out, it would plunge the West and Russia into the worst confrontation since the Cold War. A Russian intervention on this scale to annex territory or even to overthrow the government in Kiev would represent the most serious challenge to European security in decades, dwarfing the crisis triggered by Putin’s takeover of Crimea and the unrestrained fighting that characterised the eastern Ukrainian conflict’s earlier days. Russia’s five-day war with Georgia, another former Soviet republic that turned its gaze to the West, began in a similar fashion in 2008 and ended in effective annexation of rebel areas by Moscow.

What can the West do about it?

The US, EU and UK have in recent years imposed several rounds of sanctions targeting Russian individuals and companies, hitting the country’s energy and banking sectors. While Russia downplays their impact, its economy has stagnated and its officials have pushed to have the punishments revoked. Other potential measures include targeting Russian billionaires, or making further efforts to derail the new Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

Bloomberg