Diplomacy has failed in the past and is unlikely to be useful in the current situation between Russia, Ukraine and the West, says a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham .
In a piece he wrote for The Conversation, professor Stefan Wolff says there should be increased sanctions on Russia - including on Putin, his inner circle, and their families.
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Although, he says, sanctions will not bite hard while Russian gas continues to flow into Europe.
“The gas has kept flowing through the existing pipelines from Russia to the European Union, which goes through Ukraine. So, I think in that sense, there is still quite a bit of ammunition in the sanctions also that the West has against Russia.
“And I think now is the time that these need to be deployed.”
This will entail a degree of economic pain in the West, he says, but is a necessary step.
“Plans have been drawn up over the past couple of months as the situation certainly showed signs of potential further escalation, how can this impact can be minimised.
“In particular, in Western Europe, where we have quite a significant dependency on Russian oil and gas. So, I think, within a relatively short period of time, alternative arrangements could be made to really let Putin feel the pain.”
China’s position on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is nuanced, Wolff says.
“On the one hand China clearly is very much sympathetic to Russian claims that there's something wrong with the overall international order, that it's very much US-centric, very much serving Western interests. Which does not fully reflect the reality of the international order that we have right now. With Russia, and even more so China or other global powers alongside the US.
“By the same token, I think this is also really interesting. China has consistently made statements to the effect that it is absolutely important that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states is respected”.
China also has significant investments in Ukraine, he says.
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“Over the past 10 or so years, China has invested $10 billion in Ukraine and about $6 billion in Belarus, to a large extent connected to its own Belt and Road initiative, and the main land corridors between China and the European markets that go through Central Asia, Russia, and then Belarus and Ukraine.
“So, also from that perspective, it is clearly not in China's interest to have that level of military hostilities now taking place in Ukraine. And whilst I'm doubtful that China will openly the side with the West against Russia here, I think China will certainly use whatever means it has available in terms of quiet diplomacy with Russia to push Putin to stop with his aggression, return to diplomacy and contribute to stabilisation of this particular part of Europe.”
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine plays into a larger strategy, he says.
“What Putin is doing right now, is basically improving his own position by creating a much larger zone, a much larger sphere of interest for himself in the post-Soviet space, if you want, for which he can then continue to challenge the West.
“For the time being, I don't think that he will seek direct confrontation with NATO, even though this can really not be excluded, given what looks like completely irrational actions that he has taken over the past week or so.”
Putin is part of a generation of elites from the former Soviet Union that have never come to terms with the collapse of the former superpower, Wolff says.
“In a personal, almost psychological sense, they have taken very badly to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the chaos that reigned in Russia for the first decade afterwards.
“And the real loss of international stature that Russia had and what they are longing for is to somehow recover some of this greatness of the Soviet and Russian past.”
Putin’s actions have moved into the realm of the irrational, he says.
“It's really hard to put anything beyond him now after what he has been not just doing over the past four or five days, but also the things that he has been saying.
“As one of my students put it this morning in a seminar: 'the man has gone mental', and there is very little rationality to him, and just think about the not particularly thinly-veiled threat that he has made, that he would be prepared to use nuclear weapons if it would come to a confrontation with NATO.”
