Warning of border flashpoint

By Andrew Hammond

With the eyes of much of the world on Afghanistan, Angela Merkel completed the last big foreign policy trip of her chancellorship on the weekend to one of the world's other major flashpoints ― Russia and Ukraine which has become the bloodiest European conflict since the wars over the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

To be sure, much of the fighting ended with a 2015 ceasefire. Yet, deadly exchanges of fire continue, and fighting between Ukraine and Moscow-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, alone, have killed around 14,000 people, with some 2 million people having fled their homes.

There is also a clear economic dimension to the crisis. The conflict is at the heart of wider U.S.-Germany discord over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline; the now near-complete 764-mile pipeline under the Baltic Sea will double Russian gas exports to Germany.

Ukraine says Nord Stream 2 threatens its security ― indeed that it fears a full-scale Russian invasion once it is fully operational ― plus losses of about $3 billion a year in gas transit fees.

Under the terms of the U.S.-German deal last month to smooth tensions over these issues, Ukraine will reportedly get a guarantee of repayment for the gas transit fees through to 2024, plus $50 million in green energy technology credits.

While military tensions between Ukraine and Moscow have cooled somewhat in recent weeks, the border remains one of the most dangerous flashpoints in the world.

Earlier this year, Moscow built up an estimated force of some 100,000 troops in a major show of force, with former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak warning of a potential armed intervention to help citizens in eastern Ukraine. Russia also restricted airspace near Crimea and the Donbas region, and it blocked parts of the Black Sea.

The buildup worried the West, with former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steve Pfifer asserting the situation was "one step from war." To this end, the United States put its forces in Europe on a higher level of alert with President Joe Biden, who previously served as the U.S. point person on Ukraine during the Obama administration, re-affirming his support for Ukraine's "sovereignty and territorial integrity."

This commitment is important given international fears about the viability of the Ukrainian state. In Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian-backed separatists have seized significant portions of the regions with heavy weaponry.

With Volodymyr Zelensky traveling to Washington to see Biden next week, the first time a Ukrainian president has visited the White House in over four years, Merkel sought to calm tensions on the weekend. She has often cited her own experience of growing up behind the iron curtain in East Berlin during the Cold War, and has repeatedly said that there is no military solution to the conflict.

On several occasions in recent years, leaders such as ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Petro Poroshenko and former French President Francois Hollande have warned of "full-scale war" and "total war" respectively.

While Merkel has used more restrained rhetoric, her relationship with Putin has been strained for some time, most recently because of the nerve-agent poisoning of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

The fundamental question shaping the future of the conflict is likely to remain the risk tolerance of the Russian leadership, with Putin potentially remaining in power into the 2030s.

Previously, Moscow had hoped that sustained economic, military and political pressure could lead to significant loss of support within Ukraine for the pro-Western orientation of the Kiev government.

That scenario has not fully come to pass yet, and a key question now is the degree to which the U.S. and wider West will continue to support Ukraine. At his meeting with Biden, Zelensky is likely to request that top U.S. officials assist with peace negotiations given that the current Normandy Summit and Trilateral Contract Group have stalled.

It is also possible he will request further clarity on Ukraine's relationship with NATO. Since the start of the conflict, Ukraine has undergone a series of defense reforms to become interoperable with the Western military alliance becoming the first partner nation to participate in NATO's Response Force, and is also one of six non-members to hold "Enhanced Opportunities Partner" status.

If tensions rise again, international debate could reignite not just about U.S. and European sanctions in place in 2014, but also intensified military support for Kiev.

It is also possible this would reopen debate in Washington over enhanced U.S. bilateral military support for Kiev following Obama's consideration toward the end of his term of office of a range of potential options, including so-called "non-lethal" equipment such as reconnaissance drones and radar screens.

However, the West is divided on this issue, with some, including Merkel, especially concerned that provision of extensive tranches of such equipment could be used by Ukraine not just to secure military balance on the ground between its own and separatist forces, but that it could potentially become a means to achieve riskier military goals that could see the crisis potentially spiraling out of control again with Moscow potentially raising the stakes too.

Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.