Adding fuel to the fire

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States, which repeatedly promised to protect Kyiv, has again come into the spotlight because it continues to add fuel to the fire. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a video speech complained that the Western countries have abandoned his country. Some Western netizens even asked: Where has the United States been, which provoked the war and said that it “stands with Ukraine?”

The question is how much will the West sacrifice for Ukraine? How far the Western leaders prepared to go? Four of them in particular – the US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime minister Boris Johnson. All of them vowed to protect Ukraine come what may. On the contrary, all they offered so far are words of condemnation. None of these leaders are sending troops to fight Russia. They have all ruled out a direct confrontation. So, the test for them right now is to prove that they are not what Russian President Vladimir Putin has long called them – “shallow, pretentious and ineffective.”

According to Putin, the Western leaders remain unable to act “with the kind of strength and purpose required to defeat a determined opponent.”

For the West, sanctions appear to be their top strategy at the moment, but it seems that they are betting on a blunt weapon. Russia is not Iran or North Korea and sanctions on Moscow will act more as a double-edged sword that would also hurt those who imposed them. Europe depends on Russia for its energy needs. Penalty for Moscow means costs for Brussels.

The United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, the European Union and Japan are the countries that have sanctioned Russia. They all are targeting the Russian economy. China says this is not the best way forward and rightly so. Sanctions do not work.

Russia was sanctioned in 2014 after the Crimea incident but those sanctions did not stop the Donbas incident. In 2014, the US-led western bloc sanctioned Russia. They targeted Russian banks, companies, and even some citizens. Did that help?

The company that owns Nord Stream 2 is sanctioned by the United States. The name of the company is Gazprom; it controls the 11 billion dollars gas project, Nord Stream 2. The UK also sanctioned Moscow but between 2014 and 2021, Russian companies raised at least 1.8 billion dollars a year on the London Stock Exchange – so much for sanctions.

According to the Wion news Executive Editor, Palki Sharma Upadhiya, if the west was serious about punishing Putin, it would need a better strategy. “Do they have one? Well, not yet. They are giving Russia the same Vodka in a new bottle. The US for example has sanctioned Russian state-owned banks; blocked them from trading on US and European markets, their American assets frozen. Impact on Russia, some market volatility but Putin is prepared for this. Russia has enough in reserves. More than 600 billion dollars in gold and forex reserves, a concrete plan it seems. The Russian finance minister told Reuters that all bank deposits, transactions, and foreign currencies will be secured.”

The UK too has sanctioned Russian banks but most of them are pretty small players. Also, post-Crimea, Russian state banks cut their exposure to the Western markets meaning these sanctions would not hurt them much. The UK has also sanctioned some Russian billionaires, they have been on the US sanctions list since 2018, these same people. Is the UK doing anything new? Targeting banks is fruitless, targeting already sanctioned individuals is senseless.

What about Russia’s dream project, the Nord Stream 2? Well, Germany has halted it, not stopped. The first phase of this project — Nord Stream 1 — remains unaffected and continues to supply Russian gas to the European markets. So, for now, Russia’s gas suppliers remain unaffected, which means the sanctions so far are cosmetic.

The West knows that Russia has diversified big time since 2014. It has moved away from the US treasuries and the US dollar. Today, the euro and gold have a bigger share in Russian reserves. Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, recently brushed off the Western sanctions, saying that his country was used to them. “We know that sanctions will be imposed anyway, in any case, with or without reason.”

Another option the west is exercising to punish Russia is to remove them from the SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) financial system. Removing all Russian banks from the SWIFT could prove to be disastrous for Russia. Initially, the west was divided on removing Russia from the SWIFT, as Europe’s biggest economy Germany did not seem to be convinced with this idea since they rely on Russia for 50 per cent of their gas.

Eventually, the west did remove 7 Russian banks from the SWIFT financial system, but not all. According to a senior EU official, only those banks were targeted which had connections to the state and contributed to the war effort. “We have not gone for a blanket ban across the whole banking system.” The sanctions did not include the other Russian banks which serve as the main channels for payments for Russian oil and gas, which EU countries are still buying despite the conflict.

The EU official said it was not possible simply to allow energy-related transactions and exclude others as SWIFT was unable to differentiate between the types of payments. Under these sanctions, Russia would surely use the unsanctioned banks for their payments. These Western sanctions surely lack a bit and every Western leader knows this. There is a reason why these countries are only slapping symbolic sanctions on Russia because starting an economic or trade war will boomerang and will hit the Western energy industries.

The Global Times, a Chinese publication, wrote that the “arrogant American elites” think they could profit from crises. “For years, the US has incited conflicts, manipulated the situations from offshore and reaped benefits. It is accustomed to be the one who adds the fuel to the fire without paying any cost. What it wants is to realize its instant interests. The US shows no consideration for the suffering of the locals pushed into the forefront. When there is a real crisis, the so-called commitments it initially made will only become empty diplomatic rhetoric. Those politicians don’t care about the suffering of local people at all, but attempt to attract attention under the guise of humanitarianism.”

This reminds people of when it abandoned the former Afghan regime last year, the US also said on multiple occasions it would provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan. But shockingly, the reality is that the US humanitarian assistance hasn’t been provided to the Afghan people, but Washington carved up the $7 billion in frozen funds that Afghanistan’s central bank had deposited in New York.

Another challenge the US is facing against Russia is their internal politicians. Former US president, Donald J. Trump, called Putin ‘smart’ and the US leaders ‘dumb’ during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. He also mentioned that Putin must have made the decision to attack Ukraine only after watching the pathetic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. He blamed the US leader’s policies for the last 25 years for the crisis. Trump also did not look impressed with sanctions, he said that Putin was already aware of the sanctions and must have made the calculated move. Trump is not the only US political voice blaming the US for the Ukrainian crisis. In 1998 when the US Senate approved NATO’s eastward expansion plan, the late senior US diplomat George Kennan had foreseen today’s tragedy. He had said that this expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

Another major blow that Biden has to face is the unsupportive behavior of his allies as India and Germany have been very reluctant in saying anything to Russia; as the former depends heavily on Moscow for its defence equipment and the latter relies on Russia for the gas. Also, three — China, Germany and India — out of the top five economies of the world enjoy strong economic relations with Russia and have not made any statement on cutting or even reducing their ties with the Kremlin at any level until now.

Ineffective sanctions, backlash from their own people and lack of support from the allies are not helping the West, and especially the US, against Putin’s calculative move. The Kremlin has looked well-prepared and confident in this conflict until now. First Crimea, then Afghanistan and now the Donbas; The US needs to revisit its foreign policies. The US needs to realise that the world is no more scared of the US sanctions and the NATO forces. As of now, Putin seems to have countered all the western moves, while the West looks restricted to the hollow slogans and the shallow actions.

(The writer is a staff member of BOL News. Views expressed by him are his own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy)