In response to President Vladimir Putin’s latest provocation in Ukraine — his recognition of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics in Luhansk and Donetsk — the US and its allies are lining up punitive sanctions against Russia. But are these strong enough to force Putin to back down? Bloomberg Opinion’s Bobby Ghosh hosted a Twitter Spaces discussion with fellow columnists Clara Ferreira Marques and Andreas Kluth. This is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Bobby Ghosh: The US, UK and European Union have announced some sanctions. Symbolically just as important, if not more so, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany. But is this the tough response that the West has been warning about in the past couple of weeks?
Clara Ferreira Marques: In short, no. Yesterday was really a turning point in the 22 years Putin has been in power. The televised address he gave to the Russian Security Council was a level of sinister we haven't seen before. It was essentially a piece of theater: Every senior figure in the council was made to stand up and effectively endorse Putin's plan before he supposedly made a decision. Then he gave an hourlong, rambling speech — littered with erroneous historical allusions — laying the groundwork for a full invasion of Ukraine.
In that context, what we've seen from the West is understandable in a way, because this isn't a cut-and-dried invasion. You don't have tanks in Kyiv. But at the same time, sanctions should be intended not only to punish, but to deter further action. This is pretty weak.
Take the U.K., for example: I'm sure it'll hurt a few people, but the targeted banks are not the ones that hold up the Russian economic system. The list doesn’t include Sberbank or VTB.
Ghosh: The Europeans have had had plenty of time to prepare sanctions. Why the weak beer in this first tranche — what are they waiting for?
Andreas Kluth: I'm not sure the beer is weak. As you know, I'm very critical of European foreign policy. It has been a failure in so many ways and it could yet be that again. But in this case, there has not yet been a major invasion of the sort that the three of us have been talking about in the past few weeks. We need to leave ourselves room to ratchet up sanctions in step with Putin ratcheting up his attacks — and then also to ratchet down.
We cannot impose sanctions as if he had already invaded Ukraine from three sides, as we were fearing, through Belarus toward Kyiv, from the south and from the east.
He's taking a first step, so we're taking a first step. For every step he takes, we should match him. And we have to go very far, if necessary, because he might go very far.
Ghosh: How significant is Scholz’s decision to suspend Nord Stream 2? No gas was expected to come down that pipe this winter, and there are many months to go to the next one, before the suspension has real consequences for Russia.
Kluth: No gas has flowed through Nord Stream 2: It’s been built right next to Nord Stream 1, and gas continues to flow through that. So nothing has changed in terms of energy supplies. But suspension is a powerful gesture, coming from a chancellor and a government that was, until a few weeks ago, criticized for not being clear on what they would do with this project, which is so dear to the Social Democrats, Scholz’s party.
It can be undone, and that's the point: If Putin were to step back, we have to be able to reverse these steps.
Ghosh: How seriously will the Russians take the announcement from Scholz?
Ferreira Marques: I think they're taking it seriously, but they've gone quite far down the road now and it will take more than a suspension to stop them. Putin's credibility is on the line now. Once you've spent an hour on national television telling people about the history of Ukraine, founded on your own questionable research, dating all the way back to 1917, you’re going to need quite a strong reason to say it was all a big mistake.
Ghosh: There’s an effort by the Kremlin to reassure other former Soviet satellites and states that Ukraine is an exception, that Putin is not interested in reviving the old Russian Empire or even the old Soviet Union. How do you think the events of the past 72 hours are going down in the former Soviet states?
Ferreira Marques: I think the former Soviet states are quite clear that Ukraine has a very specific role in Putin's mind in Russian history. But I would point out that while we have all been watching Ukraine, Russia has effectively taken Belarus. Russian troops will remain in Belarus after what were meant to be military exercises. That is very significant: to allow another country's military to effectively be permanently stationed in yours. And we've seen President Alexander Lukashenko, at every opportunity, supporting Putin enthusiastically.
Kluth: Putin turned irredentist at some point more than a decade ago. Wherever there are ethnic Russians in the former czarist realm, he has portrayed himself as the protector of them. There are large ethnic Russian populations in Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and so on.
All those countries know the script. Putin can at any point use false flag operations to claim that ethnic Russians are being harmed. This is a script that other dictators have followed for decades and centuries. So the way to answer that question is to ask the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and others if they believe the Kremlin. I don't think they do.
Ghosh: What do we know about the discussions within the EU about sanctions? I’ve seen reports that the Italians are not keen on sanctions that might affect Russian energy supplies. Who's taking on the role of herding all the cats and trying to get a united European voice?
Kluth: In the past, it would've been Chancellor Angela Merkel. Scholz is the new kid on the block, and there'll now be pressure on him and his new foreign minister to step into that role. Some of us, including me, had been speculating before this German government took over: Would there be a new Merkel, a new European leader?
It can't really be France’s President Emmanuel Macron, because other Europeans don't trust him. I thought it might be Italy’s Mario Draghi, but it’s surprising that he’s said energy should be left out of sanctions.
It takes unanimity among the 27 members for the EU to pass measures. One member can block them. Of course, the others exert their weight when they decide something is important. They can lean on Hungary’s Victor Orban, if he opposes the rest of the group. And others — everyone from the U.S. and Canada to the U.K. — will make that clear to Brussels and the 27 capitals that this is no time to go wobbly.
Ghosh: The Russians say they’re sending peacekeepers to the breakaway republics. The Biden administration is calling it an invasion. The Ukrainians themselves are saying not a great deal has changed in the ground, that this simply formalizes an informal arrangement that already exists.
Ferreira Marques: That might be the optimistic way to look at it, but there is a big difference. You would have Russian troops in direct confrontation with Ukrainian troops. That hasn't been the case to date, so there has been plausible deniability where there have been skirmishes between the two sides. If you have government troops on both sides, plausible deniability is much harder to sustain. It’s very hard not to see this as a significant escalation.
Ghosh: How does the formal recognition of these two breakaway regions play with Russians? When Russia seized Crimea, it was portrayed as a big achievement, something to celebrate. This doesn't feel quite so triumphant.
Ferreira Marques: It is really important to understand that the apathy of the Russian population is one of Putin's great successes. He has managed to turn a reasonably engaged population into a population that's increasingly apathetic. But they do not feel about the Donbass region, or indeed about the rest of Ukraine, the same way they did about Crimea.
Crimea was seen as historically Russian territory. Even though Russians weren't exactly supportive of the war, when it happened, it was reasonably fast and people were supportive. There was a rallying around the flag and a lasting effect for Putin's popularity.
It's unclear if that will be the case this time. Support for putting Russian government troops in the Donbass region is very low. Ukraine is seen as an independent country, so costly Russian action across the border at a time when people are dealing with inflation and squeezed incomes is going to be a much harder sell.
But Putin’s propaganda machine is strong, and most Russians are convinced that this is the result of NATO provocation. The story you will hear from Russian media is all about Ukrainian aggression.
Ghosh: Where does this leave Putin? What is his next move? Has he already gone as far as he can reasonably go without the prospect of sanctions becoming too painful for the Russian economy, for Russian people and for himself? Or does he have another notch to ratchet up this crisis?
Ferreira Marques: Absolutely he does. He can obviously go all the way to Kyiv and beyond. I think the important thing is that the tone has changed in Moscow. He has put himself in a position from which it will be much harder to pull back.
It is important not to think about this in the sense of Putin having a complete plan. We know from 2014 that he is opportunistic. So there’s a chance that, having gone this far, he will wait, see what the West does.
Strategic ambiguity: He likes that very much. Nobody knows quite what to do. Is it a war? Is it not a war? Is it an invasion? Is it not an invasion? It is a good position for Russia to be in. He can sustain this for quite some time and go from there.
Ghosh: From Europe's point of view, how do they get past that strategic ambiguity? How do they force clarity upon the situation?
Kluth: We cannot get past it, probably. Putin thrives on what is called escalation dominance. He’s appeared to be in control throughout this whole crisis because he's always the one deciding whether to escalate, never the West.
But does he still have de-escalation dominance? In international relations, escalation dominance is an advantage only when you can decide whether to go up or down in intensity and pressure. And I worry that he's now gone too far to climb down, that he's only left himself one way forward.
Ferreira Marques: It has become a lot harder for him to deescalate. It's not impossible. He can, at any point, declare this as a victory. This is why the West needs to show a very strong hand at this point. Yes, they don't need to come out with the bazooka sanctions quite yet, but you really want to show a very strong hand because we know from 2014 that Putin can be deterred with strong sanctions.
Russia, for all its claims to being a fortress economy, will hurt. If you go for the large state-owned Russian entities, if you ban Russia from Swift, if you go for Nord Stream 2, the combination will be painful.
Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering foreign affairs. A former editor in chief of the Hindustan Times, he was managing editor of Quartz and Time magazine’s international editor.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.
