In Ukraine, Putin is running rings around the west
Although it was ignored, Putin's call for pro-Russia rebels to delay their referendum in east Ukraine is a promising development. It is a sign that the Kremlin may be willing to halt the slide into civil war – and bring the warring parties back to the "national dialogue" on Ukraine's constitutional future envisaged by the Geneva agreement.
But the west is kidding itself if it thinks this is the result of the sanctions it imposed last week. Putin's move is more probably part of a broader game. He is subverting the Kiev government and threatening invasion to push through his preferred option: the federalisation of Ukraine on Russian terms.
If anything, the sanctions will be counterproductive – too weak to subdue the Russian bear but strong enough to provoke it. They stop short of sweeping bans on oil and gas exports, on which Russia heavily depends.
Gazprom, the state energy giant, is the Kremlin's biggest weapon against Ukraine, and sanctions against it would seriously hurt Russia's stagnating economy: a loss of revenues from fuel exports might lead to a full-blown crisis for the country's creaking infrastructure and welfare state – and perhaps a broader opposition to the Putin government than the young urban professionals who joined the protest rallies of 2011-12.
But the Russian government has huge reserves to withstand such a crisis, and the EU cannot stop importing fuel without affecting its own economies. About one-third of the EU's gas supplies is imported from Russia. In the new democracies of eastern Europe the figure is twice as high. Putin knows the west is divided – and that, short of military intervention, there is little it can do to stop his undermining of Ukraine.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/09/ukraine-putin-west-sanctions-russia
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