Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Ken Okorie, an attorney, is a member of the editorial board of USAfrica
Amidst growing setbacks and defeats on the battlefield, condemnation and rejection in the global arena, and faltering economy, a defiant, embattled Russian President, Vladimir Putin, on September 30, 2022, announced annexation of four Ukrainian provinces. Located on Ukraine’s East/Southeast border with Russia, the four provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk (collectively, the Donbas), Kherson, and Zaporizhzhi, constitute 15% of Ukrainian territory.
By this reckless display of arrogance and impunity, Putin believes he suddenly and unilaterally transformed Ukrainians living in territory he does not control into “Russian citizens”.
In 2014, Russia propelled the region into protracted armed separatist uprising against Ukraine. This was long before Russia invaded Ukraine with a fighting force estimated between 150,000 and 200,000 on February 27, 2022. A resilient Ukrainian defense force has rendered Putin’s dream and ambition a gross miscalculation.
A more defiant Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose leadership many already equate to Britain’s World War II Winston Churchill, promptly vowed that Ukraine will not concede an inch of Ukrainian territory to Putin’s Russia. Current odds plus international sentiments and goodwill favor Zelenskyy.
In April 2014, Russian-backed rebels took over public buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk and proclaimed themselves independent republics. A sham referendum followed in which objectors paid with their lives.
In the same 2014, Russia annexed Crimea Region in Southern Ukraine. Collectively, Russia has taken over 20% of its neighbor, albeit not recognized by the international community.
How do these things happen? What is the international community and institutions that guide its affairs doing in the wake of this manifest indiscipline and recklessness from the Kremlin? The current convening of the United Nations General Assembly makes this question very timely.
Putin justifies his incursions as measures to secure Russia from unspecified threats from the West, more specifically from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Russia’s move may hasten actualization of separatists’ ambitions in East Ukraine, but what do these developments mean for our world?
What does the future hold if states can, without provocation, unilaterally invade, annex, and convert citizens of neighbors by fiat?
How does a state justify or protect itself from undefined distant threat by invading and taking over the territory of a sovereign neighbor that has not threatened its peace or existence?
All of Russia’s actions violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. These are sacred rules that guide our global order. They also constitute total disregard for the rule of law as well as Russia‘s membership obligations in the Committee of Nations.
Recent developments within Russia, such as reported open demonstrations and violent confrontations with police and the mass exodus of men of fighting age in response to Putin’s recent partial mobilization of Russia’s military reserves point to troubles from within for Putin. They suggest an internally challenged and severely weakening Putin within Russia.
But Putin has ceaselessly demonstrated desperation fueled by unguarded ambition. His capacity to cause severe global harm must not be misread.
Putin is on a mission that constitutes grave threat to global peace and security as clearly evidenced by his repeated threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if Russia’s existence is threatened. But there has been no credible threat that justifies invading a neighbor and taking its territory.
Therein lies the danger that is Putin. Documented war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine have shown his indifference to life, peace and order. They compel even more vigilance. A desperate power drunk will do anything and cannot be ignored or underestimated.
Nuclear threat is not to be taken casually. Use by one nuclear power, however limited, will attract equally or stronger nuclear response. NATO, and definitely the United States, will not spare Russia or let Putin free if he deploys the ugly weapon in Ukraine; not for as long as Joe Biden resides at the White House. The whole world could go poof.
It is a scenario that spells Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It is also literally mad.
The devastations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 are proof that global apocalypse is as good as guaranteed should Putin’s present nuclear threat materialize.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) acknowledges five nuclear weapon states. In order of acquisition of nuclear weapons, they are the United States, Russia (the successor of the former Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, France, and China.
But we now live in a world where nuclear capabilities have proliferated to include North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel. Global ideological alignments are also more checkered, with no defined lines of who will go with who. This looms the Putin danger even larger.
Putin’s complex of ambition, irrepressibility, irrationality and desperation make him a molotov waiting to explode. He is clear and present danger of a proportion not matched since Adolf Hitler of Nazi notoriety. Putin is the terror that belittles all terrorists. The world cannot afford to blink.
Importantly, Russia occupies a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council. From this power position it can blunt and block any attempt to hold Putin and his cohorts accountable for their reckless violations and illegalities, especially in Ukraine.
What does this say about our world? In particular what does it say about the UN? Could it be that the constructs that informed the UN formation in San Francisco on October 24, 1945 have become totally obsolete?
UN Department of Peace Operations deploys its Peacekeeping role as an “instrument to help countries torn by conflict to create the conditions for lasting peace. This instrument has responded to many conflicts across the globe. An example is the crisis in Congo in 1960. Twelve missions are currently ongoing, eight of them in Africa. Mindful that most are internal conflicts within individual nations, prudence and reason suggest it is time the instrument is activated to checkmate Putin in Ukraine and restore order in East Europe. Putin is determined and desperate. If not deterred or restrained, he will find excuse’s to expand his ambitions beyond Ukraine. At that time, the stakes will grow even higher.
One crazy arrogant person can cause mass harm. Allowing Putin’s senseless carnage and conflagration in the Ukraine to persist could portend catastrophic disablement of civilization and humanity as we know it. The time to act is now.
USAfrica: Trevor Noah’s success, the Nigerian and African diaspora. By Chido Nwangwu
Ban the word sex and the word slave. They are both scientific lies. All they did was create a landfill out of the planet. Like garbage. End all work except gathering resources for housing, food and clothing. All other industries will end…only human beings get procreation rights who know what the word parent means.