European leaders have eyes wide open but simply are too cowardly to see and act. Shame on them!
Europe’s complacency on a vital matter of its own security is damnable. The situation over Ukraine is becoming increasingly combustible, and yet the European Union is doing nothing to avert the danger. Indeed, it can be said the bloc is compounding the danger of confrontation and war.
Geopolitical tensions on the continent are being heightened by a border crisis with Belarus and Poland, which the European Union has exacerbated for cynical political reasons. These tensions are adding to instability over Ukraine and the Black Sea region.
Russia’s foreign and defense ministers are meeting their French counterparts in Paris on Friday for “2 plus 2” talks under the auspices of the Russian-French Cooperation Council. Topping the agenda will be the challenges to regional security stemming from the Ukraine conflict.
Ahead of the meeting, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked both France and Germany for “undermining” the prospects for peace in Ukraine.
Russia, France and Germany are guarantors of the 2015 Minsk Agreements which set out a roadmap for a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Ukraine. That war erupted in 2014 when the United States and the EU backed a coup d’état in Kiev the same year. The then newly installed Kiev regime launched a war against the Donbas region in Southeast Ukraine because the ethnic Russian population there did not recognize the new government.
Under the Minsk accords, the Kiev regime is mandated to observe a ceasefire and to accede to political autonomy for the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. This has not been implemented despite the election of Vladimir Zelensky as Ukrainian president in 2019 and his vow to prioritize the pursuit of a peaceful, political settlement. The former TV comedian’s election vows have turned out to be a cruel joke.
Not only has the Minsk mandate been ignored, but the Zelensky regime has also done everything to belittle the accord. The Ukrainian Armed Forces under his command have continually violated supposed ceasefire commitments on the contact line with the Donbas region. According to the monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Kiev regime’s military has breached the purported ceasefire on a daily basis with thousands of incidents over recent weeks. Also, the Kiev forces have reportedly reintroduced heavy-caliber weapons near the contact line in blatant repudiation of ceasefire terms.
The stark truth is that France and Germany have turned a blind eye to these multiple and systematic violations of the Minsk accords by the Kiev regime. Furthermore, this complacency and abdication of commitments as guarantors of the peace deal have served to embolden the Kiev regime to harbor ambitions of pursuing a military solution to the eight-year-old civil war. In short, the European powers are fueling more conflict on their own continent.
Let’s be clear, the prospect of a wider war is daunting. The Kiev regime is being heavily armed with lethal weaponry by the United States. The U.S. and its NATO allies are also building up military forces in the Black Sea with warships, fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft. This week, American and British recon planes of the type used in coordinating offensive operations were buzzing Russian borders at an unprecedented level. Moscow is warning that its national security is coming under increasing threat and that any miscalculation is only a slip away.
The absurdity of the American government is also part of the offensive. This week, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning in which he claimed that Russian military forces were amassing (on their own territory, mind you!) and they were planning to “invade Ukraine”. Blinken said: “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook.” The discombobulated contradiction is laughable, if not reckless provocation.
President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call this week that the United States and NATO are stoking instability and dangerous tensions over Ukraine and the adjacent Black Sea. It is glaringly obvious who is escalating the risk of war. But where are the European voices calling for sanity and for an urgent de-escalation?
The prevailing incendiary dynamic from the inordinate buildup of U.S. and NATO forces on Russia’s doorstep is only incentivizing the Kiev regime to further ignore the path for peace in Ukraine. There is a very real danger that the conflict in the country will explode into a full war. In that case, the United States and Russia will be dragged into the morass. And once again, Europe will be a battlefield with disastrous consequences.
The last century has seen two world wars erupting in Europe. A major factor in those conflagrations was criminal complacency among European leaders to prevent catastrophe.
Today, there is a disturbing echo of similar complacency among German and French authorities with regard to their obligations for upholding peace in Ukraine. Instead, they are indulging a reactionary regime in Kiev and ludicrous provocations by the United States.
European leaders are not merely sleepwalking towards the abyss. They have eyes wide open but simply are too cowardly to see and act. Shame on them!
