With Russia threatening war with Ukraine, I’m headed to Kyiv | Trudy Rubin

I am leaving for Ukraine this week — as more than 100,000 Russian troops surround the country — to write about why its future matters to Americans. And to learn how Ukrainians feel about being treated as if it were 1945.

In February 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin carved up Europe between them, at the Yalta Conference in Crimea, with Winston Churchill looking on. These three men agreed that future governments of Eastern European countries would be “friendly” to the Soviet regime but could still hold free elections.

We know how that turned out: a divided European continent whose eastern half was severely repressed by the Soviets. That misery lasted until the bloc was liberated by the popular uprisings across Eastern Europe in 1989, and by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Now in 2022, Vladimir Putin is openly trying to restore the late Soviet empire, which he views as Russia’s legitimate “sphere of influence,” meaning Kremlin control of Eastern Europe (along with Central Asia and the oil-rich Caucasus countries). Putin is demanding that the United States and Europe accede, and Ukraine be subjected to Russian dominance as the centerpiece of his project.

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As Russia’s de facto tsar, Putin wants the Yalta-redux deal to be signed between Washington and Moscow without giving Ukraine any voice in its fate. (As if to remind us of Russia’s modus operandi for settling boundaries, Yalta is located in Crimea. The Russian army invaded Crimea and seized it from Ukraine in 2014.)

But 2022 is not 1945. Ukraine has been a democracy, if flawed, since the early 1990s, and does have free elections. The vast majority of Ukrainians do not want to live under Moscow’s thumb and will fight a Russian invasion, despite facing a vastly superior Russian army with daunting air and sea support. If Russian tanks invade, the world will be watching, live.

Americans need to hear Ukrainian voices. “Putin has put the narrative as if this is all between the United States and Russia and as if this were colonial times,” I was cautioned by Fiona Hill, former Russia expert on the U.S. National Security Council. “But what do Ukrainians think their relationship with Russia should be and what are they prepared to do? We shouldn’t accept Russia’s framing of this.”

So while in Ukraine, I want to speak not only with leading security experts but also with professionals who train on weekends as volunteer defense forces to be called up if Russia actually invades. I hope to go out on a ship to view what is left of Ukraine’s navy after the Russians destroyed most of it in 2014, and to go to the front lines in Donbas, where Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting Russian proxies for the last eight years. Their determination will cost Moscow dearly if Putin stages a full-scale invasion, which is why I doubt he will.

I also want to explore the debate inside Ukrainian society about whether any sort of deal is possible with Putin. Should there be a moratorium on NATO membership for several years or would that just fuel further Kremlin demands? Do they believe Russian threats are a pressure tactic? Do they expect a massive cyberattack? Or is a Russian takeover of more parts of eastern Ukraine more likely to show NATO that Moscow can act as it pleases?

I want to know what Ukrainians think might still make Putin rethink his invasion threats, and what cost they believe their David could impose on the Russian Goliath. And what more defensive military aid and tougher sanctions they believe the U.S. and Europe (read: Germany) must announce now to dissuade Putin from any notion that Ukraine will be a pushover and NATO will cave.

I will also travel to the Baltic state of Lithuania, a NATO member, to hear about the threats Russia is making on its borders – and to discuss how it achieved energy independence, unlike Germany with its controversial Nordstream 2 pipeline that depends on Russian gas.

Of course, many Americans may be reluctant to see the U.S. get further involved with Ukraine, for fear of a broader war with Russia.

But we should be aware that if Putin succeeds in retaking Ukraine by invasion or another form of destruction, it would encourage China to expand its own sphere of influence in Asia, including Taiwan. Two such broad authoritarian spheres of influence vs. a shrunken Western democratic sphere would create a more volatile world than in Cold War days.

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Some experts argue that the U.S. should meet Putin’s demands that Ukraine be legally excluded from NATO and NATO troops withdrawn from the former Eastern bloc.

But contrary to incessant Kremlin propaganda, those NATO soldiers — including 8,500 U.S. troops who may be sent to the Baltics — are there to protect NATO members against constant Russian threats and incursions.

The Biden administration has offered to negotiate on troop and missile placement if Moscow does likewise with its troops and missiles, but the Kremlin has downplayed the offer as of secondary importance. Biden has rightly and flatly rejected acceptance of Putin’s grandiose demands to effectively hand over Ukraine.

I want to hear the debate inside Ukraine about whether any sort of deal is possible with Putin. After all, it is Putin who wants to restore the Cold War divisions in Europe with his dreams of restoring Russia’s imperial empire. To avoid that nightmare, the Biden team must avoid any hints of another Yalta in Ukraine. I’ll be there to see what happens next.