Global warming, much in the news of late, has been accompanied by another unwelcome thaw. The ‘frozen conflict’ in the East of Ukraine between a Western-backed, Ukrainian nationalist government and Russian-speaking rebels with cultural affinity with Moscow, has been heating up alarmingly. Back in 2015, the Minsk 2 Agreements were signed between Ukraine and separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk with various ‘guarantors’ and ‘mediators’ also adding their names to the document — Russia, France and Germany. Notably, the United States, which is the lead backer of the Ukrainian government, was not a party. Unfortunately, like its predecessor, the Minsk Accord of 2014, Minsk 2 is functionally dead — with none of its provisions having been implemented.
The result has been a volatile front line with periodic shelling causing misery for local inhabitants. The conflict has, however, been prevented from spreading more widely by a certain balance of deterrence. The Russians, who provide the rebels with moral and material support, have not gone further than this (despite periodic scare claims in the West), have no desire to assume responsibility for the breakaway regions themselves. Similarly, Ukraine, at least until recently, has recognised that it has been unable to secure control of the area by force and that it would have no Western backing (beyond ongoing arms and training) for an open offensive.
Recently, however, there have been some worrying shifts in the balance. The US is reported to have deployed a military command ship, the Mount Whitney, to the Black Sea as well as a missile destroyer. At the same time, the US imposed new sanctions on Russia on 23 November (in response to the completion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe which would allow Russia to compete with more expensive imported US natural gas without it transiting Ukraine). Recent Western reports also state that the US has increased military activity around Russia’s borders, has offered an ‘open door’ to NATO membership for Ukraine, and is reactivating a Cold War nuclear missile unit in Germany, equipping it with hypersonic missiles.
While Secretary of State Blinken has claimed that much of this is in response to a Russian troop build up on Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian officials themselves have denied that such a build up has happened. The Ukrainian government has, however, tabled a new bill in the Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) which would officially disown the requirement to cooperate with the rebels in organising elections contained in Minsk 2.
Ukraine is suffering from fuel shortages (partly due to Russia suspending coal shipments on 1 November in response to a recent Ukrainian drone strike on rebel positions). President Zelenskiy has just lost his parliamentary majority and the leader of the largest parliamentary opposition party, Viktor Medvedchuk, has been under house arrest since May (with the television channels which he controlled shut down since February).
'If this conflict does indeed ‘unthaw’, it risks horrors at least as great as those of climate change — and in a much shorter timeframe.'
In such a febrile atmosphere, there is the risk of a serious miscalculation on one side or the other. The US president, Joe Biden, has a long association with Ukraine — famously boasting in a 2018 conference, that:
‘it just happened to be that was the assignment I got. I got all the good ones. And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to — convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev.’
Indeed, so close was the relationship that he went on to describe how he threatened to withhold those guarantees from that country’s government in order to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired. As it happens, the prosecutor was then investigating corruption by the owner of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company of which Biden’s son, Hunter, was a director — an investigation which seems to have ceased shortly after the firing.
With that history of closeness and President Biden’s falling approval ratings, it may be that some in both US and Ukrainian governments believe that unfreezing the Donbass war with US military support will boost the fortunes of a struggling economy, give both US and Ukrainian leaderships a popularity boost by bloodying the nose of the Bear and even strengthen Western Europe’s allegiance to the US.
If so, it is a dangerous calculation. Limited wars between nuclear powers are generally thought to be a contradiction in terms since the accepted wisdom on all sides has been that any direct conflict between nuclear powers will automatically escalate to a point where a catastrophic nuclear exchange becomes inevitable. If this conflict does indeed ‘unthaw’, it risks horrors at least as great as those of climate change — and in a much shorter timeframe.
Fr Justin Glyn SJ has a licentiate in canon law from St Paul University in Ottawa. Before entering the Society he practised law in South Africa and New Zealand and has a PhD in administrative and international law.
Main image: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky speaking at Holodomor Remembrance Day. (Preseident.gov.ua)