West still backing Ukraine, Klimkin says after Munich, reported sanctions

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said his main
conclusion from this weekend’s Munich Security Conference was that “the
transatlantic community and Europe still appreciate the meaning of Ukraine and
its contribution to global security and stability, and are all the more ready
to discuss this.” More global authorities are realizing that the Russian
government’s contempt for international law “can’t continue any longer and
something needs to be done about Russia,” Klimkin wrote on his Facebook page on
Feb. 17 , adding that a consensus on what needs to be done and how has yet to
be reached.

At the same time, many members of the global community
continue to view the ongoing warfare in Donbas as a remote event that doesn’t
affect them directly, Klimkin wrote. “The Russian aggression against Ukraine is
still perceived by many as a dramatic film that they are watching from their
own comfortable reality on a couch. Obviously, that’s more convenient for some.
And that is truly irritating,” he wrote after attending the three-day
conference.

Meanwhile, EU diplomats reached an agreement to impose
sanctions against the Russian government for its actions in the Nov. 25 armed
conflict with the Ukrainian navy in the Black Sea, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty reported on Feb. 15. Recall, Russian border agents arrested three
Ukrainian navy ships and detained two dozen crew members (who remain
imprisoned) for attempting to cross the Kerch Strait into the Azov Sea, in full
accordance with international maritime law. The sanctions will target about
eight individuals – namely officers involved in the detentions and judges who
sentenced those arrested – with visa bans and asset freezes, correspondent
Rikard Jozwiak tweeted. The decision will be formalized in the coming weeks.

In response to reports of further sanctions from the
West, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he told Western diplomats
during the Munich conference that sanctions are useless. “I didn’t warn them. I
simply said that this is senseless and nothing more,” Lavrov told a Russian
state television broadcast on Feb. 17. “I said that their goal is not
understandable. If they haven’t understood yet that the sanctions aren’t
effective, then I pity them.”

Zenon Zawada: The citizens
of the West continue to view the armed conflict in Donbas as unrelated to them
because the Russian government is succeeding in many of its foreign policy
goals with the war. By keeping the armed aggression at a low level, while extending
it for many years, Russia has kept the war out of the global mass media, while
at the same time exhausting the morale of the Ukrainian public, as well as
state finances. It has also exhausted the patience and interest of Europeans,
all the while directing their attention to domestic issues (immigration, rising
taxes, shrinking middle class) by backing rising populist-nationalist political
forces.

At the same time, we believe Lavrov is bluffing to a
large extent when claiming the sanctions haven’t been effective against Russia.
While the Russian economy has been gradually adapting to the new conditions it
faces, Russian elites resent not enjoying what they strove to achieve with
their vast wealth, which is to live in the West. It’s not clear just how long
the Russian economy can withstand the sanctions – and how long the elites will
tolerate being excluded from Europe – but this weekend’s events indicate that
Western authorities will keep applying pressure for as long as neoliberal
political forces dominate France and Germany.

As widely acknowledged, Russia is actively backing
nationalists in France, with similar forces currently rising in Germany. In
this sense, Klimkin is correct in voicing his frustrations that many lack the
understanding that the conflict in Ukraine is truly about Russia’s attempt to
undermine the neoliberal order that emerged from the post-World War Two
consensus.