Translated material
Berlin wall around Donetsk
How to save Ukraine: Slate column
In Munich, an annual security conference ended. In 2015, it was almost completely devoted to the events in Ukraine, and there is no unity on this issue among participants. According to the Columnist Slate, Anna Appelbaum, those present converged in distrust of the Russian delegation, but could not agree what to do with all this situation.
At the annual security conference in Munich, something memorable is rarely happening. NATO ministers mutter banality, experts frown by eyebrows - that’s, in fact, that's all. But this time it turned out differently.
The conference participants - usually calm - laughed at the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, when he tried to question the legitimacy of the unification of Germany. Someone began to applaud Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel when she stated that the conflict in Ukraine does not have a military decision. However, when the former head of the British Foreign Ministry, Malcolm Rifkind, asked how in this case it plans to resist Russia, everyone else was anneal.
The United States and Europe are passionate about the dispute, whether to transfer the weapons to Ukraine, but this is a dispute about tactics, and not about the strategy, Anna Appelbaum is sure. Moreover, this dispute, in her opinion, distracts the participants from the game that Russia leads.
Columnist believes that the main thing for Putin in this game is not to win, the main thing is to prevent the creation of European Ukraine. Therefore, not a single truce will bring peace - only freezing conflict is possible. This scenario, appelbaum notes, is driven by the “Russian security forces” in Transnistria (Moldova), South Ossetia (Georgia); Now the turn of New Russia has come in Ukraine.
The West needs a strategy - a long -term, aimed at strengthening Ukrainian statehood, at the integration of Ukraine into Europe, says Columnist Slate. Appelbaum calls for Donetsk to surround the demilitarized zone like the Berlin Wall, and to the rest of Ukraine to be treated like West Germany. In addition, new, even more stringent sanctions against Russia are needed.
We do not want the Cold War, but such a war is preferable to the new World War. And this is exactly what we get - if we do not develop a serious strategy to prevent it (English.).