During a session of parliament in Kyiv, lawmakers hold state flags of Ukraine's partners to show their appreciation for the political support and military aid their country has received, on Feb. 1, 2022.STRINGER/Reuters
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West has ignored his country’s security concerns and warned that if Ukraine were allowed to join NATO it could lead to war between Russia and the Western military alliance.
Mr. Putin, making his first public comments on Ukraine in almost six weeks, accused the United States of being less interested in ensuring the security of Ukraine than in containing Russia.
He raised a hypothetical scenario in which Ukraine, after joining NATO, tries to regain the Crimean Peninsula by force. Mr. Putin ordered the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, a move Canada and the rest of the international community view as illegal.
“Let’s imagine Ukraine is a NATO state and they start this operation [to retake Crimea]. So now do we have to start a war against the NATO alliance? Did anyone think about that? I don’t think so,” Mr. Putin said at a joint news conference in Moscow with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday. The event was carefully scripted, with only a handful of Russian and Hungarian reporters invited.
As Mr. Putin spoke, an estimated 130,000 Russian troops remained massed on three sides of Ukraine. Even more menacing than the troop presence, military analysts say, is the number of tanks, artillery and other equipment Russia has positioned near Ukraine’s eastern border, as well as in Crimea, to the south, and in Belarus, a close Russian ally directly to the north of Ukraine.
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Canada changed its travel advisory Tuesday to warn against all travel to Ukraine “due to ongoing Russian threats and the risk of armed conflict.” The updated statement on the government website advises that “if you are in Ukraine, you should leave while commercial means are available.” The previous advisory had advised against all “non-essential” travel to the country.
Last week Canada ordered non-essential diplomatic staff and the families of all diplomats to leave Ukraine, (although additional envoys are being flown in to bolster sections of the embassy that are dealing directly with the crisis). Canadian military trainers working with the Ukrainian military have had their movements restricted to the west of the country.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, on a visit to Kyiv, accused Mr. Putin of trying to change the security arrangements of Europe.
“It’s about the whole European security architecture, because be in no doubt about what I think President Putin is trying to achieve here. I think that he is trying, by holding a gun as it were to the head of Ukraine, by intimidating Ukraine, to get us to change the way we look at” European security, Mr. Johnson said at a news conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This is a clear and present danger. We see large numbers of troops massing. We see preparations for all kinds of operations that are consistent with an imminent military campaign.”
Britain, which has sent several planeloads of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine in recent weeks, is one of a handful of Western countries that have rushed military aid to Ukraine’s outmatched forces. Canada, so far, has sent only non-lethal aid – as well as an additional 60 military trainers – despite intense pressure from the 1.3 million-strong Ukrainian-Canadian diaspora.
No foreign government has said it would fight alongside Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion.
The Russian buildup has sparked a frenzy of high-level diplomacy, culminating in the U.S. and NATO replying in writing last week to Moscow’s main demand that Ukraine never be allowed to join the alliance. The Kremlin has also called for NATO to withdraw its troops and weapons from much of Eastern Europe.
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a call with Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov. According to a U.S. readout of the call, Mr. Blinken told Mr. Lavrov that “if President Putin truly does not intend war or regime change … this is the time to pull back troops and heavy weaponry and engage in a serious discussion.”
While the contents of the letters from the U.S. and NATO have not been made public, the U.S. has said they contain no major compromises. On Tuesday, Mr. Putin said it was clear “Russia’s core security concerns were ignored.”
Russia, he said, had been promised at the end of the Cold War that NATO “would not move a single inch to the east” – a claim disputed by many Western historians. NATO has expanded repeatedly eastward since then, growing from a 16-country alliance in 1991 to 30 countries today by gaining members that once deferred to the Soviet Union.
“They said one thing, they did another thing … we were basically swindled. We were lied to,” Mr. Putin said. “Now they say that the next step is Ukraine.”
Mr. Putin has repeatedly mourned the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union – an empire many believe he seeks to at least partially restore. He charged that Washington’s interest in Ukraine was really about “hindering the development of Russia.”
Ukraine, he said, was “just a tool” to accomplish that aim. “You can do it in various ways. You can drag us into some kind of armed conflict and, by using your allies in Europe to impose these hard-line sanctions against us that the United States is talking about, or they can drag Ukraine into NATO.”
While his speech was long on grievances, it was short on statements about what Russia intends to do if its security demands are not met. No timelines were mentioned.
He did hold the door open for a negotiated solution, however, pointing to the possibility that French President Emmanuel Macron will soon visit Moscow for talks.
Meanwhile, Mr. Orban, who praised his country’s warm relations with Russia, appeared to undermine the West’s position on the Ukraine crisis by suggesting that Hungary – which is a member of both the European Union and NATO – does not favour the use of sanctions against Mr. Putin and his regime.
Canada, the U.S. and the EU have warned they would impose harsh, co-ordinated sanctions against Mr. Putin and his inner circle should Russia attack Ukraine. Mr. Orban, however, called sanctions “a tool doomed to failure.” He said the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after the annexation of Crimea had caused more damage to Hungary than to Russia.
On Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky signed a decree to increase the size of the Ukrainian army by 100,000 soldiers over the next three years and to raise salaries. He has previously criticized Western governments for creating “panic” by speaking of the possibility of imminent war but said the moves to boost the country’s military were not related to the current situation.
Speaking at the news conference with Mr. Johnson, Mr. Zelensky said no one can predict what will happen next in the crisis. He warned a Russian attack on his country would lead to “tragedy and a full-scale war in Europe.”
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