Diplomacy failed to stem the escalation of the Ukraine crisis earlier this week when Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia does not recognise the eastern region of Donbas as part of Ukraine and ordering Russian troops over the border as part of what he called a “peacekeeping mission.”

As a result, Europe now faces the threat of a war between Russia and Ukraine, an international refugee crisis, and severe tensions in Moscow’s relations with the West.

It is a complex and dangerous situation that is still developing because it is about the recent past as well as the near future. Among its possible repercussions is the forced redrawing of the map of Europe.

All eyes will now be directed towards the repercussions of the Russian actions, and whether they are the first phase of a larger strategy.

The UK announced that the Russian “invasion has begun” after Putin ordered troops over the border, but EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell was less direct, commenting that “I wouldn’t say that it’s a fully-fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.”

EU foreign ministers met on Tuesday in Paris to decide what sanctions to impose over Russia’s move.

“Clearly, that response will be in the form of sanctions,” Borrell said, adding that the aim was not to impose the whole range of sanctions the EU has prepared but rather to address its recognition of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent territories.

The apparent divergence between the UK and the EU will help Putin play down the significance of his action and whether or not it is a “fully-fledged invasion.”

In a speech on Monday night, Putin declared that Russia does not recognise the Donbas region as part of Ukraine.

“I consider it necessary to take a long-overdue decision: to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic,” Putin said, referring to two pro-Russian parts of Ukraine that since 2014 have been engaged in a war with the Kyiv government.

In his speech, which included Putin’s version of Russia’s modern history, the Russian president was dismissive of modern-day Ukraine, saying that its creation as a sovereign state was a “tragedy”.

Arguing that there had never been a separate Ukraine until Soviet times, Putin blamed Soviet leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin for the present situation. He also criticised the decision of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to take Crimea from Russia in 1954 and award it to Ukraine.

Putin painted today’s Ukraine as a corrupt, barely functioning puppet of the United States that threatened Russia’s security.

He said that the West had deceived Russia repeatedly since the end of the Cold War and had expanded much more than what had been agreed after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

The Russian narrative says that in 1990-1991 after the fall of the Berlin Wall Russia had been promised that NATO would not expand to the east, but the West did not honour its pledges.

However, the Western narrative is different, with US academic Mary Sarotte writing in her book Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Stalemate about the post-Cold War order and how this has affected the current geopolitical environment, that Russia was not given a binding commitment by NATO not to expand eastward, though the idea was discussed by US and Russian officials.

Putin’s declaration to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk will end the West’s diplomatic efforts to prevent a possible military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the recognition of the republics was “a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and inconsistent with the principles of the charter of the UN.”

There are now fears that the coming days may witness a bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine after Russia’s announcement that it was sending “peacekeeping” forces into Donetsk and Luhansk to protect them from Ukrainian attacks.

The Russian recognition of the two territories also effectively finishes the 2014-2015 Minsk Agreements that, although still unimplemented, have until now been seen as the best chance for a solution. The agreements call for a large degree of autonomy for the two regions inside Ukraine.

Russian-backed separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as Donbas, broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed themselves as independent “people’s republics”.

Now that they have been recognised by Russia, this will create a new reality on the ground and make it difficult for Ukraine to apply for NATO membership as it does not control the whole of its territory.

Russia has recognised the independence of breakaway regions before, something which took place with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian breakaway regions, after a short war with Georgia in 2008.

It has provided these regions with extensive budgetary support, extended Russian citizenship to their populations, and stationed thousands of troops in them.

In the case of Georgia, Russia used recognition of the breakaway regions to justify an open-ended military presence in a neighbouring and former Soviet republic with a view to thwarting Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO. The same considerations could apply to Ukraine.

But this could be only the first stage of Russia’s strategy, and a senior Russian MP has said he believes Russia intends to recognise separatist claims over the entirety of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Rebel forces currently control just over a third of the two regions in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The rest is still under Ukrainian government control.

Leonid Kalashnikov, a Communist Party MP and head of the Russian Duma’s regional affairs committee, told the RIA news agency he thought Moscow would recognise both eastern regions.

“Recognition of the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic will be within the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” Kalashnikov said, explaining that it would be decided in the coming days.

His statement opens the door to fears that Russia may try to expand the territory controlled by the rebels.

In response to the Russian moves, the US, UK, and EU declared sanctions against Russia this week.

The certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline cannot go ahead as a result of Russia’s actions, German Chanceller Olaf Scholz said. The pipeline between Russia and Germany was completed last September, but it is not yet operating.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield condemned Russia’s decision to recognise the two territories in eastern Ukraine at an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council, warning that the consequences would be dire across Ukraine, Europe, and worldwide.

She said that Putin “has torn the Minsk Agreement to shreds” and that Washington did not believe “he will stop at that,” according to the Reuters news agency.

Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vasily Nebenzya argued for the need to defend Russian-backed separatist areas of Ukraine from what he called “Ukrainian aggression.”

“Allowing a new bloodbath in Donbas is something we do not intend to do,” he said.  

The Kremlin said that Russia remains open to all diplomatic contacts over Ukraine and that Kyiv’s cutting ties with Moscow would worsen the situation. The statement came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was considering breaking off diplomatic relations with Russia.

Ukraine has sent a letter to the Russian mission to the UN, which currently holds the chair of the Security Council, demanding another emergency meeting. The chair cannot stop a meeting from taking place and must hold it within 24 hours of a member state requesting it.

US President Joe Biden spoke with Zelensky during the second half of Putin’s speech, before calling Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, who had been trying to arrange a Biden-Putin summit.

Macron condemned the Kremlin’s move to recognise the two Ukrainian separatist regions as independent, urging the EU to agree on new sanctions against Moscow.

“This is clearly a unilateral violation of Russia’s international commitments and a breach of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he said in a statement issued after chairing a meeting of France’s defence and security council.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK would introduce “immediate” economic sanctions against Russia and warned that Putin was bent on “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and President of the European Council Charles Michel said that “the recognition of the two separatist territories in Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law, the territorial integrity of Ukraine and the Minsk Agreements.”

Chinese Ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun told the Security Council meeting on Ukraine that all parties must exercise restraint and avoid action that could escalate the situation.

While there is unity in the West about the need to respond to the Russian action, there may be disagreements regarding that response.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on Tuesday that “we should not hesitate to take whatever action we need to deter President Putin from undermining both NATO and Europe, and more importantly, our values.”

His declaration came after reports that Washington and London might secretly arm resistance fighters in Ukraine in the event of a Russian invasion, leading to a proxy war between Russia, the US, and the UK.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 February, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.