More than ever, Putin stands out as the master of clocks. By announcing to everyone’s surprise, on Tuesday, the “partial” withdrawal of certain Russian troops massed on the borders of Ukraine, Moscow continued to dictate the diplomatic tempo in the crisis which opposes it to its Slavic neighbor – and to the rest of the world. And has since made fun of the alarmist tone adopted by Washington and London in recent days.
“Announce the schedule of our invasions for the coming year, I would like to plan a vacation,” scoffed the spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy Maria Zakharova, while American intelligence had mentioned last week a possible invasion of Ukraine this Wednesday, February 16. A hypothesis that Russian televisions were happy to sweep away, with a lot of images showing trains loaded with Russian armored vehicles leaving Crimea to reach Russia.
But should we see in this gesture of the Kremlin the beginning of de-escalation? In Western chancelleries, caution, even skepticism, dominates. An attack on Ukraine remains “quite possible”, warned Joe Biden from the outset on Tuesday, while affirming that he wanted to “give diplomacy every chance”. As a sign of distrust of Moscow’s announcements, the American president mentioned the presence of “more than 150,000” Russian soldiers still present around Ukraine, against a figure of 100,000 previously mentioned.
Same circumspection on the side of NATO, where it is claimed to have seen “no de-escalation” on the ground for the moment. “On the contrary, it appears that Russia continues to strengthen its military presence,” Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg objected on Wednesday from Brussels. Within the EU, the discourse is hardly different. Its head of diplomacy Josep Borrell called on the same day to “verify” the Russian allegations. Clearly, we are waiting to judge on the spot after the spectacular increase in tensions in recent days.
Blow hot and cold
The master of the Kremlin likes to blow hot and cold. At the same time as the announcement of a start of withdrawal, the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, voted on Tuesday a resolution asking Putin to recognize the independence of the separatist republics of Donbass. An initiative denounced by Westerners in the process.
“In reality this de-escalation is not really one: this slight decrease in military pressure is replaced by an increase in diplomatic pressure, explains Françoise Thom, lecturer emeritus in history at the Sorbonne. In exchange for this partial withdrawal of his troops, Putin wants the West to force Ukraine to implement the Minsk agreements – which, in their Russian interpretation, are very favorable to Russia.”
In case of failure, the master of the Kremlin can always console himself by recognizing the independence of the two Ukrainian separatist territories. Especially since during his press conference with the German Chancellor on Wednesday, Putin again accused the Ukrainian government of “genocide” of the Russian-speaking populations in the Donbass. A warning to the tunes of possible reason for military intervention in the future.
“It is quite possible that Moscow will use an incident on the line of contact as a pretext to launch a military operation by asserting that the Russian populations are threatened and that it is Russia’s duty to intervene, confirms Marie Dumoulin , director of the Wider Europe program at the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR). .” The tension is not about to drop.