De todo un poco!
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Australia for talks on security and fighting COVID-19. But the massing of Russian troops along Ukraine’s border has also cast a spotlight on the growing partnership between China and Russia. VOA’s senior diplomatic correspondent Cindy Saine reports.
Camera: Nike Ching
The most senior U.S. military officer warns Russia will end up blazing a path of death and devastation, for all sides, should it decide to resolve its differences with Ukraine by using military force.
U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley issued the blunt admonishment Friday during a rare news conference at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, where both men insisted tragedy could be avoided if Moscow was willing to pull back from the brink.
“Given the type of forces that are arrayed, the ground maneuver forces, the artillery, the ballistic missiles, the air forces, all of it packaged together, if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant,” Milley told reporters.
“It would result in a significant amount of casualties. And you can imagine what that might look like in dense urban areas,” he said. “It would be horrific. It would be terrible. And it’s not necessary.”
The U.S. warning Friday comes as the standoff between Russia and Ukraine appears to have reached a tipping point.
Putin’s call with Macron
Senior U.S. defense officials cautioned that Russia had amassed sufficient firepower to launch a full-scale invasion at any time, while Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted in a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron that the West had failed to adequately address Moscow’s security concerns.
Putin, according to the Kremlin, told Macron that the most recent Western diplomatic responses did not consider Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion such as stopping the deployment of alliance weapons near Russia’s border and rolling back its forces from Eastern Europe.
Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Russian radio stations Friday that Russia did not want war with Ukraine but that it would protect its interests against the West if necessary.
“If it depends on Russia, then there will be no war. We don’t want wars,” Lavrov said. “But we also won’t allow our interests to be rudely trampled, to be ignored.”
Escalating tensions and rhetoric
But the U.S. defense secretary pushed back, telling Pentagon reporters Friday that no one has done anything to lead Russia to encircle Ukraine with more than 100,000 troops.
“There was no provocation that caused them to move those forces,” Austin said Friday at the Pentagon, calling out Moscow for a new wave of disinformation campaigns.
“Indeed, we’re seeing Russian state media spouting off now about alleged activities in eastern Ukraine,” he said. “This is straight out of the Russian playbook. And they’re not fooling us.”
Austin also painted Moscow’s saber-rattling as counterproductive.
“A move on Ukraine will accomplish the very thing Russia says it does not want — a NATO alliance strengthened and resolved on its western flank,” he said.
But with no sign of give from any side — U.S. and NATO officials have repeatedly rejected Russia’s demands — there are growing concerns that fear or hysteria could spread, making an already fragile situation more perilous.
“We don’t need this panic,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv on Friday, accusing U.S. leaders of talking up the possibility of conflict.
“Are tanks driving here on our streets? No. But it feels like this (reading the media),” he said. “In my opinion, this is a mistake. Because those are signals of how the world reacts.”
Despite the disagreement over rhetoric, U.S. and European officials said they continue to hold out hope that diplomacy can prevail.
One senior U.S. administration official, talking to reporters on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss developments, said remarks like those Friday by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov are a positive sign.
“We welcome the message,” the official said. “We need to see it backed up by swift action.”
The official added that Monday’s United Nations Security Council meeting on Ukraine will be “an opportunity for Russia to explain what it is doing, and we’ve come prepared to listen.”
Ramping up military preparations
While Russia and the U.S. and its allies have spent much of the past week trading demands, both sides have also ramped up military preparations.
Russia has launched military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian fighter jets and paratroopers in Belarus.
Ukraine’s military held artillery and anti-aircraft drills in the country’s southern Kherson region Friday near the border with Russian-annexed Crimea.
And the U.S., which has been providing Kyiv with anti-tank missiles, grenade launchers, artillery and ammunition, said another shipment arrived Friday to help bolster Ukrainian defenses.
Also Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance has already bolstered its troop presence in Eastern Europe and continues to watch Russia’s military movements, including the positioning of aircraft and S-400 anti-aircraft systems in Belarus, closely.
“The aim now is to try to reduce tensions,” Stoltenberg said, speaking online from Brussels at a Washington think-tank event.
“We urge Russia, we call on Russia to engage in talks,” he said, adding that opting for the use of force will not work out well for Moscow.
“When it comes to Ukraine, I am absolutely certain that Russia understands they will have to pay a high price (for invading),” Stoltenberg said. “I am certain President Putin and Russia takes NATO very serious when it comes to our ability to protect and defend all allies.”
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of China having established diplomatic ties with five central Asian countries. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan gained independence.
Three decades later, in the first week of January 2022, President Xi Jinping exchanged congratulatory messages with the presidents of the five states.
China’s influence in Central Asia has grown exponentially in recent decades as the five nations seek Chinese financing for everything from infrastructure projects to educational endeavors, according to Samantha Custer, director of policy analysis at AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.
She told VOA the main goal of Chinese financial diplomacy in the region is to gain “access to energy supplies and strategic positioning for transit routes.”
Custer said the five countries are of interest to Beijing for two main reasons: First, they offer access to ready supplies of energy via oil, natural gas, or hydropower; and secondly, potential Belt and Road initiative trade routes from China to Europe and the Middle East run through them.
“In keeping with this strategy, most of China’s financial diplomacy has been focused on the energy and transportation sectors,” Custer said.
Last month, in a new report titled Corridors of Power, Custer and her coauthors analyzed how China used massive financial assistance to win friends and allies across Central and South Asia.
According to the report, the Chinese government directed $127 billion in financial assistance across 13 countries in Central and South Asia over nearly two decades. The five countries in Central Asia are among the biggest recipients of Beijing’s financial assistance.
“Kazakhstan alone attracted 26% ($33 billion) of Beijing’s financial assistance dollars,” Custer said, adding these investments were heavily focused on the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline. “Turkmenistan was the second-largest Central Asian recipient of Chinese financing, worth $9 billion.”
Soft power investments
Even as Beijing emphasizes economics over soft power in Central Asia, it recognizes that these tools are most formidable when employed in concert, according to Custer.
“In this vein, Chinese leaders doubled down on soft power overtures via education, culture, exchange and media to foster people-to-people ties with Central Asian students and professionals over the last two decades,” Custer said, adding these efforts are important avenues to cultivate future markets for Chinese goods, services and capital in Central Asia.
In its bid to become a premier study-abroad destination for students from Central Asia, China offers less burdensome visa requirements than its competitors and financial assistance for education, according to the report.
“Kazakh and Kyrgyz students were top recipients of Chinese state-backed scholarships, and both countries received a large share of Beijing’s language and cultural promotion efforts in the form of Confucius Institutes at the university level and Confucius Classrooms at the primary and secondary school level,” Custer said.
Chinese leaders have also practiced city-level diplomacy to cultivate relationships with public and private sector leaders at the local level, according to the report.
“As a case in point: Turkmenistan’s Mary province received more money from Beijing over two decades than seven of the 13 countries in South and Central Asia,” Custer said. “Kazakhstan’s Atyrau, which received $5 billion, was the second-largest district-level recipient of Chinese state-backed financing in the entire region.”
Investing in security
China has also been investing in security in Central Asia, according to Emil Avdaliani, director of Middle East Studies at the Georgian think tank Geocase.
“Before, Russia was seen as the only and irreplaceable security provider,” Avdaliani said. “China has also penetrated the region. It operates a military base in Tajikistan, funds a new semi-military one there and has increased the number of drills with separate states in the region.”
Avdaliani said that even though China’s position in central Asian countries has evolved quite successfully, China still faces obstacles such as nationalism in the Central Asian states and political elites’ distrust of Beijing.
But the elite also sees that “the five states need China. They need investment, and in the longer run, they need China as a balancer against Russia,” Avdaliani told VOA in an email.
Beijing successfully uses this opportunity, and it is likely to continue in the future, he said.
The United States and NATO have provided written responses to Moscow, addressing Russia’s renewed security demands, following consultations with various European partners as well as Ukraine — the latest moves in diplomatic maneuvering aimed at heading off armed conflict.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan delivered the document in person Wednesday to Russia’s Foreign Ministry. NATO transmitted to Russia its own responses regarding European security, described by officials as a few pages in length, separately.
Officials portrayed the responses as a way to address the Kremlin’s concerns while also giving all sides a chance to further pursue diplomacy.
“The document we’ve delivered includes concerns of the United States and our allies and partners about Russia’s actions that undermine security — a principled and pragmatic evaluation of the concerns that Russia has raised, and our own proposals for areas where we may be able to find common ground,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters during a press conference.
“We’ve addressed the possibility of reciprocal transparency measures regarding force posture in Ukraine, as well as measures to increase confidence regarding military exercises and maneuvers in Europe,” Blinken said. “We are acting with equal focus and force to bolster Ukraine’s defenses and prepare a swift united response to further Russian aggression.”
U.S. officials declined to elaborate on specifics, though they expressed hope Washington and Moscow still could find consensus and even make progress on issues such as arms control related to missiles in Europe.
Moscow’s security demands include a pause of NATO’s eastward expansion, especially in Ukraine and Georgia, as well as a rollback of NATO troops in Eastern Europe.
The U.S. has dismissed those demands as nonstarters, demanding Russia pull back its forces from the border with Ukraine and instead offering dialogue with Moscow on issues including military exercises and transparency, as well as the placement of missiles.
Russia offered a cautious initial response to the written proposals.
“We will read it. Study it,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the Interfax news agency when asked about the NATO document. “The partners studied our project for almost a month and a half.”
In contrast, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters there is a growing sense of urgency, calling on Moscow to “withdraw its forces from Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, where they are deployed without these countries’ consent.”
“We face a critical moment,” he said, warning that Russia now has positioned more than 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, with additional deployments already underway.
“We see also more troops not only in and around Ukraine, but also now in Belarus, where Russia is in the process of deploying thousands of combat troops, hundreds of aircraft, S-400 air defense systems, and a lot of other very advanced capabilities,” Stoltenberg added.
“We have listened to Russian concerns. We have listened also to the Russian call for a written response,” he said. “This is about whether there’s a will to engage in good faith and to try to sit down and find common ground.”
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Wednesday Kyiv had no objections to the U.S. responses to Russia, acknowledging the threat from the number of Russian troops massed along his country’s borders as well as in Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian forces.
Still, Kuleba insisted there was no need for panic to take hold.
“The number of Russian troops massed along the border of Ukraine and in the occupied territories of Ukraine is large (and) … poses a threat,” Kuleba said during a Wednesday press briefing. “However, at the moment, as we speak, this number is insufficient for a full-scale offensive against Ukraine along the entire Ukrainian border.”
While the U.S. would not rule out an imminent military move by Russia against Ukraine, a senior State Department official noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin may not want to upset China when the country is hosting the opening ceremony of Winter Olympics.
“We certainly see every indication that [Putin] is going to use military force sometime perhaps now and middle of February,” said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Wednesday during a virtual event with Yalta European Strategy, a European security forum.
“We all are aware that the Beijing Olympics begin on February 4 — the opening ceremony — and Putin is expected to be there,” added Sherman. “I think that probably President Xi Jinping would not be ecstatic if Putin chose that moment to invade Ukraine. So that may affect his timing and his thinking.”
Some analysts agreed with the assessment, noting Russia’s military logistics “have not yet been fully activated to start massive military operations.”
“The Winter Olympics in China, to be held between 4-20 February, might offer some respite,” said Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow for the Russia and Eurasia program of London-based Chatham House. “To safeguard relations with Beijing, Moscow may avoid repeating its actions of August 2008, when Russia took military action against Georgia, literally during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics.”
In Kyiv, the U.S. embassy is urging American citizens in the country to consider departing now, citing an “unpredictable” security situation that “can deteriorate with little notice.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Russian officials rejected the prospect of U.S. sanctions against President Putin, one of several proposed responses if Russian forces were to invade neighboring Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that such sanctions would be “destructive” but not politically painful.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned of “severe” and “enormous” consequences for Putin — including personal sanctions against Putin himself — if the Russian leader mobilizes troops standing ready to strike along the Ukrainian border. Ukrainian intelligence officials put troop estimates at 127,000.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $5 billion in both security and non-security assistance to Ukraine, including more than $351 million in assistance to those displaced or affected by “Russia’s aggression,” according to Deputy Secretary of State Sherman.
Jeff Seldin contributed to this report; some information came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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