MOUNTING CONFRONTATION

We can see the outlines of a new phase of exacerbation in the Ukrainian crisis. The opposing sides remain as far from a comprehensive peace settlement as they were before. It appears to be virtually unreachable against the background of the Russia-US relations that have become even worse over the past few days.

A new round of quadrilateral talks in the Normandy format (between the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France) has left a mixed impression. On the one hand, Pavlo Klimkin, Sergey Lavrov, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Laurent Fabius urged to observe the Minsk accords, in particular, as regards withdrawing heavy weapons from the dividing line between the Ukrainian government's forces and pro-Russian rebels. On the one hand, the talks in Berlin virtually failed to reach any consensus on a number of major issues.

Summing up the results of the Normandy format negotiations, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said that the most complicated issue discussed at the Berlin meeting was the functioning of the OSCE monitoring mission. Kiev demands that the mission should monitor the situation in the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions. However, the self-proclaimed "people's republics" will not provide proper access for OSCE representatives. The problem is that neither Kiev nor the OSCE have recognized the legal status of the DPR and the LPR. In any event, the Ukrainian authorities' position is that they can enter negotiations with only those representatives of Donbass who were elected in accordance with Ukraine's laws and OSCE criteria. Clearly enough, the pro-Russia separatists are not the case.

The issue of the proposals to send an international peacekeeping mission to Donbass remains no less problematic. Kiev has agreed that this issue calls for coordination with Russia which has the right of veto at the UN Security Council. However the keynote of the Ukrainian position consists in that Moscow should be involved neither in organizing the mission, nor in monitoring the international peacekeepers' operation. For its part, the Russian Federation is making it clear that it is impossible to implement any international peacekeeping mission in the south-east of Ukraine without its consent or even without its participation.

The absence of a strategic breakthrough in the talks involving Moscow and Kiev is affecting the current situation on the Donbass front. According to data from representatives of the OSCE mission, the number of clashes between Ukrainian security forces and pro-Russian rebels in Donbass has drastically increased over the past few days. Large-scale hostilities with the use of mortars are under way in the northern suburbs of Donetsk. According to Moscow's opinion as stated by Andrey Kelin, Russia's permanent envoy to the OSCE, Ukraine's activities near Donetsk points to the fact that Kiev is consciously undermining the operation of the OSCE special monitoring mission by promoting the idea of sending UN peacekeepers to Donbass territory.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine crisis is progressing against the background of mounting confrontation between Russia and the West. During his "direct line" [live phone-in show with the nation] on 16 April, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that a lifting of Western sanctions against Russia "should not be expected in the near future" because, in his words, "this is a matter of political nature, of strategic relations with Russia and holding back our development". Valeriy Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, paid attention to one of the key aspects of the strategic collision between Russia and the West. He pointed out directly that, in a situation of civil war in Ukraine, there is a military threat to Russia. Gerasimov was unable to predict when the war might end because "we do not know what instructions the new Ukrainian authorities are receiving from their Western tutors".

NATO's actions aimed at strengthening its positions next to Russia's borders were also assessed by the Russian General Staff chief from the angle of confrontation with the West. In Gerasimov's opinion, the USA and NATO are interested in developing crisis situations in regions bordering on the Russian Federation "in their effort to put Russia in place". In this case, at issue is not only NATO's eastward expansion towards Russia started in the 1990s but also the "colour revolutions" in a number of states across the post-Soviet space (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova) which is considered by Moscow as its traditional territory of influence.

The start of the Ukraine crisis spoiled the Russia-NATO dialogue to such an extent that Russian Deputy Defence Minister Anatoliy Antonov allowed himself to make a statement the other day about a collapse in relations between Moscow and the alliance. He sees one cause of this in the fact that "instead of developing cooperation and measures of trust, NATO has set a course for confrontation" which is expressed in "unprecedented and absolutely unjustified" activity of the North Atlantic alliance at Russia's borders.

The sharp deterioration in the Russia-US relations should also be considered in the context of the confrontation between Moscow and the entire West which is exacerbating amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine. A recent incident in the international airspace over the Baltic Sea increased tensions in the relations between the two biggest states. According to Pentagon's data, a US RC-135U military aircraft was performing a mission in the airspace to the north of Poland when a Russian Su-27 fighter jet flying at a high speed intercepted it from the rear. Then the Russian aircraft made two circles around the US plane using, as the US military department said, "unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvres".

The Russian Defence Ministry has commented on the situation in a different way. Moscow's theory has it that the Su-27 approached the US reconnaissance aircraft after the RC-135U headed confidently towards the Russian border. This is why the SU-27 was sent to meet it and forced the US reconnaissance aircraft to change its course and move away from the Russian border.

Anyway, the interception of a US military aircraft by a Russian fighter over the Baltic Sea may lead to an even worse deterioration in the US-Russia relations. Washing-ton has already warned Moscow that the tensions between the two states may possibly increase. The Americans are accentuating the fact that the midair incident took place in "in the context of a changed security environment in view of Russia's aggression against Ukraine".

To all appearances, the Ukraine crisis promises quite a lot of new unpleasant surprises to the present world order. It has become the decisive phase of struggle for control over the post-Soviet space threatening to assume a chronic character fraught with keeping the "heart of Eurasia" in a state of permanent explosive tension.