Who lost Ukraine?

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There are multiple accounts suggesting that there was actually a productive meeting among the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine earlier this week over the conflict in eastern Ukraine. According to the BBC:

[German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter] Steinmeier said all parties reaffirmed that the ceasefire, which has held for almost two weeks, needed to be consolidated.

The warring sides were now “very close” to a deal that would see the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the frontline, he added.

He also said there was some progress on the legal groundwork towards holding local elections in eastern Ukraine in October.

If the conflict in Ukraine has stabilized while, at the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin has deployed more military force to Syria, what does it mean?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/15/who-lost-ukraine/

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1. Ukraine Bars 3 BBC Journalists From Entering Ukraine

Ukraine on Wednesday barred a few dozen reporters, including three BBC journalists, from entering the country as an unspecified security threat.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko late on Wednesday signed a sanctions list barring nearly 400 individuals from entering Ukraine, including BBC correspondent Steve Rosenberg and producer Emma Wells, both British, and Russian cameraman Anton Chicherov.

This is the first sanctions list against Russia and foreign individuals that Kiev has introduced since a conflict broke out in April 2014 in eastern Ukraine, claiming more than 8,000 lives so far.

The decree which was published on the president's website said the reporters and media executives on the list presented an unspecified "threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty or territorial integrity."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/ukraine-bars-bbc-journalists-entering-ukraine-33821981

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2. The Obama Administration Rejects Russia’s Offer to Form a New Military Coalition vs. ISIS in Syria

 Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. Pointing to the torrent of American political and media denunciations of Russian President Putin’s increasing of Moscow’s longstanding military support of the Assad regime in Syria, along with Putin’s dramatic offer to join the US-led air war against ISIS in Syria, Cohen concludes that Washington seems to prefer an Islamic State takeover of Damascus to any cooperation with Putin’s Russia. This, Cohen argues, opens another front in the new Cold War—along with the ones that have already unfolded in Ukraine and Europe—and is further evidence of Washington’s inability to think rationally about American national security. Unless ISIS is stopped soon, and its military victories reversed, which requires Russia’s assistance, millions of refugees are likely to flood into Europe, giving further rise to right-wing nationalist parties already opposed to US influence in Europe and to NATO. If so, the vaunted “transatlantic alliance” may not survive this political transformation of European politics. Also discussed are the worsening US-Russian confrontation over Ukraine, which American commentators now insist is directly related to Putin’s policies in Syria; and the way Russia has welcomed perhaps 1 to 2 million refugees from the Ukrainian civil war in a generally humanitarian way—in contrast to the refugee crisis in Europe.

http://www.thenation.com/article/the-obama-administration-rejects-russias-offer-to-form-a-new-military-coalition-vs-isis-in-syria/

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3. Russia’s game plan: Compel Obama to meet with Putin

On Syria, Moscow is driving the Barack Obama administration nuts. This is coercive diplomacy at its best.

With about three weeks to go for the UN General Assembly session to begin in New York, Russia abruptly stepped up its military intervention in Syria. The intervention is no longer ‘below-the-radar’. Moscow intended to create misgivings in the American mind. And it has succeeded.

Yet, no one in Washington knows what the Russian intentions are. The Russian statements have been assertive and rhetorical. It could be that

Moscow simply pre-empted a US-NATO military intervention on the cards; or,
Moscow has decided to directly enter the fight against the Islamic State which threatens Russia’s ‘soft underbelly’ in the Caucasus and Central Asia; or,
Moscow is beefing up the military capability of the Assad regime to ensure it does not pack up any time soon; or,
Russians are preparing for a long haul by setting up military bases; or,
With Ukraine crisis cooling off, Moscow has turned to Syria; or,
Moscow senses the mood in Western Europe is affected by the refugee flow and an opportune moment has arrived to isolate the United States; or,
Moscow is flexing muscles essentially to compel President Barack Obama to engage President Vladimir Putin at a meeting.

http://atimes.com/2015/09/russias-game-plan-compel-obama-to-meet-with-putin/

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4. It seems that Putin is playing a game in Syria, where the only way to win

is to not play.

The lessons of Afghanistan have not been learned, apparently.

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5. I don't understand your argument, all wars are pretty much like that.

And he doesn't have to win in Syria, as with Ukraiine, he just has to make sure Assad doesn't lose, which more or less equates to keeping the Baathist government in power in the Alawite heartland. That is a lot easier. The proper analogy here is Georgia./S. Ossetia or Ukraine/Donetsk. The Eastern part of the country he can leave for the neighbors of that territory which will no longer be Syria (the Caliphate) to clean up. This has been in preparation for a few months now. He learned the lesson of Afghanistan very well: "occupation of a hostile population is a stupid idea". Meanwhile we have the refugee crisis to put steel in the spine of cowardly Yurpean politicians who would like to continue to ignore the mess.

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6. There are wars of choice, and there are wars of necessity.

The goal in Afghanistan was to make sure the Parcham crowd stayed in power. The USSR lost everything trying to achieve that goal.

Russia's government isn't going to disband, but they're getting themselves entangled in a land war in the Middle East. Didn't work so well for them, or for George W Bush.

He doesn't control any borders in Syria, unlike Ukraine and Ossetia. Syria's borders are controlled by NATO members and ISIS.

How many dead Russian soldiers is this going to be worth? You can imagine what the ISIS crowd will do if they get their hands on living Russian prisoners.

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7. That would all be true if he were trying to maintain the territorial integrity of Syria.

But he is not. It is no accident that he has agreed to give more active support only after Assad abandoned keeping control of most of Syria. The Alawite coastal heartland, as I said, can be defended. Iran is going to send troops, do most of the bleeding, I think, Russia is supplying the air cover. Which is smart, the Iranians are Shiia and muslim, there will be less friction.

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8. less friction? I dunno about that, Shiite/Sunni is about as vicious as Islamist/infidels.

Russia's also sending 1500 tanks the Syrians have never seen, let alone used.

To put it another way, this seems to be less the Afghanistan playbook or the Iraq playbook--more like the Viet Nam playbook.

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9. Alawites are Shiia, sort of.

The Iranian grunts will fit in better THERE in the Alawite lands than Russian grunts. I don't expect they will be trying to fit in anywhere else, the Iranians, they will be pursuing that Shiia-Sunni dispute themselves. I have read suggestions that the Iranians have already been known to make themselves unwelcome in Syria, but it's hard to tell how much of it is true. The bullshit levels that surround this dispute are amazing, the overt lying, the wild imaginations at work.