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2023-04-01 Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
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'Close to this border' Under what conditions will peacekeepers appear in Ukraine
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[REGNUM] Moscow reacted sharply to the cautious message of the Hungarian leader Viktor Orban that the EU leadership resumed until recently impossible talk about sending a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine. The "pioneer" of this idea, with the exception of Kyiv itself, in recent years has been not Hungary, but another European state.
The issue of sending peacekeepers from the European Union to Ukraine is close to becoming “legitimate and accepted”, although before it seemed impossible to talk about this topic. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced this on the radio Kossuth . “We are close to this previously uncrossable border,” the Hungarian leader said, adding that a year ago there was a dispute about whether lethal weapons could be transferred to Kiev (and as a result, these weapons go to Ukraine).
It follows from Orban's words that he rather fears that the scenario of sending EU "peacekeepers" to Ukraine, which is now being discussed by EU leaders, will be implemented. But in July last year, the head of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, Peter Szijjarto, told the Index publication that Budapest had some scenarios for protecting 150,000 ethnic Magyars in Transcarpathia.
In Moscow, the very question of sending EU peacekeepers to Ukraine was treated with caution. "If we are already talking about some kind of serious negotiations, then this is a potentially extremely dangerous discussion," RIA Novosti quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as commenting on Orban’s current statement.
Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev spoke even more clearly.
"It is clear that the so-called NATO peacekeepers are simply going to enter the conflict on the side of our enemies," Medvedev wrote on the Telegram channel. "It is also obvious that such “peacekeepers” are our direct enemies… They will be a legitimate target for our Armed Forces if they are deployed on the front lines without the consent of Russia with weapons in their hands and will directly threaten us. And then these "peacekeepers" must be ruthlessly destroyed. They are soldiers of the enemy."
The arrival of European peacekeepers in Ukraine will provoke an escalation of the conflict, push Russia and NATO together and may lead Russia to turn to the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) forces, said Alexei Chepa, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.
If Budapest seems to hesitate about the "previously uncrossable border," then Warsaw is definitely in favor. The leader of the ruling Law and Justice party in Poland, Yaroslav Kaczynski, even at the beginning of the SVO, a year ago, called for the introduction of an “armed peacekeeping contingent” of NATO into Ukraine. The statement was made at a briefing following a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Prime Ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
Back in 2015, Kiev itself appealed to the UN Security Council and the leadership of the European Union with a call to send peacekeeping forces to the conflict zone in Donbass. Both this appeal of the then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to the EU, and the appeal of the de facto leader of Poland Kaczynski to NATO in 2022 had no effect. The Joe Biden administration then responded that the United States would definitely not send troops to Ukraine as part of any alliance mission. But now, judging by Orban's statement, the first persons of the European Union have already begun to discuss (more precisely, they have returned to the discussion) armed peacekeeping.
So far, a different opinion prevails in the political circles of most EU countries - that Ukraine must defeat Russia on the battlefield and that, moreover, Kiev has a chance of a military victory, German political scientist Alexander Rahr told REGNUM. According to him, any other options are seen as weakening the positions of the European Union, NATO and the West as a whole. But theoretically, Poland and Hungary, “states that have developed special relations with Ukraine,” see themselves as countries ready to send peacekeeping contingents, Rahr points out.
"Provided that Ukraine does not have enough strength to return the lost territories, and Russia cannot move further, then the talk about the need to conduct a peacekeeping operation and find diplomatic ways will sound louder and louder," the German political scientist believes. Under such conditions, the EU leadership will already try to put pressure on both sides - on Kyiv and Moscow, Rahr believes.
If now the intention to send the military to Ukrainian territories to “protect civilians and stop the conflict” is announced in Poland and with reservations in Hungary, then "in the future there may be more such countries," the German political scientist believes.
But if Moscow allows such a development of events, then "it will hardly agree that the peacekeeping troops that entered Ukraine were purely Western," the interlocutor emphasizes. Rahr suggested: "Therefore, it is possible that in the future a scenario will be realized (which today seems unrealistic) when not only Europeans, but also military personnel from China or India will be involved in the peacekeeping mission."
"Moreover, in my opinion, the appearance of peacekeepers from China or India in Ukraine is more realistic than NATO troops. Rather, one should expect some kind of Chinese-Indian-European "mixture," the German political scientist believes.
The formation of any international contingent with the participation of the EU countries is in principle excluded, objects military expert, captain 1st rank of the reserve Vasily Dandykin . He recalled that the countries of the European Union (with the exception of Austria, Ireland and - still formally - Finland and Sweden) are members of NATO.
"Peacekeeping missions are still possible through the UN - and we see examples of such missions, from Cyprus to the countries of Central Africa. But the involvement as peacekeepers of the military from those countries that supply the Armed Forces of Ukraine with weapons and instructors and whose citizens are already fighting in the Ukrainian army as mercenaries? This will only add kerosene to the fire," Dandykin told REGNUM.
He noted that the possibility of participation in the peacekeeping mission of China, India and Iran - about which the German expert spoke - is not considered even hypothetically, the conversation is only about the EU countries. Which, Dandykin emphasized again, is absolutely unacceptable for Moscow.
March 31, 2023
Ivan Zhurenkov
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Posted by badanov 2023-04-01 00:00||
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