[서울=뉴스핌] Reporter Lee Young-ki = US President Joe Biden predicted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and said that if it did, Russia would suffer catastrophe. This is a warning against Russia, which is moving troops to the Belarus-Ukrainian border in the name of joint exercise with the Belarusian army.
It is analyzed that this crisis, which is wreaking havoc in Ukraine, was caused by the confrontation between Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO with NATO’s eastward policy on its back and Vladimir Putin’s red line to prevent it and put Ukraine under its own influence. .
“I think Putin will push into Ukraine,” said Biden, during a press conference on the first anniversary of his inauguration at the White House on the 19th (local time), according to Reuters. .
“If we invade Ukraine, it will be a disaster,” he said. However, Biden said, “I don’t think he wants an all-out war yet.”
In particular, in relation to Putin’s call for Ukraine to ban NATO membership, he said, “It is unlikely that Ukraine will join NATO in the near future.”
| US President Joe Biden at a press conference for the first anniversary of his inauguration [사진=로이터 뉴스핌] |
◆ Ukraine join NATO vs Putin Redline
The intermediate region (buffer zone) formed between the West and Russia has rapidly become friendly with the West since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In Eastern Europe, NATO accepted Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic as members in 1999, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Baltic States, Romania and Bulgaria in 2004. Since then, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia have joined, increasing the number of NATO allies to 30.
Ukraine has also developed cooperative relationships with existing member states on the premise of joining NATO since 2008. The Russian government reacted extremely sensitively to this, calling it “a very dangerous action that could trigger Russian retaliation.”
To keep Ukraine under its influence, Russia annexed Crimea by force in 2014 and supported pro-Russian anti-government forces in the Donbas region, fueling conflict. Finally, at the end of last year, about 100,000 troops were deployed in the border area.
At the time, Putin said, “If Ukraine joins NATO, NATO weapons deployed here will threaten Russia right in front of them.” and Ukraine.
Meanwhile, in mid-December of last year, Russia delivered a draft agreement unilaterally prepared by Russia to the United States and NATO, respectively. Putin has put forward the red line.
Its contents were to stop NATO’s eastern advance and effectively withdraw troops from Eastern Europe, as well as limit the deployment of nuclear weapons in the United States. Furthermore, the request to recognize the former Soviet Union as a Russian sphere of influence was also included in the content.
To achieve this demand, Russia initiated negotiations with the United States, NATO, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the new year, but to no avail.
It is known that Russia is moving its troops to the Belarus-Ukrainian border area under the pretext of conducting joint exercises with the Belarusian army, and Russian ballistic missiles and armored vehicles are also arriving one after another in Belarus.
Aleksandr Volpovic, chairman of the Belarusian Security Council, announced on the 17th that “Russian troops are arriving in Belarus for joint exercises.” The Belarusian government explains that it is a training exercise to combat 30,000 NATO forces deployed in Poland and Lithuania, but a different interpretation is possible considering the location of Belarus, which borders the northern border of Ukraine about 1130 km. In particular, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is strengthening ties with Putin.
The current situation in which Russia is staring at Ukraine is considered the biggest crisis since the Cold War. At the end of last year, Andrew Rosen, a research fellow at the American think tank CSIS, evaluated that “the current crisis in Ukraine is the worst crisis that has occurred in Europe since the Cold War.”
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| Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (centre) visits a military unit deployed on the border near Donetsk [사진=로이터 뉴스핌] |
◆ Why is Putin obsessed with Ukraine?
Russia’s Putin was looking for an opportunity to regain the presence of the Cold War era in a situation where the global situation was changing into a two-way structure between the United States and China. In particular, it has dispatched a paratrooper with a capacity of 2,500 people to Kazakhstan, where large-scale anti-government protests have been taking place since the 2nd. In other words, he does not want to give up his control over Central Asia, his old hometown.
Regarding this move, the Financial Times (FT) on the 24th of last month said, “The US has no time to look to Afghanistan or Iran because it is competing with China. I’m trying to get it back.”
Russia considers Ukraine, which is mostly Slavic, as one ethnic group, and thinks that the two countries are effectively one after Catherine the Great in the 18th century. Two-thirds of the country was black soil, and it was nothing more than a food warehouse in the former Soviet Union and Russia.
From a military point of view, Ukraine was both through Ukraine and Poland during Napoleon’s expedition to Russia and the Nazi invasion of Russia during World War II. Foreign Policy said, “Ukraine is a strategic point through which Western European powers enter Russia.”
Because Russia recognized the value of Ukraine, it installed 1900 nuclear warheads and 2,500 tactical nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. This is the reason why Ukraine overtook China, France and the UK to become the world’s three largest nuclear powers when Ukraine became independent with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union before proceeding with denuclearization.
If Ukraine joins NATO and U.S. and NATO missiles are deployed on Ukrainian territory, it will take five minutes for these missiles to reach Moscow, which Russian Putin has repeatedly feared.
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin [사진=로이터 뉴스핌] |
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