EU v.s Russia: game, set, and .............?

Ukraine ‘is a far away country of which we know nothing’; Minsk has an eerie resonance in 2015 with Munich in 1937, and the so-called peace agreement is of the same worth as Chamberlain’s ‘piece of paper’.

 

If this was a  ploy  by Merckel to expose Putin as a double-crossing two-faced liar it was pointless. The world already knew this.

 

When this imbroglio first started I maintained it was all due to meddling by the EU in its attempts to bring the Ukraine within the Brussels orbit, and, by implication, eventually into NATO. Others, including John Redwood MP, have since endorsed my view.

 

The prospect of parking Western tanks on Putin’s front lawn, was bound to be taken as a provocation which played completely into Putin’s hands to give a pretext for all subsequent events, beginning with the annexation of the Crimea.

 

Everyone knows that the Minsk peace deal is a very bad joke. Putin will simply ensure that the Ukraine continues to be destabilised.

 

But it goes deeper.

 

Since the early 90s the West has been gloating over ‘winning’ the Cold War. The problem is that it has not moved on. The intelligent policy  would have been to have brought Russia in from the cold. Instead it treated Russia with a degree of disdain, a gangster state with a mockery of democracy, run by corrupt oligarchs who are Putin’s friends and backers. Very true, as it is true of many Western allies.

 

EU policy was to push up to the borders of Russia by signing on new members who possessed very few of the essential qualifications, which include sound democratic institutions, economic stability, good governance, free courts and judicial system, and financial and fiscal integrity. Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria possess scarcely any of these. Their economies are almost ‘third world’ and none is in the top 50 countries for GDP per capita. (The quasi-criminal Balkan states are in the queue. Russia regards them as within an exclusively Slav sphere of influence, so Vlad is not going to like the idea one bit. Just for the record Bosnia has a GDP per capita ranking of 105, just shy of Jamaica).

 

Meanwhile, Vlad has been schmoozing around potential friends all over the place. He has given loans to the half-country Cyprus in  return for military facilities. This could be interesting. The street of Akrotiri of a Saturday night could be quite exciting as British squaddies from the British base there do battle with  their Russky equivalents. ‘Professionals against amateurs’ nights!

 

He has been cosying-up to Iran. You can be sure he will be making mischief in Greece. He had a hero’s reception in Egypt, which pre-Obama was Yankee territory.

 

The EU has no clue as to what to do next. Their hopes that Russia’s economy would collapse under the weight of sanctions are absurd. The impact so far has been minor with only 6% of companies being badly affected. Oil revenues have held up through the simple expedient of devaluing the rouble against the US dollar. It is true that Russian standards of living have fallen for the first time in 15 years, but if Brussels thought that rising unpopularity would sweep Putin from power they were much mistaken. His popularity rating has risen.

 

Maybe the latest political assassination, of leading politician Boris Nemtov, will be Putin’s tipping point.

 

Don’t hold your breath.