07/03/2022
Un pala ang dahilan…… now I know…. Galing talaga ni For the Motherland - Sass Rogando Sasot
“WHY DIDN'T YOU THINK ABOUT WATER?" UNDERSTANDING THE METHOD BEHIND PUTIN'S MADNESS
What unleashed the Russian bear from its decades of restraint? Urgent problems that needed decisive actions. Here’s an explanation of how Putin is playing this geopolitical chess game.
We often cite the enlargement of NATO eastward towards Russia’s border as the cause of the Ukraine-Russia War. Ukraine being a member of NATO would be a geopolitical tragedy for Russia. However, that problem has already been effectively resolved when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
So what could be the urgent reason this time? Vladimir Putin referred to the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, which of course is a way to rally Russians round the flag and provide “just cause” justification for war. And just like any war initiated on a “just cause,” history will provide its verdict. But this grander aim seems to hide an urgent cause that might not appeal that much to the Russian public.
Russia’s foreign policy interest is to have influence in, and to some extent control over, its “near-abroad,” a term used in Russian foreign policy thinking to refer to the member States of the former Soviet Union. The urgent aim to realise it is to prevent Russia’s “near-abroad” to be part of NATO.
A remnant of the Cold War between the U.S. and USSR, the transatlantic military alliance NATO kept enlarging even after the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact military alliance (consisted of socialist republics in Central and Eastern Europe) dissolved in 1991.
With an increasingly powerful NATO and a decapitated Soviet Union, which got reduced to its heir state Russia, the precarious balance of power in Europe hanged on to the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty.
Negotiated a month before the Soviet Union dissolved, the CFE treaty is considered the “cornerstone of European security.” It set “the amount of tanks, armored combat vehicles (ACVs), heavy artillery, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters that NATO and the Warsaw Pact could deploy between the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains” (Arms Control Association, August 2017).
It aims to keep the balance of offensive-defensive capabilities in order to prevent “either alliance from amassing forces for a blitzkrieg-type offensive, which could have triggered the use of nuclear weapons in response” (Arms Control Association, August 2017).
In 1999, the CFE Treaty was revised in order to adapt to the change of condition when the treaty was negotiated in 1991, which are the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact military alliance and the expansion of NATO.
The United States and NATO refused to ratify the treaty, until Russia fulfil its legally non-binding commitments in the CFE Final Act and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Istanbul Summit Declaration, which includes Russian pledges “to withdraw its treaty-limited weapons and military forces from Georgia and Moldova” (Arms Control Association, August 2017).
In 2002, Russia “met the adapted treaty’s weapons limits. NATO accepted this claim but repeated that Russia must still fulfill its commitments with regard to Georgia and Moldova before NATO states would ratify the adapted treaty ”. Russia was disappointed by NATO’s non-ratification of the new CFE Treaty because its new members — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia — were not part of the treaty and thus “have no arms limits” (Arms Control Association, August 2017).
In other words, NATO has four territories that could host offensive weapons outside the treaty limits, thus upsetting the balance of offensive-defensive capabilities that can preserve the balance of power. Three of these territories — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — are right at the borders of Russia.
Russia got impatient. In 2007, Russia suspended its participation in the treaty.
The following year, in April, during the Bucharest summit, NATO declared that it “welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
It was the United States, under George W. Bush, that lobbied hard on having a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia.
Reporting in the New York Times, Steven Erlanger and Steven Lee Myers pointed out that “Germany and France…said they would block the invitation to Ukraine and Georgia” (“NATO Allies Oppose Bush on Georgia and Ukraine,” April 3, 2008).
Knowing that his position would not be accepted by other NATO countries (whose decision-making is based on consensus), Bush asked “officials…to find some construction overnight that would encourage Ukraine and Georgia without asking them to enter a membership plan now.” The result is the water-downed statement of “welcoming aspirations for membership in NATO.”
“Germany and France,” Erlanger and Lee Myers continued, “have said they believe that since neither Ukraine nor Georgia is stable enough to enter the program now, a membership plan would be an unnecessary offense to Russia, which firmly opposes the move.”
And they were right. In response to the Bucharest Declaration, Putin considered the NATO membership of these two countries as a “direct threat” to Russia.
With an ever-expanding NATO and the CFE Treaty being inoperative, the European balance of war is in danger.
Between Georgia and Ukraine, it is the latter that is more geostrategically important for Russia because Crimea hosts Russia’s main naval base in the Black Sea Fleet. However, Russia didn’t prioritise Ukraine.
It started with Georgia because it was closer to the process of becoming a member of NATO than Ukraine: in 2006, the parliament unanimously passed a bill on NATO integration; which was followed by a referendum, with an overwhelming “Yes” to NATO membership.
In 2008, Russia intervened in the long-standing dispute between Georgia and its separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Abkhazia is particularly strategically and economically important for Russia in its force projection into the Black Sea.
As Roy Allison wrote in Russia Resurgent? Moscow’s Campaign to “Coerce Georgia to Peace:
“Already in the 1990s Russian leaders observed that their strategic weight in the Black Sea depends on the presence of their troops on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. This traditional military concern is likely to have been reinforced recently as Russia struggles to come to terms with the looming prospect of losing its naval base facilities at Sevastopol in the Crimea.”
When Russia intervened in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia was still leasing Crimea from Ukraine; however, it was set to expire in 2017. Russia didn’t annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but simply recognised their independence.
In 2010, Russia reached a deal with Ukraine to extend Russian lease of Crimea until 2042. It is known as the “Kharkiv Pact.” Under the agreement, Russia would pay 100 million USD/per year, and Russia would “slash the price [Ukraine] pays for 1,000 cubic metres of Siberian gas by $100 (£65) from its current rate of $330, with a 30% discount if the price falls” (“Ukraine extends lease for Russia’s Black Sea fleet,” The Guardian, 21 April 2010).
When Russia reached that deal with Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych was still the president. Yanukovych was seen as Russian-friendly, specially that he is from the Donbas region of Ukraine, where Russian separatists are. In February 2014, Yanukovych was ousted by an upheaval — the Euromaidan protests — which aimed to make Ukraine gear towards the European Union.
The Euromaidan protest was supported by the West. As Ted Galen Carpenter wrote for CATO Institute, “Western leaders made it clear that they supported the efforts of demonstrators to force Yanukovych to reverse course and approve the EU agreement or, if he would not do so, to remove the president before his term expired. Sen. John McCain (R‑AZ), the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went to Kiev to show solidarity with the Euromaidan activists.”
Meanwhile, Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, “traveled to Ukraine three times in the weeks following the start of the demonstrations. Visiting the Maidan on December 5, she handed out cookies to demonstrators and expressed support for their cause” (“America’s Ukraine Hypocrisy,” August 6, 2017).
The West’s role in the Euromaidan upheaval was further proven by a leaked conversation between Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, who were talking about “what the outcome should be” and the goals that they need to strive to achieve (“Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call,” BBC, February 7, 2014).
In response to the American-sponsored Euromaidan protests, Russia annexed Crimea, after a referendum was held in the peninsula about joining the Russian Federation in March 2014. At the same time, Russia supported the cause of the Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.
At this point, let’s recap how Russia aimed to keep its influence in its “near-abroad” as a response to the continued expansion of NATO, which France and Germany called an “unnecessary offense to Russia:”
One, it recognised the independence of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Donetsk, and Luhansk; and two, it annexed Crimea. Here we can see that it’s Crimea that is Russia’s core geopolitical interest because it is the only territory it incorporated to greater Russia. The others are just, at best, Russia’s protectorates, they remain internally independent but they get military protection from Moscow and thus limited in their foreign policy decisions.
The annexation of Crimea puts Ukraine’s NATO dreams very difficult if not totally impossible. This is because one of the principles of NATO’s enlargement is that: “States which have ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional disputes must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.”
Ukraine still insists that Crimea is part of its territory. However, Russia is effectively occupying and thus insists it is part of its territory. Because of this, Ukraine’s territorial dispute will make it hard for it to become a member of NATO, unless it gets resolved “by peaceful means.” And that is on top of the ethnic disputes in the Donbas region with the ethnic Russian separatists.
Given this, why did Russia still proceed with its invasion of Ukraine? The answer, it seems, is still Crimea.
Crimea’s freshwater supply comes from the Dnieper River, which flows from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into the Black Sea. The amount of fresh water that flows to Crimea is through the North Crimean Canal, which links the Dnieper River to the peninsula.
Without water flowing from the Dnieper River, Crimea doesn’t have enough fresh water to keep its agricultural sector alive.
“Crimea was 85% dependent on water delivery from [Dnieper River]. Out of a total volume of consumed water, 72% were used for agricultural purposes, 18% – for public needs and as drinking water..., and 10% for industry. The closure of the Canal had a devastating effect on agricultural production in Crimean and adversely affected the chemical industry” (Oleksii Plotnikov, “The Proceedings Flow While Water Does Not: Russia’s Claims Concerning the North Crimean in Strasbourg”).
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Ukraine built a dam in Kherson, the city north of Crimea. Ukraine retaliated by stopping the flow of the Dnieper River to Crimea, essentially turning off the faucet of freshwater supply to the peninsula, consequently destroying Crimea’s agricultural sector. “Without water from the Dnieper River, Crimea’s arable land has shrunk, from 130,000 hectares in 2013 — already a fraction of Soviet-era levels — to 14,000 in 2017” (Clara Ferreira Marques, Bloomberg, “Crimea’s Water Crisis Is An Impossible Problem for Putin,” 19 March 2021).
In August 2019, Ukraine rejected any negotiations with Russia regarding Crimea’s access to water flowing from the Dnieper.
Anton Korynevych, Ukraine’s Representative on Crimea, had some harsh words: “The [Dnieper] River does not flow through the territory of Crimea. Ukraine did not block the source of the river, but the technology equipment (a canal) which is on Ukrainian territory, as it had the full right to do…All claims presented by the occupier state for Dnieper water, therefore, do not have any legal or international-legal basis. Crimea is Ukraine” (“Ukraine Rejects Negotiations With Russia Over Dnieper Water Supply to Crimea,” OOSKANEWS, August 14, 2019).
Russia exhausted ALL diplomatic means to address the Dnieper River issue — and all of it fell on deaf ears. Writing for EJIL: Talk!, Oleksii Plotnikov, enumerated the diplomatic actions Russia took to address the water issue:
“In June 2020, Russian lawmakers addressed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) complaining that ‘Ukraine has deprived millions of people of a basic and inalienable right to drinking water’. No official reaction followed."
"On 14 September 2020, the Russian Human Rights Council (an advisory body with the Russian presidential administration) appealed the OHCHR claiming that the actions of Ukraine contravene the UN Convention on Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes and the Berlin Rules on Water Resources. This appeal was again without a response."
"In March 2021, the Russian envoy to the OSCE listed the violations of the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms allegedly resulting from shutting down the Canal.”
On July 22, 2021, Russia filed an Inter-State case against Ukraine at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Among other requests, Russia asked the court to order Ukraine to stop blocking the flow of the Dnieper River to Crimea.
The European Court of Human Rights “decided to reject the request under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court since it did not involve a serious risk of irreparable harm of a core right under the European Convention on Human Rights” (Press Release, European Court of Human Rights.)
Insulting the Russian bear, Oleksiy Reznikov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister in charge of reintegration policies for the occupied territories, said that: “The canal symbolises the stupidity of the Kremlin in occupying Crimea. They didn’t weigh the consequences at a moment of electoral euphoria that was fed by their own propaganda…Why didn’t you think about water?” (Roman Olearchyk, “Crimea ‘water war’ opens new front in Russia-Ukraine conflict,” FT, July 29, 2021).
Without any recourse anymore to diplomatic means, it’s not hard to imagine that Russia would use force to pursue its interests to resupply fresh water to Crimea.
However, its aims seem to be limited. Russia doesn’t seek full invasion. A full invasion would mean that Russia would have to bear the cost of rebuilding Ukraine: it’s the responsibility of every occupying power — a situation it wouldn’t want to be in because the cost of doing that greatly outweighs the benefit.
The annexation of Crimea itself is already much of a burden for Russia. According to Bloomberg, “Crimea cost 1.5 trillion rubles to support in the first five years of occupation, equivalent to roughly two years of Russia’s education budget, according to one former central bank official.... And the price tag is set to rise” (Clara Ferreira Marques, “Crimea’s Water Crisis Is An Impossible Problem for Putin,” 19 March 2021).
While there are options to supply freshwater to Crimea, they are prohibitively expensive, and would still take time to be realised. Cheap source of freshwater is very important for the survival of Crimean economy.
Ukraine controls the Dnieper River flows to Crimea. Its turning-off-the-faucet retaliation, its resistance to negotiation, and international organizations turning a deaf ear on this issue made the Russian bear unleash its fury.
War over freshwater isn’t new. It has always been a geopolitical issue that plagued world history.
Writing for Interesting Engineering, Marcia Wendorf highlighted the first documented water wars, “the first known war over water took place between the Sumerian states of Lagash and Umma around 2500 BCE. A dispute over the Gu'edena (edge of paradise) region of Mesopotamia led Urlama, King of Lagash, to divert water, thus depriving Umma. Urlama's son Il followed in his father's footsteps and he cut off the water supply to Girsu, a city in Umma” (“Water Wars:” The Fight for Earth’s Most Precious Resource,” 24 February 2021). Sounds familiar?
That Russia’s aims in its current invasion of Ukraine are limited to having control of the Dnieper River is supported by the following:
One, Russia didn’t attempt to establish aerial supremacy immediately — and most probably, it has no intention to do so. No full invasion can successfully happen without dominating the skies first. And I think NATO's military calculation factored this in that’s why they denied Ukraine President Volodymr Zelenskky’s request for air denial request. And that is on top of NATO's military calculation of why they ruled out sending troops to Ukraine. As what NATO-Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: "The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO planes, fighter planes, into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes...If we did that, we’ll end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe involving many more countries and causing much more human suffering." In other words, if NATO granted Zelenskyy's request, NATO is already declaring war against Russia. That's just not a wise thing to do...
And second, if you look at the progress of Russia’s invasion, the first city that fell was Kherson. Russia immediately bombed the dam Ukraine built there. Thus, opening the faucet of freshwater supply to Crimea. By occupying Kherson, Russia has now control of the lower basin of Dnieper River, which is accompanied by its control of its upper basin, which is near Chernobyl.
I believe that Russian invasion will stop when it already gets enough leverage in negotiating the control of Dnieper River. And that leverage would materialise when Russia would have taken control of the full coastline of Ukraine, denying it access to the sea.
This seems to be Russia’s retaliation to Ukraine’s turning-off-the-faucet move when Moscow annexed Crimea. When Kiev stopped the flow of water to Crimea, it essentially killed the latter's economy; now, I think, Russia would seek to do the same by blocking Ukraine's access to the sea. So for Ukraine to regain access to the sea and keep its economy afloat, Ukraine has to give Russia a good offer on the Dnieper River.
And as for the larger structural issue of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, NATO should offer a guarantee that it won’t keep expanding anymore. I think what happened to Ukraine should be enough lesson for them. What NATO and Russia should do in order to keep a healthy balance of power in Europe is to negotiate an updated Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. And resolving those three critical issues of this conflict that I mentioned (Dnieper River issue, NATO enlargement, a new CFE Treaty) hopefully could save us from World War III...
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Written by Sass Rogando Sasot:
Sass has a Combined Major in World Politics and Global Justice (magna cm laude) and a Master’s in International Relations at Leiden University. While studying, she provided research, teaching, and student assistance to the following courses at Leiden University: Multilateral Institutions; Europe on the World Stage, the development of the EU’s Foreign Security, and Defence Policies; and Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Building. And for three years, she taught courses in International Relations, Policy Analysis, and International Diplomatic Negotiations at Maastricht University.
