Last week I was at UCLA for our Advanced Management Program in Media & Entertainment and was prepared to write about California but that will have to wait as it appears that Russia is likely to invade Ukraine at any moment.
According to the Daily Telegraph, the death of 32 pro-Russian protestors in Odessa could offer Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, the pretext he needs to send the Russian Army into Ukraine.
While I am not sure of it accuracy, a website called globalfirepower.com allows the comparison of the Russian army to the Ukrainian and with almost 5 times as many men, 8 times as many helicopters and more than 10 times as many tanks, Ukraine does not stand a chance in open conflict.
Not so secret war
The first phase of Russia’s operation was its takeover of Crimea where it sent thousands of heavily armed soldiers to occupy the province prior to its takeover of the regional parliament and the holding a hastily organized referendum which of course voted to join Russia.
This appeared to be the plan in the Eastern provinces of Ukraine which, as discussed in this space, is not as Russian as most media is saying. This time, according to Genya Savilov, Russia is using a mix of its own special forces and intelligence units with the local Mafia to repeat the play in Crimea.
The Ukrainian government has been understandably trying, over the last few weeks, to stop Russia from taking over half, or perhaps even all of the country, but I fear that the trap is almost complete.
If Kiev allows these so called “patriots” to hold their “referendums”, then they will bully the local population into acceptance and as they try to stop them, with force, they give Russia the pretext to invade.
Why worry?
One may wonder why a Professor who is primarily interested in Energy and the environment, spends so much time worrying about geopolitics and what is happening in Ukraine?
- The first point is that, as far as I can tell, the Ukrainian people rose up against the former government not so much to be European, but because they were fed up with the criminal behavior of Viktor Yanukovych and his cronies and that to see Russia bringing these same people back is an enormous human tragedy.
- The second is that Ukraine sits in a critical position between Russia and Europe and could potentially control the flow of natural gas which keeps Europe warm and the Russian government solvent.
- The last reason is the future of the northern part of the planet, which as UCLA’s Laurence Smith writes in his exceptional book, The World in 2050, will become increasingly important, depends largely on the excellent multilateral relations that have existed between the arctic powers for the last 20 years.
As I predicted, the West was ready to allow Russia to have Crimea but I can not imagine how President Obama and Chancellor Merkel will go back to business as usual after the seizure of Donestk and Kharkiv.