dangerous games

Dangerous games

The wrangling between Russia and the West over the Ukraine and Crimea carries undertones of long held rivalries and also of the hairsplitting diplomatic arguments which led to the first World War.   This is why many feel  “let’s just keep out of it.”     The better-informed analyse, apportion blame on both sides, and usually end up taking a view either for or against the Russian claim that Crimea historically is part of Russia and that the Russian speakers in the Ukraine are being persecuted.

      I went once to Kiev, briefly, when covering an international women’s march against nuclear weapons organised by Scandinavians in the last years of the Soviet Union.     I t was grey but friendly, and there was friendliness and support in the outer states like Estonia, as compared with Moscow, where I had my exit visa taken away because I had dared to interview a dissident.         

       Those  who admire Russian literature and music, not to mention the Bolshoi, and have friends in Russia who would probably be too scared to discuss the present  situation in an email – for that reason, I haven’t tried)  certainly are against conflict.      But the politicians - Obama, threatened by his heavy Republican opposition,  Putin, replying to Western provocation and the EU leaders varying in their timid or not-so-timid reactions, seem to be unaware of how close they are to the brink, even though the Russians  have inherited the black memory of the millions lost in the last war, as have the Germans.   

      Some journalists  are responding  to the big story of the day and giving it plenty of drama and brinkmanship coverage.   Others, like Angus Roxburgh, who was  in Russia for 10 years for the BBC,  says in a New Statesman article that getting Russia right is difficult.   He was there under Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin.   “……knowing how little I understand after all those years, I am horrified to see our flat-footed ‘diplomats’ taking decisions so ill-informed and insensitive that they may be impelling the world towards catastrophe.”

      So it was not just me and the other pessimists who were seeing the acute dangers of the games of international slanging matches.

       “Which side are Ukraine’s oligarchs on?” asked a Guardian article describing the oligarchs who are major players in Ukraine and  have been stage-managing  the often corrupt financial dealings.   The best-known one, according to Nick Dochan, is Victor Pinchuk, worth $3.2 billion dollars.   He is said to tread a fine line between east and west, is a friend of Tony Blair and made his money selling steel pipes.  And then there is, of course, the better-known Dmytro Firtash with his second home near Harrods, who helped to finance Yanukovych until his downfall and has had many disputes over gas interests (he made his billions through an energy company.)

         Finally there is the view of  Evgeny Lebedev, Russian owner of the Independent newspaper,  who thinks that the complexity of understanding Russia is lost in a Cold War paradigm that Western  policy-makers still seem to depend on – that Russia and America and the EU must be in a zero-sum game.  

   The shared gas contracts, the “arms trade” with Russia – how extensive is that, could we be told? – the competition to have high numbers of nuclear weapons, all mean that this is far from being a game.  And the ones behaving as though it is should take themselves off to the nearest pool table, making it safer for all of us.