You're reading: Cease-fire may be holding but Russia still a threat, European and Ukrainian leaders say

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin slammed Russia for what he described as “trading instability” at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv on Sept. 11. Speaking on a panel with NATO officials and European leaders, Klimkin said Russia posed a major threat to European nations because it was abiding by only one rule: to not follow any rules.

Klimkin
also offered criticism of the European Union’s handling of the Ukraine
conflict, saying it lacked a “comprehensive and consistent policy,” while NATO
was doing much more to resolve the conflict.

While the
recently achieved cease-fire has mostly been holding since it began on Sept. 1,
Klimkin and fellow speakers expressed skepticism that Russia really wanted
peace.

Russia
“can at any time throw a toggle switch to turn the ceasefire back into
aggressive war,” said Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution
and chair of the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

The real
motive behind the cease-fire, Talbott said, was “an attempt to lull the West” and was
“not intended to be a platform for real and lasting peace.”

The one
thing Russia’s behavior has shown is that Russia “will not feel completely
secure unless all of its neighbors are insecure,” according to Talbott.

Vaira
Vike-Freiberga, former president of Latvia, had equally scathing things to say
about Russia’s role in the conflict, calling the ideas of the Kremlin
“psychotic” and “delusional.”

Freiberga
cautioned against trying to predict what move the Kremlin might make next,
saying “we cannot idly stand by and start psychoanalyzing the feelings of
Russia” while European values get “trampled.”

She urged
Western leaders not to try to appease Russia simply because it was such a
large, powerful country, saying smaller, neighboring nations shouldn’t be
treated like “peasants.”

Klimkin
echoed her thinking, saying he had no hope for rebuilding trust with Russia due
to its “backward thinking” and determination to build a separate world for
itself.

All the
speakers agreed that NATO should be strengthened in order to deter Russia from
any attempts at expansion, and General Stanley McCrystal urged European nations
to invest more in building NATO capabilities.

“If NATO
is going to be effective, it’s got to be a credible military arm,” McCrystal
said.

Wolfgang
Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, countered the argument
often made by Russian President Vladimir Putin that NATO posed a threat to
Russia.

“NATO was
never designed to do anything against Russia,” he said, while Russia was
actively promoting the idea of “lesser sovereignty” for neighboring nations.

Ruslan
Grinberg, director of the Institute of Economics at the Russian Academy of
Sciences, was the only commentator to offer a more sympathetic view of Vladimir Putin’s
Russia.

Grinberg
said he believed it would be counterproductive for Ukraine to strive to join
NATO, and that while Russia’s current spat with the West was “a shame,” both
sides were to blame for it.

Grinberg
conceded that he and many other Russians couldn’t help but experience “older
brother syndrome” with Ukraine, a way of thinking that had prompted the Kremlin
to want to keep Ukraine in its orbit.

Grinberg’s
comments drew some gasps from the crowd, and Klimkin and Freiberga quickly hit
back, saying they would not tolerate such a mentality simply to appease Russia.