The only word that can describe the aggression to Ukraine is catastrophe, with the not-so-hidden risk to turn into a planetary catastrophe.
It is the first aggression in ages (since the World Word II) based on the aggressor’s assumption that one people is not entitle to live as such. Vladimir Putin rejects the very existence of the Ukrainian people as an independent entity. It is not surprising therefore that, based on this assumption, the Russian military operations are meant to annihilate entire cities.
The international response to the aggression – with few and, may I say, shamefully blind exceptions – are relying on economic and diplomatic pressures. More sanctions can be added, diplomatic representations can be summed, recalled. In the end, diplomatic relations can be severed.
The military option, a humanitarian intervention to protect the civilian population, is highly risky, as a nuclear escalation cannot anyhow be ruled out.
At the same time every single days carries human costs that are more and more unsustainable.
Many hope in the Russian citizens’ response to the domestic crisis (forget the international one), on the fact that they will make their government accountable for the depravations caused by sanctions. Many hope that there’s a chance for a coup and a change of leadership that would bring the invasion to an end.
There is no tangible evidence that any of these two options will materialize any day soon.
The situation is so dramatic that there’s no option that shouldn’t be discussed. Beside the military, economic, and diplomatic response, there is political one.
Follow me as I unfold it.
Although the popular response can have a limited impact, it is necessary to keep a channel of communication opened with the Peoples of the Russian Federation, who are exposed to a propaganda that does not enable them to properly assess the risks Moscow is exposing the entire Federation to. Russians might be unaware of what the outcomes of the so-called “military operation” might be, in terms of their own personal safety, a danger that is instead very palpably felt among the public opinions in Europe.
In this context, it should be recalled that the Kremlin and the Duma, in a word Moscow, is not the only representative, elected level of government of the Russian Federation. As a Federation, Russia is constituted by more than 80 small and bigger states with different degrees of autonomy (full republics, territories, provinces, city-states). Their heads are elected, once the central government has approved the candidates.
Military and civilian infrastructures which are vital for Europe are located not in Moscow, but in the constituent parts of the Federation. They can pay a key role for the European security.
Let’s take the example of the Republic of Karelia. The only reason why Karelia today is not an independent state, as Russia, or Azerbaijan, it that in 1956 it was downgraded from a Soviet Republic to a Russian Soviet Republic. But, as other constituent parts of the Federation, Karelia has the features of statehood: a territory, borders, a permanent population, a parliament, a government, a constitution.
Karelia can be for Moscow, as Putin said in his address to the nation, “the outskirts of an empire”, but to the European security, it means a lot. Karelia shares a long border with Finland, which has been targeted by the Moscow aggressive rhetoric.
Not necessarily Moscow’s word match a belligerent intention of the Karelian people, who have their own features and legitimate interests.
And the same can be said about many other peoples of the Russian Federation with whom -via direct contacts and consular services,- a frank discussion can be tabled. European requests are security guarantees and the protection of transnational interests. Among them: access to vital resources and infrastructure, no belligerent status and therefore no usage of the constituent parties’ territory for military aggression against the European Union and European Sates or Euro-Atlantic ones, no deployment of their citizens in armies or military actions hostile to the EU and European States or Euro-Atlantic ones, a coordinated policy for the military and nuclear installations located in their territories.
The European or Euro-Atlantic counterpart can offer the immediate end of sanctions, direct payments for the access to their resources, integrated with the complete shift of all contracts and agreements from the Moscow government and private ownerships to the local elected bodies. The EU (but this can be expanded to any interested party) could also reciprocate the cooperative attitude in the security and military sphere.
This means of course bypassing Moscow and open a direct political line with the local elites of the Federation. Not an easy task, and a decision that might compel the political recognition of the constituent parts of the Federation as independent states – if requested from their side.
But it could also be a political step to launch a promising friendly cooperation with all the Peoples of the Russian Federation who might show interest in closer and peaceful cooperation with the European Union and Euro-Atlantic States, and that are now prevented by repression and propaganda from making a free choice.
The outcome of this political response would be one of the many paradoxes that the so-called “military operation” is engendering. Putin states that the Russia and Ukraine are one. What if the tentative partition of Ukraine leads directly to the tentative partition of the Russian Federation?
For sure, it would be very unlikely that Russia could keep this pace of aggression in Ukraine under the threat of its own распад, disintegration.
While making ruthless recognitions and aggressions among the post-Soviet states, someone in Moscow forgot that you don’t always need an army to cancel a state. A political act is enough. And that what you encourage to happen to others, might strike back at you.
