Is the European Union's Russia policy failing? Recent developments in southeastern Ukraine have shown that the results of the EU's response to the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking majority population have been mixed at best. The EU's policy on Russia and Ukraine has now boiled down to one key pledge: pestering Russia, come what may. The EU summit in Brussels last Saturday gave the Kremlin an ultimatum to quit its policies in Ukraine within a week and to reverse course in the east of the country or face a new round of sanctions. Kiev has warned that it is on the brink of full-scale war with Moscow. But the EU must confront the logic of its pugnacious policy towards Russia. The Kremlin is in no mood for compromising. The Russian Federation is flexing its muscles precisely because it claims it cares for Russia's kith-and-kin in the countries that were once part of the former Soviet Union. “They [the Europeans] should have known that Russia cannot stand aside when people are being shot almost at point-blank range,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who vowed to defend the rights of Russian speakers and people of ethnic Russian descent. “We need to immediately begin substantive talks on questions of the political organisation of society and statehood in southeastern Ukraine, with the goal of protecting the lawful interests of the people who live there,” Putin said. The Kremlin said that the EU would be ill advised to interfere in the conflict in southeastern Ukraine. In these hard times, Moscow argued, the EU would surely suffer as much as Russia if it imposed any more sanctions on Russia. Some way forward needs to be found if a resolution to the crisis is to be identified. In the present crisis, the Kremlin has pointed an accusing finger at the EU, while the Europeans view Russia as the aggressor. Meanwhile, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, said that pro-Kremlin insurgents are “preparing a second large-scale offensive.” The Europeans believe that Russia is using force to gain full control of the strategic Azov Sea, including plans to overrun the port city of Mariupol to the south of Donetsk to secure a corridor to the Crimea. Eastern European countries, and in particular former Warsaw Pact states such as Poland and former Soviet Union states such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all three of which have large ethnic Russian minorities, are also fearful of Russia's intentions. In this context, it is no coincidence that the EU has elected Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as president of the European Council. It has also elected an Italian, Federica Mogherini, to replace Britain's Catherine Ashton as EU foreign policy chief. Italy is heavily dependent on Russian gas, as are a number of Eastern European countries, including Poland. Moreover, the Italian corporate world is closely connected to Russia. It will be interesting to see how Mogherini handles the Russia question. Meanwhile, the Ukraine knows that NATO is unlikely to accept its membership in the organisation it so desperately seeks. The west may be threatening to impose more sanctions against the Kremlin, but it is not prepared to go to war with Russia. “We are very close to the point of no return. The point of no return is full-scale war, which is already happening in the territories controlled by the separatists,” the country's president, Petro Poroshenko, was quoted as saying in Brussels. He had flown to the Belgian capital to participate in the EU summit. Ukraine is not an EU member state, but it is seeking EU membership. “Today we are talking about the fate of Ukraine. Tomorrow it could be all of Europe,” he warned the EU. “Are we going to let the situation worsen until it leads to war?” French President Francois Hollande asked in Brussels. “There is no time to waste,” he added. British Prime Minister David Cameron was even more blunt, telling his fellow Europeans in Brussels that it was “totally unacceptable that there are Russian soldiers on Ukrainian soil.” But different calculations, financial and political, are at stake, and they tell widely divergent tales. NATO claimed on Thursday that Russia had sent at least 1,000 troops to fight alongside the insurgents in Ukraine, along with air defence systems, artillery, tanks and armoured vehicles, and had massed 20,000 troops near the border. The Kremlin is unlikely to concede to the west's demands. The west and Russia have diametrically opposed notions about how society ought to be run. Kiev has opted for the European model. But the Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian majority in southeastern Ukraine prefer the Russian example. Europe should now steel itself to wait patiently, and not try, in an impetuous rage, to fight Russia. Europe and Russia have reached a stalemate. Europe is as likely to be hurt by sanctions against the Kremlin as Russia itself. As a result, the Ukraine, unfortunately for Kiev, has become Europe's liability.
