By Ian Davis, NATO Watch
Is Moscow fermenting unrest in Ukraine?
Russia is resuming its military build-up along the Ukrainian border, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday. Rasmussen said Russia has sent a few thousand additional troops to the border, calling it “a very regrettable step backward”. Moscow denies allegations that it is sending troops and weapons into Ukraine.
At the end of May, Rasmussen (mirroring comments by US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel) acknowledged that there were indications that Russia was pulling back some of its estimated 40,000 troops from the Ukraine border. "We have seen some signs of a start of Russian withdrawal”, he said at a meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. "Maybe around two thirds have now pulled back", he added. However, Rasmussen said Russia still had a substantial military force along its border with Ukraine and urged Russia to "pull back all troops from the Ukrainian border".
Earlier, in a no-holds-barred speech at the Tallinn University, Estonia on 9 May, Rasmussen condemned Russian actions in the following terms: "President Putin and his government have shown complete contempt for international law. For international order. And for international institutions. Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine are outrageous. They are irresponsible, they are illegal, they are illegitimate……".
On the 14 June, NATO released new satellite images to support claims by the Ukraine and US governments that Russia had allowed tanks to cross the border into the eastern part of the country. In the satellite images, according to a NATO statement, tanks can be seen leaving Rostov-na-Donu, a region in southwestern Russia, before appearing in Ukraine. NATO’s evidence comes from open-source photos, amateur video footage published on YouTube and US commercial satellite imagery. “These images raise significant questions concerning Russia’s role in facilitating instability in eastern Ukraine and its involvement in the movement of military equipment from Russian territory into Ukraine”, NATO writes: “Russian officials have been repeatedly misleading and evasive regarding their roles in both Crimea and eastern Ukraine. It is important to bring relevant facts to light in an effort to ensure Russia remains publicly accountable for its actions.”
“If these latest reports are confirmed, this would mark a grave escalation of the crisis in eastern Ukraine in violation of Russia’s Geneva commitments”, reads the NATO report. When NATO published similar satellite photographs in April and May showing a Russian military build-up near the Ukraine border, Russian officials disputed their authenticity. However, NATO, while reasonably reliable, has erred in the past, and still images of the tanks taken have not been verified. “The appearance of three mystery tanks in east Ukraine may be a serious escalation of the conflict… or another one of those desperate attempts to prove a Russian presence”, writes Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security services and a professor at New York University.
The latest NATO allegations came as heavy fighting raged in the Donetsk region, which has been the epicenter of violence during the past two months. Putin publicly welcomed a peace plan put forward by Ukraine’s new President Poroshenko on Wednesday that promised to call a unilateral cease-fire to give the rebels a chance to lay down their weapons and leave the country. Rasmussen said about the troop build-up, “If they’re deployed to seal the border and stop the flow of weapons and fighters, that would be a positive step. But that’s not what we’re seeing”.
At the recent NATO Defence Ministerial meeting in Brussels, the NATO Secretary General said that the Alliance would support Ukraine to modernise its armed forces and respond jointly to the challenge posed by the Kremlin's attempt to redraw borders by force. "We will finalise a comprehensive package of long-term measures to make Ukraine's reforms more effective and its armed forces stronger”, Rasmussen said. Those details are expected to be announced at a NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting later this month.
NATO Watch Comment: Unlike the Russian takeover of Crimea, the evidence that Moscow is directly funding and arming the separatists in Eastern Ukraine is thin and inconclusive. While it seems unlikely that Moscow is planning to invade, occupy and annex a region of 19 million people, there is no doubt that Russia is heavily involved in the unrest (as are NATO and Western allies). However, the nature of Moscow's involvement is more complex than some of the one-dimensional claims coming from NATO HQ. Putin’s appeal to Russian separatists in Donetsk to postpone their referendum, for example, fell on deaf ears and revealed that the Kremlin is not in total control of events on the ground.
The same can be said for an Alliance that is seeking to strengthen its partnership with Ukraine, but fails to appreciate the destabilising impact of its own hardening stance towards Russia. No amount of technical assistance from NATO is going to heal the numerous and growing fault lines within Ukrainian society. In a region notorious for organized crime, oligarchs and corrupt officials, the power vacuum that followed the revolution in Kiev has allowed those fault lines to multiply.
With Ukraine on the brink of a humanitarian disaster— at least 270 people have died in the east of the country since Kiev launched its 'anti-terrorist operation' two months ago—some form of regional mediation and peacekeeping is essential. Russia needs to be part of that process, but NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia in April in response to its annexation of Crimea. Although the Alliance left the door open to contacts at ambassadorial level in order to allow the two sides to discuss ways out of the crisis, at the most recent meeting between NATO's 28 ambassadors and their Russian counterpart, Alexander Grushko in Brussels on the 2 June, it was clear that the chasm between them was growing.
NATO needs to curb the anti-Moscow rhetoric and reach out to Moscow in a more meaningful way. Doing the opposite is, at best, counterproductive. To begin with, it should cancel the military exercises that are due to take place in Ukraine in July, as part of NATO’s Rapid Trident manoeuvres. The exercise would likely escalate an already tense situation, whereas cancellation could be part of a confidence-building olive branch towards Moscow.
Moscow accused of supporting anti-fracking groups in the EU
Meanwhile, Rasmussen has also claimed that Russian intelligence agencies are covertly funding and working with European environmental groups to campaign against fracking and maintain EU dependence on Russian gas.
Answering questions after the speech in London, Rasmussen said improving European energy security was of the “utmost importance” and accused Moscow of “blackmail” in its dealings with Europe. “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas”, he told an audience at the Chatham House foreign affairs think-tank. He declined to give fuller details of the alleged plot, but said: "That is my interpretation".
The EU depends on Russia for about a third of its oil and gas needs but has significant shale gas reserves and/or renewable energy alternatives that could help curb its high dependence on imports. A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Financial Times that the Alliance believed Russia was engaged in “a campaign of disinformation on many issues, including energy”… “the potential for Russia using energy supplies as a means of putting pressure on European nations is a matter of concern. No country should use supply and pricing terms as tools of coercion”. “We share a concern by some allies that Russia could try to obstruct possible projects on shale gas exploration in Europe in order to maintain Europe’s reliance on Russian gas”.
NATO's claims were ridiculed by Greenpeace, which said: "The idea we’re puppets of Putin is so preposterous that you have to wonder what they’re smoking over at NATO HQ. Mr Rasmussen should spend less time dreaming up conspiracy theories and more time on the facts". "Fracked gas will probably cost more than Russian imports. There’s little chance fracking will generate more than a small fraction of Europe’s gas needs and it won’t even do that for at least ten years", the Greenpeace spokesman added.