Brzezinski: US Should Avert Effort by Moscow to Promote Secession
With Ukrainian protesters struggling to pull their country toward greater democracy and engagement with Europe, the US and EU governments should set policies to avert any effort by Russia to divide the country by backing the secession of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking regions, says Atlantic Council senior fellow Ian Brzezinski.
“It’s very clear that the Russians are considering different options for Ukraine,” Brzezinski said in an interview. “The Russian press is full of assessments of how Ukraine can be partitioned, you’ve had senior Putin advisors traveling through Ukraine – to Kyiv, to Crimea – talking about the need for federalism, the need for regions within Ukraine to have [their] own foreign policy, even partition.”
US and EU policies should “start making clear that, as long as Russia’s acting the way it is toward Ukraine, we can’t have business as usual,” notably by slowing or halting Russia’s efforts to win greater trade and investment from the West, including its application to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Brzezinski said. Western governments also should set conditions on their participation in the G8 summit conference of industrialized democracies, scheduled to be held in the Russian city of Sochi in June, he said. “It’s not clear to me why we ought to be giving Russia, particularly President Putin, legitimacy in an economic and democratic forum like the G8 at a time when it’s using economic and political coercion to prevent the Ukrainian people from choosing the direction they want to take.”
In a February 6 article, Putin’s main advisor on Ukraine, Sergei Glazyev, told the newspaper Kommersant-Ukraine that the three-month-old protest movement, in which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have called for greater democracy and engagement with Europe, was being fueled by $20 million per week from “American sources,” plus combat training at the US Embassy in Kyiv. While such suggestions are dismissed in the West (the US Embassy declined comment), their assertion in Russia’s state-dominated media can resonate powerfully in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. Glazyev said the federalization of Ukraine is an “obvious need,” and declared that Russia is within its rights to intervene – he did not say how – in Ukraine’s crisis. He suggested that southeastern Ukraine might be given the autonomy to direct its own foreign relations and then join the Russian-led customs union into which Moscow has sought to draw other former republics of the Soviet Union.
While the US and EU governments used financial and visa sanctions this week to push Ukraine’s government to abandon a police attempt to crush the country’s broad protest movement, they have largely ignored Russia as the more relevant target of policies to help Ukraine seek a democratic, European future, according to Brzezinski.
”One shortcoming of the West’s approach to this crisis has been to kind of almost ignore the Russian role in the tragedy,” that culminated this week with police attacks on protesters in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), Brzezinski said. “We’re spending a lot of time sanctioning Ukrainian officials, but we’ve done nothing to respond to the Russian political, economic and military pressure [on Ukraine] that caused, that’s the root of, this crisis.”
Below is a transcript of Brzezinski’s remarks.
ON RUSSIA’S ROLE IN UKRAINE:
We have to remember that this whole crisis was created and catalyzed by Russian economic and military pressure on Ukraine, on the Ukrainian government, to turn course away from the European Union. That’s what happened over the course of the summer, and it catalyzed over the fall and the winter, in November, specifically.
I think it’s very clear that the Russians are considering different options for Ukraine. The Russian press is full of assessments of how Ukraine can be partitioned, you’ve had senior Putin advisors traveling through Ukraine – to Kyiv, to Crimea – talking about the need for federalism, the need for regions within Ukraine to have [their] own foreign policy, even partition. And it’s not surprising that after one of his advisors’ visits to Crimea, there’s been talk about Crimean secession. So this is a contingency that we have to closely monitor.
And I think one shortcoming of the West’s approach to this crisis has been to kind of almost ignore the Russian role in the tragedy that we see in the Maidan. I mean, we’re spending a lot of time sanctioning Ukrainian officials, but we’ve done nothing to respond to the Russian political, economic and military pressure that caused, that’s the root of this crisis. Russia used trade sanctions, used energy leverage to pressure the Ukrainians, yet have we raised in the WTO, these Russian actions?
This is a dimension that we can’t pretend doesn’t exist, because pretending that it doesn’t exist won’t make it go away. And pretending this actually ties our hand, and makes it more difficult for us to give the Ukrainians confidence that we’re going to stand with them. So this has to become a more prominent element of our strategy to help Ukraine choose its own way.
ON STEPS THAT THE US AND EU GOVERNMENTS SHOULD TAKE:
I think we have to first start making clear that, as long as Russia’s acting the way it is toward Ukraine, we can’t have business as usual. So I commend the EU’s decision not to give Russian VIPs visa-free travel in the EU. That was a useful step. I think we ought to really slow down Russia’s application to the OECD. I was surprised that the US administration was hosting the deputy Russian prime minister and talking about moving into a new trade agreement – or investment agreement – with the Russians, at the very time in December when the Russians were squeezing the Ukrainians economically. A week later the minister of energy from Russia was in Washington signing an energy cooperation agreement. At the same time, Russia was squeezing the Ukrainians through its leverage on gas and oil supplies to Ukraine. These sort of agreements ought to be ratcheted back, and the United States and the EU ought to make clear that progress in them won’t happen as long as Russia is using economic and political leverage against Ukraine.
Another consideration is to condition US participation and European participation in the G8 meeting in Sochi. It’s not clear to me why we ought to be giving Russia, particularly President Putin, legitimacy in an economic and democratic forum like the G8 at a time when it’s using economic and political coercion to prevent the Ukrainian people from choosing the direction they want to take.
So these are some steps that I think are necessary, and needed to communicate to Russia that we’re taking this seriously. And it also conditions Russian participation and role in these organizations according to the very principles on which these organizations were founded: free trade, respect for the sovereignty of other countries, respect for democracy.