January 29, 2021

Ukraine faces a fourth betrayal

More

Dear Editor:
I applaud Ihor Mirchuk’s insightful letter in the January 17 issue of The Ukrainian Weekly. Mr. Mirchuk pointed to three moments in recent history where Western powers betrayed Ukraine: (1) when Presi­dent Barack Obama’s emissaries, John Kerry and Joe Biden, dismissed the guarantees in the Budapest Memorandum, (2) when Mr. Obama refused to deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine and (3) when he [Mr. Obama] blocked Ukraine’s military from reacting to the Russian occupation of Crimea. The last mentioned was a fateful decision because resistance to a Russian takeover would have signaled to the world that Ukraine is ready to fight for its territory.

Currently, Ukraine is facing a possible fourth betrayal. Last year, the Trump administration and Congress managed to halt the completion of Nord Stream 2. Now that Mr. Trump is gone, Gazprom has resumed work on the pipeline, and even worse, on January 21, German chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her support for the controversial gas pipeline.

The Biden administration has seemingly taken a firm stand. Antony Blinken, Mr. Biden’s secretary of state, said he is “determined to do whatever we can to prevent the pipeline’s completion.” In the final analysis, there is only one way to judge the seriousness of such words: either work on the pipeline will resume, or it will not; there is no in-between. The Biden administration, therefore, must demand that Germany cancel the project altogether. Completion of the pipeline will have two abysmal outcomes: it will irreparably harm Ukraine’s economy and it will expose Europeans to perpetual intimidation and blackmail.

Washington

Comments are closed.