Making a move

Russia’s interests and strategic limitations in Eastern Ukraine

By András Rácz
A
ssociate Professor, Pázmány Péter Catholic University

  • This article was originally published as part of the 2018 edition of Bled Strategic Times, the official gazzette of the Bled Strategic Forum (BSF) international conference. You can access the full version of this and other BSF publications by visiting our official website.

On 16th July 2018 in Helsinki Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly proposed U.S. President Donald Trump to hold a referendum in the occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine about the future status of the region. Shortly thereafter, on 24th July 2018 an earlier unannounced meeting took place between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Foreign Minister Heiko Maas with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in Berlin. Still on the same day, Lavrov and Gerasimov travelled to Paris, and met French President Emmanuel Macron as well. Besides other issues, both discussions touched upon the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. The proposal to send a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Eastern Ukraine to assist the work of the already present OSCE observers (originally launched by Russia in September 2017) was reportedly discussed in detail.

The increasingly active Russian diplomacy might be understood as a clear sign that Russia’s strategy about the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is changing. Besides, though Russia still maintains the official narrative of non-involvement regarding Eastern Ukraine, the Helsinki, Berlin and Paris meetings all demonstrated that in order to make progress in the case of Eastern Ukraine Russia is the one to address, and not the Donbas separatists.

Russia’s strategic goals in Ukraine

From Russia’s perspective, maintaining or settling the conflict in Eastern Ukraine is not an objective in itself, but a tool to influence Ukraine as a whole. The likely actual objective is to make sure that Ukraine never joins either the EU or NATO, and does not become a successful, democratic country either. Keeping Ukraine out of NATO, and preferably also clean of Western forces stationed there is connected to Russia’s perceived security and defense interests. Meanwhile, the opposition to enhancement of Ukrainian-EU relations can be derived from Kremlin’s security interests: Moscow needs to make sure that Ukraine does not succeed in continuing on its current pro-Western path in order to prevent the Russian population from contemplating a similar turn.

One way to achieve these goals is to pressure Kyiv to give such high level of autonomy to the two separatist regions, that it would later enable them to block any pro-Western intentions of the Ukrainian state. This could be done either via open coercion, which Russia tried after defeating Ukraine’s military in September 2014 and February 2015, or via convincing the international community to make Ukraine accept Russia’s conditions. Another way leads through influencing the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine, both scheduled to take place in 2019. If a Russia-friendly president or parliament takes office, the Kremlin could take for granted that Ukrainian relations with both the EU and NATO would suffer serious drawbacks.

Russia’s shrinking options and changing strategy in Ukraine

Russia’s economy is in grave need of reforms, as well as foreign investments and technology. The appointment of well-known reformist economists — such as Anton Siluanov and Alexey Kudrin — to key state positions, or the recently announced, radical increase of the retirement age all indicate that serious changes have to take place. As U.S. and EU economic sanctions isolate Russia from the Western capital markets, and also block access to Western technologies, getting them lifted is an essential condition to any successful reform.

The main problem for Russia is that its Ukraine-related objectives contradict the overall need to improve and stabilize the Russian economy. As the most painful Western sanctions are conditioned to the fulfillment of the Minsk ceasefire agreements, theoretically an easy way to get rid of the sanctions would be to simply give up Eastern Ukraine, and let Kyiv retake control. However, this would contradict the Kremlin’s above-described defense and regime-security interests. Hence, Russia needs to find a way that does not endanger the strategic interests related to Ukraine, but also permits the necessary economic modernization, preferably including the lifting of sanctions.

Another problem is that time does not work in Russia’s favor anymore. Maintaining the two separatist entities — the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics — puts an immense burden on the already overstretched Russian budget. Russia finances everything in the separatist regions: salaries, health care, education, and even food supplies for a territory, which still has a population of approximately 3 million. Recent reports about decreasing Russian subsidies may indicate that Moscow does not intend to — and probably cannot — maintain these proxies infinitely. From the financial perspective, it would be a lot more beneficial for Moscow if all costs would fall on the Kyiv government.

Regarding the military situation, the lasting stalemate in the conflict settlement initially favored Russia by allowing it to stabilize its separatist proxies. However, due to the gradual improvement of Ukraine’s armed forces, the Kremlin’s potential of military coercion over Kyiv is shrinking. Short of a full-scale attack which would have to involve Russian regular forces too, no other form of military pressure could currently coerce

Ukraine to comply with the Minsk agreement. Any such attack would immediately ruin Russia’s hopes to get Western sanctions lifted any time soon, therefore a serious military escalation is highly unlikely to happen.

The conflict no longer has any domestic mobilization potential either. According to the latest relevant polls of the Levada Center, by September 2017 less than one third of the Russian population paid high or even moderate attention to the conflict in Ukraine. This is in sharp contrast to the data of summer 2014, when nearly two-thirds of Russians followed the events closely. Hence, if the Kremlin intends to divert the society’s attention from the painful economic reforms, it is not the conflict in Ukraine that Moscow needs. Instead, a political breakthrough that could lead to the lifting of Western sanctions, thus to the improvement of Russia’s economic situation would be more beneficial from the perspective of Moscow’s domestic political intentions.

Where is Moscow heading?

All in all, the recent Russian proposals about a UN mission to be sent to the Donbas, and about holding a referendum there, do not indicate at all that Moscow intends to give up its political objectives in Ukraine, or its influence over the occupied Donbas region.

Instead, it is ‘only’ the control over military escalation dynamics that Russia is now ready to give up, in exchange for a dominantly political settlement mechanism through the deployment of a UN mission. Moscow probably hopes that its new attitude might help get Western sanctions removed, but without endangering Kremlin’s fundamental strategic interests in Ukraine. Besides, the change of strategy in conflict settlement does not mean that Russia would abandon its efforts to influence the upcoming Ukrainian elections either.


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A platform for high-level strategic dialogue among leaders from private & public sector. Organised by Slovenian MFA & Centre for European Perspective (CEP).

Bled Strategic Forum

The official Medium publication of Bled Strategic Forum (BSF) — a platform for high-level strategic dialogue among leaders from private & public sector. Organised by the Slovenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Centre for European Perspective (CEP).

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