Neutral Ukraine

The United States, under the Obama administration with Biden as its vice president, had described Russia as a regional power. Today, the Kremlin finds itself surrounded by missiles from a NATO that uses countries of Russian geopolitical influence and choked with economic sanctions with the help of the EU to reduce the former USSR to that "village with a big gas station" as McCain would say.

The escalation of war, with Putin's and Biden's offensive drive, turns Europe into a dangerous battlefield whose contenders have short-, medium- and long-range nuclear warheads. Does Ukraine's neutrality deserve such a war in the heart of Europe?

NATO, created in 1949, established a strong relationship of European dependence on the US in order, during the Cold War, to deter the USSR from any attempt at communist or territorial expansion. After the Soviet collapse, NATO redefined its objectives in order to confront terrorist threats where it has failed miserably, Afghanistan being a recent and clear example of this, while at the same time expanding into Eastern countries and now towards Ukraine, which Putin considers a red line because it is his area of border and security influence.

In this context of NATO's rapprochement to Russia's borders, which rekindles the bloc confrontation, Putin's reaction was to be expected as he seeks security in his geopolitical zone, as the US has been doing in Central and South America, as well as in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine, located in Central Europe, larger than Spain and with more than 42 million inhabitants, heavily armed, with weapons and a hatred of Russia except for the pro-Russian rebel regions of Donbas and Lugansk, would be and is inconceivable.

On the European side, the Old Continent continues to show no clear vision of how to deal with Putin. Economic sanctions against Russia were first initiated in 2014 in response to the annexation of Crimea and its strategic port of Sevastopol. Today sanctions are much more restrictive and affect the Russian banking system, access to international capital markets, limitation of technologies for military or oil use, restrictions on the mobility of goods and their freezing on European soil belonging to Russian personalities, the suspension of Nord Stream 2 (despite Germany's reluctance). Meanwhile, Putin reacts with reciprocity by preventing access to Russia for European personalities, the closure of the German television station DW and the use of gas as a geopolitical weapon given Europe's vulnerability to this energy resource. A lever that could affect Spain if Putin pressures its ally Algeria to cut off the tap of the only Medgaz gas pipeline direct to Almería in retaliation to Sánchez's excessive impetus.

Berlin's refusal at the outset to use Russian gas as a sanctioning element and to provide war material to Ukraine was seen as a move that helped de-escalate tensions and position Scholz as a European interlocutor with the Kremlin. Macron's prominence was further enhanced by his first telephone interview with Putin on 28 January and his recent visits to the Kremlin and Kiev. Today, France is Russia's interlocutor in the search for a peaceful rather than a warlike solution. Significant progress seems to be being made.

Russia has declared to the UN Security Council its intention not to invade Ukraine, and President Macron is reportedly working to obtain guarantees. It seems that Putin would settle for Ukraine's neutrality by forcing a new Yalta Agreement to limit NATO's expansion and thereby entrench its security on its own borders. An agreement that would satisfy almost all parties, including China and other Eastern European countries that coalign with Russia, even if they are part of the EU and NATO itself. A solution in which both the European far right and far left converge in a common pro-Russian space.

It would be a mistake to try to revive a kind of Cold War with an isolated Russia without a military coalition, as the Warsaw Pact once was. Moreover, as is well known, economic restrictions do not work; they only radicalise the countries concerned, which often end up threatening the stability of their respective geopolitical regions or erupting into endless neighbourly conflicts.

Russia is not the Iraq that invaded Kuwait in 1990 and subsequently invaded when it had neither nuclear nor biochemical weapons or anything like them. Nor is it a village or regional power, but a nuclear one, capable of provoking a catastrophe of unforeseeable consequences in the centre of Europe.

The question that arises is why neither the US nor the EU had succeeded in integrating Russia into a cooperative dynamic. Or rather, why did they prefer to maintain the confrontation after the collapse of the USSR?