BY
The Trump administration is facing its
first major test on the international stage as volleys of Russian artillery and
rockets continue to pound Ukrainian forces in the country’s contested east,
reigniting the frozen conflict and killing about a dozen Ukrainian soldiers
since Sunday.
The
barrages, along with renewed pushes by Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian
forces near the government-held industrial town of Avdiyivka, spiked dramatically
on Sunday. The day before, Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held
their first phone call, reportedly talking about forming a new alliance against
the Islamic State and working together on a range of other issues.
The international body tasked with monitoring
violations of the Minsk agreement reported at least 2,300 explosions from
artillery, mortars and rocket fire on Sunday alone, the day after the
Trump-Putin call. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said
this was a sharp increase from the intermittent shelling that marks an ordinary
day long the front, but that the fighting was so intense it could not properly
keep count.
Ukrainian forces also appear to be
advancing into the no-man’s land separating government-controlled territory
from rebel-held areas, in what seems a bid to strengthen their bargaining
position if they have to go back to the negotiating table again with a weaker
hand.
Trump’s
affinity for Russia, and his phone call Saturday with Putin, has stoked fear in
Kiev and among NATO allies that Trump could strike a deal with Moscow that
would mean less U.S. support for the Ukrainian government, and potentially give
Russia a freer hand in its destabilization efforts there.
One
U.S. defense official, speaking with Foreign Policy on the condition of
anonymity, said the Pentagon has long been anticipating an uptick in Russian
aggression in Ukraine as Moscow tries to gauge “what they could accomplish”
under the Trump administration.
The new fighting, and reports Wednesday
that a Ukrainian transport plane was struck by Russian ground fire, indicates
that “the Russians are not ready to make any peaceful gestures on the ground,”
said Alexander Vershbow, until late last year deputy secretary general of NATO.
The
Kremlin, he said, “may be trying to test the new administration to see if they
distance themselves from Kiev, and tell [Ukrainian president] Petro Poroshenko
that he has to make the best deal with Russia, which of course would destroy
him politically.”
Asked
Wednesday if the administration views the renewed fighting as a direct
challenge from Russia, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said, “We’re keeping
an eye on the situation in Ukraine.” Earlier, the State Department released a statement condemning
the violation of the 2014 cease-fire in Ukraine that managed to avoid
mentioning Russia at all.
The
U.N. Security Council on Tuesday expressed its “grave concern” over the
“dangerous deterioration” in eastern Ukraine and called for a halt to the
violence by both sides.
The
U.S. defense official said Moscow has little reason to implement the Minsk
cease-fire agreement. “This is all very calculated to have this open, bleeding
sore on Ukraine’s body politic that will allow [Russia] to manipulate the
situation and the politics of the country, and thereby keep Ukraine in this
post-Soviet kleptocratic orbit,” he said.
The
Ukraine-Russia conflict was hard enough for Europe and the United States to
confront when Europe was more unified, and transatlantic ties were strong.
Appearing
before a House Armed Services panel Wednesday, former CIA Director David
Petraeus testified that
Putin understands very well “that while conventional aggression may
occasionally enable Russia to grab a bit of land on its periphery, the real
center of gravity is the political will of the major democratic powers to
defend Euro-Atlantic institutions like NATO and the EU.”
But
resurgent nationalism and growing divisions between Brussels and Washington
make a unified response harder. The fighting is “a test of how well Washington
and Europe will coordinate” when faced with a crisis, said Franklin Holcomb
from the Institute for the Study of War.
A major
point of contention are the sanctions that the United States and Europe slapped
on Moscow for its 2014 invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. If
Washington were to end its participation in the sanctions — as Trump has hinted
— European resolve will likely crumble, handing a major diplomatic and economic
win to Putin.
So far,
some Trump administration officials are publicly presenting a business-as-usual
line on Russia. On Monday, new U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley made her first round
of calls and visits with U.N. colleagues, speaking with representatives from
Israel, the U.K., France, and, notably, Ukraine. She reaffirmed U.S. “support
for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” according to a
release from her office.
It’s
not just Ukrainians who wonder about U.S. resolve in the face of a Russian
challenge. American and German tanks — along with thousands of other NATO
troops — are taking up positions in NATO’s Baltic countries to reassure locals
nervous about the prospect of Russian aggression. The temporary deployments
were planned during the Obama administration, but could now be cut back.
During
the campaign, Trump harshly criticized U.S. troop deployments in Europe, saying
that the Europeans should pay for their own defense. The U.S. rotation of 4,000
troops and 90 tanks to Eastern Europe is funded out of the $3.4 billion
European Reassurance Initiative, a fund that could find itself in the
crosshairs of Trump and his incoming budget director Mick Mulvaney, who wants
to save money by slashing the Pentagon’s spending on overseas deployments.
If the
fund there slashed, it would represent “a major breach of solidarity” with
Europe, Vershbow said.
“The
Russians would see that as a bonanza that they would try and exploit by
convincing countries like Bulgaria and the Czech Republic that the U.S.
couldn’t be counted on.”
Photo Credit: ALEKSEY FILIPPOV/AFP/Getty Images
No comments:
Post a Comment