Nobody can stop juggernaut of war... even Vladimir Putin

Mark Almond, The Independent

The announcement that the US embassy in Kyiv — and some EU embassies — are shutting for fear of Russian airstrikes adds to the mood of growing crisis over Ukraine. If the Kremlin was to deliberately target foreign embassies in Ukraine, it would be a huge breach of the taboos protecting diplomatic installations even in wartime. Diplomatic immunity is not the only taboo that could fall.

More immediately and widely effective is Washington’s decision to send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine to slow Russia’s slow but steady advances across the front in eastern Ukraine. One thing the USA has in common with Russia — not to mention China and the world’s “pariah” regimes such as Iran, or states without functioning governments such as Libya — is its refusal to join the 1997 anti-personnel landmine treaty. The treaty bans their use by most of the world, including the UK and America’s European allies and even Ukraine itself.

Russia, of course, broke the taboo against aggression — in force since Nuremberg in 1945 — by invading Ukraine in the first place. But if Kyiv reneges on its treaty obligation — arguing military necessity — it will be another nail in the coffin of well-meaning attempts to limit the horrors of war. What is the next shibboleth to fall? How long before weapons of mass destruction (WMD) become battlefield necessities justified by the actual state of the war on the ground? Even though Kyiv says it won’t use the American anti-personnel mines in urban areas, this still leaves much of rural Ukraine a potential minefield. Why does Zelensky think breaking the ban on them is worth doing?

Ukraine is faced by a growing shortage of manpower. Russia uses its numerical superiority not to launch mass and suicidal attacks — but rather to hit many points along the front simultaneously. The Ukrainians think these mines would be useful to stop the current Russian tactic of swarming villages used as strongpoints by the Ukrainians. Although anti-personnel mines inflict hideous injuries on “soft targets” — soldiers and unarmoured vehicles — they also litter the battlefield long after a war is over. Look at the long line of limbless civilians from Afghanistan to Africa every day for the long-term costs. But Ukraine will say losing the war will cost its people even more.

“Necessity knows no bounds” is an argument that can be used by both the victim and the aggressor. Russia has hardly been pussyfooting around on the ground and in the sky over Ukraine, but it will gleefully play up Kyiv’s slippage from the moral high-ground to justify worse. Stepping up the bombing of the civilian rear and using even nastier weapons such as thermobaric non-nuclear weapons (almost as devastating as tactical nukes) could be next as Putin seeks to break Ukrainian morale before Donald Trump enters the White House. Trump’s actual stance on the war is a mystery.

On the one hand, Donald Trump Jr and his nominated national security adviser, Michael Waltz, have criticised Joe Biden’s team for raising the stakes with Russia by permitting Kyiv to strike into Russian territory with ATACMS and letting them use US anti-personnel mines. They say the outgoing team wants to tie Trump’s hands. On the other, President Zelensky attributes the White House’s taking the gloves off his forces more to Trump’s imminent arrival than Biden’s initiative, but perhaps he would say that, given Biden’s sell-by date is rapidly approaching.

Even though American decisions in recent days seem to be making the war in Ukraine ever more obviously into an open US-Russian proxy war, other players are adding their pennyworth to the escalating conflict. North Koreans in the line of fire is one obvious escalation on the Ukrainian front but with implications for the stability of East Asia ten time zones away. Most sinister is China’s willingness to let its assets act as deniable agents for Russian sabotage operations.

Denmark’s seizure of the Chinese-owned (but Russian-captained) ship accused of cutting internet cables under the Baltic Sea raises the temperature there to a dangerous level. The straits between Denmark and Sweden are a choke point for Russian access to the wider seas from its ports, from St Petersburg to its exclave, Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania. The Danes can argue that Russia has engaged in acts of war in their waters — but for Russia, losing access to the world’s oceans would be a severe blow.