February 14, 2022 10:00
Who should we believe? The United States, which announced an impending war and asked its diplomats and expatriates to leave Ukraine? Or to France, which still has faith in diplomacy and whose ambassador in Kiev has limited himself to inviting a thousand French people living in Ukraine to stock up on water and fill up their petrol tanks? Or to the ambassador of the European Union to Ukraine, who announced on Twitter that he was still in Kiev and of have no intention of leaving?
Ukrainians, meanwhile, remain surprisingly calm as news media around the world give space to rumors of a Russian attack scheduled for February 16 or shortly after the close of the Beijing Olympics on February 20. Emmanuel Macron praised the “cold blood” of his Ukrainian colleague Volodimyr Zelenskij, able to reassure the population at a time when 130,000 soldiers are massed at the borders of the country.
This dissonance is problematic. From a political point of view, there are no differences in support for Ukraine and condemnation of Russian threats, but the various forecasts fuel doubts.
A credibility problem
However, those who propose a parallel with the US maneuvers that preceded the war in Iraq are on the wrong track. Unlike 2003, in fact, today the United States does not want war and above all does not want to send its soldiers there. On February 12, Joe Biden told NBC that a confrontation between US and Russian soldiers would mean World War III.
But the US president has a credibility problem in Vladimir Putin’s eyes. The head of the Kremlin, in fact, thinks that the Americans are divided and unable to run to the aid of Ukraine, and the same goes for the countries of the European Union, deeply despised by Putin.
The mystery of this unprecedented crisis is that it is not yet known how far Putin wants to go
Washington seeks to rebuild lost credibility by turning up the volume and promising unprecedented sanctions. In this way, the United States takes back the torch of “leaders of the free world” which they had long ago refused, at least in Europe.
The United Kingdom, as per tradition, faithfully follows the American line, unlike continental Europe, which is equally determined to dissuade Russia from an attack but is convinced that diplomacy is the best solution.
After Macron, on February 14 it is the turn of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to take the road to Moscow and Kiev despite the inflexible posture shown so far by Putin. If we are to believe the prediction of the United States, that of Scholz could be a last attempt before the invasion, but it is by no means certain that this is really the case.
The mystery of this unprecedented crisis is that it is not yet known how far Putin wants to go and how much he is actually bluffing. The Kremlin’s logic is not ours, because Putin is accountable to anyone and can take risks that no Western democracy is willing to accept.
This partly explains the difference in tone between countries that are still allies and have the same information. These dissonances, however, are not divergences. Putin under no illusions: his plan to divide Western rivals is not working.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)