Edward Spiers: Little the West can do as Putin flexes muscles in Crimea

This was an “incredible act of aggression, really a stunning, wilful choice to invade another country”, said John Kerry, the US Secretary of State. “We don’t want to return to the Cold War,” he warned. He then threatened Russia with economic sanctions and possible diplomatic isolation by exclusion from the G8.

Despite comparisons in Washington with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, all the evidence suggested that Putin’s actions had caught the Western allies off guard.

Neither David Cameron’s threat of a Ministerial boycott of the Paralympics in Sochi nor William Hague’s readiness to shun the preparatory talks for the next G8 summit halted the movement of Russian forces. Just as ineffectual was the extraordinary 90-minute phone call between President Obama and Vladimir Putin on Saturday night. Obama reportedly threatened “serious repercussions” unless Moscow halted its military operations, which were a “clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

He also urged “direct engagement with the government of Ukraine”, but Putin’s reply was all too blunt. The US-backed interim administration in Kiev was “threatening the lives and health of Russian citizens and the many compatriots” in the Crimea, and in case the crisis spread to the eastern Ukraine, “Russia retains the right to protect its interests and the Russian-speaking population in those areas”.

Obama, by choosing not to attend a high-level meeting at the White House, involving his defence secretary, the director of the CIA, and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, effectively admitted that there was little that the United States could do.

Putin appears unruffled. He clearly felt that Russia could not stand by while a revolution overthrew an elected, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and was unconcerned that Yanukovych had provoked the protests in Kiev by reneging on a European Union association agreement, and then by authorising the use of lethal force against the demonstrators in Independence Square.

Putin was prepared to use force decisively, just as he did in Georgia in 2008, and gambled on the likelihood that the West would not react to a military crisis in Russia’s “Near Abroad”.

He gained the backing of the Russian Parliament on Saturday, reflecting Russia’s longstanding relations with the Crimea, which was Russian until 1954. The Crimea not only hosts the Russian Black Sea Fleet but it also has a legendary appeal by virtue of the two wars fought on its soil against invaders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nearly sixty per cent of the Crimean population is Russian.

So far the Ukraine has responded with restraint but its position in the Crimea has weakened after the defection of the newly appointed naval chief, Rear Admiral Denis Berezovsky, the surrounding of two military bases, and the severance of key communication links.

Putin is clearly holding the threat of further intervention over the interim regime in Kiev. He may wish to shape the formation of a new Ukrainian government and gain a power of veto over any decision affecting Russian interests.

Escalation, including armed confrontation, remains a risk but will depend upon how the two regional powers react, with the military balance, at least in numbers and weaponry, heavily favouring the Russians.

This seems a distinctly local crisis and not a return to the global divisions of the Cold War. The Western powers, despite siding with Kiev, will confine themselves to public posturing and possibly sanctions.

Edward M Spiers is Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of Leeds.