Analysis: Drums of War Hover Over The Ukraine

As the drum beats of war hover over Europe, the western alliance and Russia, memories of the chills of the Cold War are renewed again, bringing us a glaring sense of déjà vu.  There is a very real crisis in central and eastern Europe over the Ukraine and Russian military playfulness, and if it doesn't get resolved soon the possibility of conflict becomes more alarming. 

What is happening today is military escalation, maybe started by the Russians who are amassing troops on the Ukraine border - 100,000 or more as reported - and counteracted by US troops, albeit in smaller contingents in Germany, Romania and Poland. Maybe more is on the way from NATO countries like Britain who are promising to "kick hell" if Russia invades Ukraine and decide to topple the government there.

The crisis is being played up by different parties. There is certainly lack of trust and confidence building particularly, because of past events and the fact that Russia took over the Crimea in 2014 and there are bits of the east of Ukraine like Donbass that declared themselves as "republics" allied to the Russians which has since made the government in Kiev frustrated and angry. 

For its part Moscow, as led by its Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have denied and said such talk of invasion is preposterous and that they are merely involved in military training exercises in Belarus which happens to border Ukraine. Officials in the Kremlin are on record for saying that once the drills are completed the Russian troops will go away.

But this is no music to the ears of US president Joe Biden, nor British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and many Europe countries including the NATO's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the Germans and the French. Uneasiness presides in Europe but by the looks of it, the leaders there, are trying to find a diplomatic way out of what is turning out to be an international crisis, akin to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when the world edged on a destructive global nuclear exchange between the then two superpowers: United States and Soviet Union. 

French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to stem the standoff. He has met Putin already and travelled to Kiev to meet his counterpart, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to try to iron out point of differences between the two leaders that go-back to the early 1990s when the Soviet Union was dismantled and the Ukraine become an independent republic. 

So despite the military build up, there are diplomatic negotiations. But Moscow is not mincing words when it says it doesn't like the fact that NATO is expanding further to the east and going to as far as Ukraine with talk that it may become part of the western military alliance.  This is troubling for Russia which still regards Ukraine as well as the other independent republics such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - who have long joined NATO - as part of its traditional/historical backyard and part of its national security. 

For Moscow the situation is already bad since Ukraine has already strong military relations with the western alliance but to have them formalised would really put Russia in a jittery fix. Off course, western countries don't see it that way and are happy with the redrawing of the "Iron Curtain" that long represented the communist bloc and served as a counterpart to the western military alliance.

But NATO leaders have to watch carefully in spite of the threat of sanctions on Russia.

Putin has indicated already he will play ball and said time-and-again, his troops are not there especially after the raucous that has been made by Ukraine and western countries, but before that can be done, he wants concessions, real ones despite before the climb down. 

He has already warned about the threat and possible nuclear exchange. After all, many of the protagonists have nuclear bombs. Its a slippery-slope to a wider conflict. It happened before as in World War I and it can happen again. We watch with trepidation the next set of geo-strategic and political moves.