The European Union reacts to the apparent seizure by Russian forces in mid-September of a Lithuanian fishing vessel on the high seas, which it has raised with Moscow's envoy to Brussels.
Recall that Russia and Estonia are embroiled in what has become a tit-for-tat row that started when Russia seemingly duped or simply abducted Estonian intelligence agent Eston Kohver in early September. (He's still in custody and faces serious jail time in the Russian court system.) Then two Russian nationals, purportedly former KGB agents, were said to have been detained a few days ago for an allegedly crossing the border, apparently while fishing.
We are wrapping up the live blog for Tuesday, September 30, 2014. Please check back here in the morning for our continuing coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
EU Neighborhood and Enlargement Commissioner-designate Johannes Hahn, speaking today during his confirmation hearing at the European Parliament in Brussels:
"For us as Europeans, there is no 'in-between' -- until the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine is reestablished, we cannot yield to Russia [regarding sanctions for its actions in Ukraine]."
Ben Aris has written a -- frankly quite scary -- op-ed piece for Business New Europe on how the Russian military seems to be getting ready for a war:
Russia is actively preparing for a war that nobody wants and that will probably never happen. But its increasingly obvious commitment to real preparations for a potential military conflict with the West have been convincing enough to create trump cards in the diplomatic and sanctions war that has been raging for much of this year. On the eve of the Minsk summit that brought the shaky ceasefire to Eastern Ukraine, the US seemed to cave in.
What was sabre-rattling has become overtly aggressive military actions that are seriously destabilising the whole of the European continent and freaking Nato out. Russian fighter planes have made almost as many incursions this year into the airspace of the Baltic states, all Nato members, than they have in all of the last decade taken together. Russia has carried out the largest surprise military excises it is allowed to, without giving forewarning to Nato under the terms of its treaties with its old nemesis. And Russia has also started military exercises that include moving nuclear missiles about for the first time in two decades.
Nato of course finds all this peripatetic armour extremely unsettling, but it is part of a larger aggressive policy Russia has adopted.
"Putin's Russia today is ready and willing to go to war. Europe and the West are not ready and not willing to go to war. There is no leadership in Europe or in the world able to stop Putin," Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who lives on what could be the next front in Russian aggression, told the Washington Post in an interview on September 24.
Not just Central European politicians but also military analysts are asking: will there be war? And increasingly the answer is not clearcut. "The slow, ongoing militarisation of the Russian state - not only in a purely military sense, but also economically - socially and politically, which has been observed at least since 2007 - raises questions about its long-term consequences," writes Polish military analyst Andrzej Wilk of the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW).
Despite the economic slowdown, Russian military spending will surge to 4.0% of GDP in 2015 – twice the level that Nato members are obliged to spend – according to the recently announced three-year budget. This compares with 3.5% of GDP in 2014, which was already a rise of more than 10% in real terms to around $84bn from a year earlier, according to Wilk.
Along with the rise in spending is a rise in nationalist rhetoric and propaganda, according to which Russia must fight against the aggression of the West. "The spiral of militarisation which has been set in motion in Russia over recent years has already reached a critical 'point of no return': the ruling team in Moscow has become largely a hostage to its own policies." Wilk warns. "The consequence of the current activities may actually be that Moscow starts a full-blown regular war."
Read the entire article here
NATO says hundreds of Russian troops, including special forces, still in Ukraine http://t.co/idYeP4k5JX @AFP
— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) September 30, 2014
Former world chess champion and Russian opposition activist Garry Kasparov has been giving a forthright interview to Yahoo News, in which he is pretty critical of the West's response to the Ukraine crisis:
Arguably the world's best chess player ever, Garry Kasparov is on a new mission. He hopes to convince the world that the biggest threat to global unrest is not the Islamic State, al-Qaida or North Korea. Instead it is Vladimir Putin, Russia's president from 2000 to 2008 and then again from 2012 to today.
In an interview with Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga, Kasparov outlined his reasons for believing that Putin should be what keeps the world up at night. He chided President Barack Obama for being too late in addressing Putin's aggression in Ukraine — ultimately annexing Crimea. And while he views the president's speech at the United Nations— calling Russia's invasion into Ukraine and ideology of "might makes right" backward —he still believes that actions speak louder than words. Kasparov has extremely harsh words for what he views as European indifference to Putin's actions, and he compares the world's complacency with the lead-up to World War II.
Kasparov calls the Islamic State militant group (also known as ISIL and ISIS) a diversion for the world to focus on. He finds it hypocritical that the U.S. and other Western allies have agreed to supply Syrian rebels opposed to IS, while refusing Ukraine's similar request.
Regarding the current sanctions imposed on Russia, Kasparov believes that at some point they will hurt not only the Russian economy, but also Putin and his inner circle. However, for that to happen, he believes the sanctions will have to be in place through at least March 2015. He adds that Putin will use Russia's vast supply of natural gas as leverage ahead of what he calls the "upcoming cold winter," threatening to shut down supplies to Europe and other former Soviet republics and satellite nations. Kasparov fears that the threat will be enough to persuade an easing of sanctions. He also believes Putin is telling his inner circle of Russia's richest and most powerful business leaders, who are facing the ramifications of stiff sanctions that the western governments "will blink. As before, they will capitulate. We'll get what we need." Kasparov believes that Putin is calling the world's bluff. "He is playing poker while everyone else is playing chess."
Read the entire interview here