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Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Will ASEAN matter?
Instead of bringing Russia into the future, Putin believes that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was the work of "various Western intelligence agencies". Thus, the sphere of Russian influence and power must be equal to that of Soviet Union.
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People leave Kyiv after Russia launched a massive military operation against Ukraine, on Feb. 25, 2022. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich)
R
ussia’s President Vladimir Putin has finally confirmed what the United States had been asserting for nearly a month; he invaded Ukraine on Feb. 23. In that process, Putin’s Russia chose to legally recognize the breakaway republics of Donbask and Ruhask.
Not unlike Putin's conquest of Crimea, which holds historical and strategic importance to "Mother Russia," in 2014, last week’s invasion has led to a flurry of sanctions on financial institutions and oligarchs that are deemed to be close to Putin from the Group of Seven, out of which Russia was immediately kicked.
Strikingly, US President Joe Biden, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the European Union's foreign policy high representative Joseph Borrell, and the head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula Von Leyden have all reached for the same handbook: More sanctions on Russian banks and oligarchs.
Surprisingly, the new chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholtz, has decided to take an even more feisty approach. At the moment Putin recognized the two breakaway republics, Scholtz declared the "decertification" of Nordstream II, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline negotiated between then-chancellor Angel Merkel and Putin. This project when completed in full would have supplied Germany with up to 55 percent of its energy needs.
When former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev read about Germany's reaction, he tweeted in Russian, German and English to mock the move sardonically: "Now Germans will have to pay for their energy at 100 euros per cubic meter [from 86 euros] with no end in sight."
Should necessity call for it, Germany can recommission the seven nuclear energy plants that have been decommissioned phase by phase since Japan’s Fukushima Daichi experienced a nuclear meltdown after the massive tsunami in March 2011.
Germany, in other words, is not without the necessary options to defray the cost of not importing LNG from Russia, the world's largest exporter of LNG.
