Vol. 79/No. 13      April 13, 2015

The threats come at a time when Moscow is carrying out stepped-up military exercises and other provocations in the Balkans and across eastern and northern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aim is not to start a new war, but to keep his opponents off balance, particularly in relation to Ukraine.

The Danish government announced last August that it would equip at least one frigate with radar as part of expanding the missile defense shield of the U.S.-dominated NATO military alliance, in the works for more than a decade. Moscow has long opposed the expansion. In 2012 the chief of Russia’s general staff threatened a pre-emptive nuclear strike on any country hosting the shield on its soil.

There have been a number of recent incidents of Russian warplanes violating the airspace of Estonia, Finland and Sweden, and flying unannounced in international airspace near countries in the Baltic region with their transponders off, in violation of international aviation accords. Last year Moscow carried out a simulated attack on Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea.

Russian officials announced March 16 several days of what they described as a “snap combat readiness exercise” of Moscow’s North Fleet, involving 38,000 troops, 41 ships, 15 submarines and 110 aircraft. The next day, Moscow said it will deploy advanced Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea, and station nuclear-capable bombers in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow seized from Ukraine a year ago.

At the same time, NATO member states are carrying out a number of smaller-scale exercises in eastern Europe.

In Ukraine, daily skirmishes continue between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian units, especially in the town of Shyrokine on the outskirts of Mariupol on the Black Sea.

Under the cease-fire agreement, brokered by the German and French governments in Minsk, Belarus, Feb. 12, the Ukrainian government will not regain control of the country’s eastern border with Russia until a political settlement is reached allowing for a decentralized, special status of the separatist-held areas in Donetsk and Luhansk. Such an agreement is nowhere in sight. If the separatists, who receive fighters and weapons from Russia, can take more ground without too high a cost — especially opening a land route between Russia and Crimea that the capture of Mariupol would open the door to — Moscow would benefit. If not, maintaining a frozen conflict along the cease-fire line keeps pressure on the government in Kiev.

The Ukrainian government reported March 29 that Moscow had sent 22 additional tanks and hundreds of new troops across the border into Luhansk over the weekend.

Moscow’s goal is to keep the pot simmering, looking to gauge the reaction in Washington and Europe, probing for opportunities to strengthen the position of the so-called Peoples’ Republics in eastern Donetsk and Luhansk.

On March 31 the Australian government began implementing a previously announced embargo on weapons, oil production equipment and bank loans to Russia, as well as a ban on Australian business activity in Crimea. The European Union is planning to extend its economic sanctions against Moscow, although some EU members, including Hungary and the new Syriza-led government in Greece, hope to see them end.

The main effect of these economic sanctions is to put a squeeze on working people in Russia and Crimea, damaging the fight for working-class solidarity across national borders.

Meanwhile, some 2,000 people marched in Minsk March 25 opposing Moscow’s policies and expressing solidarity with Ukraine. The rally was approved by the authorities, reflecting the distance Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Putin, is taking from Moscow. “Ukraine is fighting for our independence too,” student Inga Shakhnovich told the Associated Press at the rally.  
 
 
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