The North Atlantic alliance is using the Ukraine crisis as a pretext to revise the terms of the Russia-NATO Founding Act. When it was signed in 1997, the sides agreed to devise rules of the game, including the demilitarization of the Baltic-Black Sea region.

       Leading Research Fellow of the Institute of International Security Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences and Valdai Club expert Alexei Fenenko believes the crisis in Ukraine was provoked by the United States and the European Union working in concert, and that the plan to destabilize the country was conceived long before November 2013.

       Alexei Fenenko argues that the seeds of the current crisis in Ukraine were sown in October 2011, when Vladimir Putin announced that he would run for a third term as president and identified Eurasian cooperation and integration as a key element of Russian foreign policy. Ever since the United States has been working to kill Putin’s plans in the crib, as demonstrated by events in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova and now Ukraine. Russia, for its part, proposed that Ukraine remain neutral on two occasions (during the Eastern Partnership summit in May 2009 and after the release of NATO’s new strategic concept in May 2010), but was rebuffed.

       Fenenko believes that the North Atlantic alliance is using the Ukraine crisis as a pretext to revise the terms of the Russia-NATO Founding Act. When it was signed in 1997, the sides agreed to devise rules of the game, including the demilitarization of the Baltic-Black Sea region. The act explicitly forbade NATO from deploying nuclear weapons or large troop contingents on the territory of new alliance members absent a threat from Russia. Despite NATO’s subsequent expansion, Russia reaffirmed the decisions codified in the act in 2002, which remained in effect until 2014. Fenenko said that President Barack Obama’s speech in Warsaw and Vice President Joe Biden’s speech in Bucharest were practically identical, and that both politicians were clear about the “need to establish a NATO military presence in the east of Ukraine” either by setting up US military bases or upgrading the military capabilities of Eastern European countries.

       Fenenko noted that NATO leaders have already settled on the alliance’s four major areas of focus in the future:

       1) Expanding its military presence in Poland, Romania and Estonia;

       2) Supporting forces seeking to change the neutral status of Sweden and Finland;

       3) Building up its presence in the Black Sea via Romania and Bulgaria;

       4) Pushing back pro-Russian forces in countries where there is still a strong attachment to Russia, e.g., Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria.

       “As for Ukraine, there is no consensus in the United States on its future,” Fenenko said adding that US analysts are divided into those that think Ukraine should be preserved in the borders of March 17, 2014 (without Crimea), in which case Ukraine will have to resort to armed force and conduct cleansing operations in its south-east, and those who think that Ukraine should shed some regions and, using the “Russian threat” as a pretext, appeal to NATO for help in forming a nationalist anti-Russian state in the Ukrainian heartland between the Ivano-Frankovsk and Poltava regions.

       Ukraine’s neutrality is currently being dictated by events. NATO cannot admit a country with two unresolved territorial disputes. NATO membership for Ukraine requires that the country cede Crimea to Russia and end the conflict in Donbass, which will require ethnic cleansing or compromise, but in this case it is unclear who will restore the infrastructure in the south-east. The Kiev government has managed to suppress the federalization movement in Kharkov, Odessa and Zaporozhye for now, at the cost of a lot of spilled blood. And yet, as Fenenko emphasized, the Americans have acknowledged that the movement can reemerge at any time.

       “A Ukraine of 43 million people cannot be integrated into NATO, but a small ethnically homogenous country consisting of central and western Ukraine can,” Fenenko said. He argued that objectionable regions could be “cut off” and that the remainder of Ukraine could sign mutual assistance treaties with individual NATO countries. The media have recently reported about a potential pact between Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine. This is a more realistic option for Ukraine than NATO membership, he said.

       Also, Fenenko warned that many NATO countries have territorial claims in Ukraine, as Hungary has mentioned indirectly. Romania claims part of the Danube delta lying in Ukraine, and Poland has claims on the Volhynia region. NATO troops sent to Ukraine may enforce these claims under the pretext of stabilizing the country. However, this scenario is only possible, if Ukraine descends into complete chaos, for instance, if it follows down the path of Nagorno-Karabakh and becomes a protracted stalemate that exhausts both sides and only produces more coffins. If this happens, the new government in Kiev could be overthrown, resulting either in a second collapse of the Ukrainian state or the rise of even more radical forces.

       “I’d already question Petro Poroshenko’s independence both from Washington and US advisors and in terms of the domestic political situation in Ukraine,” Fenenko said, adding that the coup in Kiev took place in February but the self-defense forces have not been disbanded. To believe the news on TV, they are a trained and uniformed army without ID tags, divided into groups of hundreds. They may take orders from Andriy Parubiy or someone else, but they are clearly different from Right Sector, which was sent to Donbass by someone in Kiev, who saw the group as a rival.

       “I think we don’t yet understand who is really exercising power in Kiev, what particular paramilitary structure is in charge of the Kiev junta,” Fenenko said, emphasizing that Poroshenko will remain in office as long as he obeys the will the junta and its patrons.

       Fenenko concluded his talk by noting that the Obama era is drawing to a close and that Russia will likely face a Republican president, pursuing a more aggressive foreign policy, in 2017.

       “Yes, the Americans are imposing sanctions but cautiously. Up to now they haven’t resorted to any large-scale sanctions that could push Russia to take measures in response. Russia is hardly able to respond economically but it is quite capable of making a military-political response,” the expert said.

       Fenenko believes that Russia may start withdrawing from one arms control treaty after another, to the delight of the US military-industrial complex. If Russia responds to sanctions by withdrawing from the New START Treaty, the Convention on Chemical Weapons or the treaty on intermediate- and short-range missiles, the US defense industry will receive a glut of new military orders, while the US establishment will be free to blame the new “evil empire” for upending the global disarmament process.

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.