Thousands of desperate migrants are stranded at the Belarus-Poland border amid freezing temperatures. Their plight is on Vladimir Putin.
Although it appears to have escaped the attention of President Joe Biden and most European Union leaders, Putin’s culpability is evident.
First, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko is a Putin lapdog. He has been so since Putin provided the security and economic means for Lukashenko to survive the backlash against his theft of the August 2020 presidential election. The shift in power dynamics is clear. Not that long ago, Lukashenko was willing to openly challenge Putin on energy prices. Today, he tries to flirt with Putin in video calls. Put simply, Lukashenko does what Putin tells him to do. Especially, that is, in international interactions involving NATO and the EU.
Second, this bears the signature of a man who never left the KGB. The scenes of freezing children and desperate migrants are designed to make Poland appear immoral, the EU impotent, and U.S. leadership absent. Even more vintage Putin, the timing of this crisis exploits very significant tensions between Poland and its EU compatriots on matters of judicial supremacy. This effort is designed to undermine Western resolve, credibility, and unity. Via his Belarusian proxy, Putin is undermining the territorial integrity of a keystone NATO member state.
It wouldn’t be that difficult for the West to stop Putin.
Indeed, it would be easy: The threat of imminent sanctions on Russian commodity exports to Belarus (the second-largest export market to the country) would force Putin to reassess his strategy. Unfortunately, however, because Germany has made the EU dependent on Russian energy blackmail, there is little EU appetite to take on Russian energy supplies as winter approaches.
Instead, according to Bloomberg, the EU will introduce sanctions on Belarus’s national airline and 29 members of Lukashenko’s inner circle. The EU may also target “Russia’s Aeroflot and Turkish Airlines,” which are bringing migrants to Belarus so they can be used as pawns in Putin’s border games. Flight tracking software showed a Turkish air force VIP jet landing in Minsk on Thursday, perhaps in an effort to negotiate a compromise. But with Recep Tayyip Erdogan also in Putin’s pocket, the probability of Lukashenko giving ground is low.
In the meantime, Biden is silent on the crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel? The outgoing chancellor and most powerful EU leader is trying to persuade Putin to end the crisis. Shockingly, this is not working. The Kremlin readout of a call between the two leaders on Wednesday only adds another, perhaps final, page to the encyclopedia of failure that is Merkel’s diplomacy with Putin. It says that Merkel and Putin “discussed at length” what is happening. Rather than pledge to get Lukashenko to back off, Putin “proposed establishing direct dialogue between representatives of the EU member states and Minsk to discuss the problems that have emerged in this respect.”
Translation: Get lost.
U.S. leadership is needed. Unless Putin faces a penalty for his action, he will not back off. Poland’s security and NATO’s credibility will continue to be undermined, and migrants will keep suffering in the cold.
