Eastern Europe in High Stress

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg are seen at a news conference at the European Union headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. (John Thys/AFP/Getty Images)

"The message today to Russia is that it is for Ukraine as a sovereign nation to decide its own path."

"We call on Russia to return to diplomacy. To de-escalate. And to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"Any further aggression against Ukraine will have severe consequences. And would carry a high price."
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General

"We will emphasize here once again, that the inviolability of borders is one of the very important foundations of peace in Europe, and that we will do everything together to ensure that this inviolability actually remains."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

"I'm worried because the military concentration, especially on the Ukrainian border with Russia [is] very strong."

"We are prepared to avoid the kind of surprises we met during the occupation of Crimea."

Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa, EU revolving presidency

"Probably we face the most dangerous situation in the last 30 years. I think we have to do everything that is in our hands to prevent the worst scenario, which we [cannot] exclude."

"This scenario is possible military intervention into the territory of Ukraine."

Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda

 

"There will be no talks on European security without European allies and partners."

"[Washington will hold discussions with its allies but] we will not compromise the key principles on which European security is built, including that all countries have the right to decide their own future and foreign policy, free from outside interference."

Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a conference in Moscow on Friday. (Sergei Guneyev/SPUTNIK/AFP/Getty Images)

Over 100,000 Russian  troops have been massed on the Russian border with Ukraine, leaving leaders of Europe to warn of the most dangerously tense episode occurring in real time, in the past 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union when its satellites went their separate ways, assuming full sovereignty for themselves after years of orbiting helplessly around the powerfully-enforced magnetic star of the USSR. 

 

With the last European Council summit of the year in Belgium, EU heads of state and government gave ample warning to the Kremlin that it would face "massive consequences and severe cost" should there be a repeat of the annexation of Crimea in a violent 2014 takeover. But Vladimir Putin remains resolute; should Europe wish to achieve a relaxation of tensions, NATO must withdraw its 2008 assurance to Ukraine that it would be welcomed along with Georgia into its bloc. No agreement, no de-escalation.

 

Moscow's published list of demands for de-escalation and recall of Russian troops and war machinery has failed to impress NATO  and the EU. Russia's insistence of a legally binding guarantee that NATO surrender all military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine is part of its list of security guarantees to be negotiated with the West if any progress is to be made in de-engaging from its current level of intimidation and threat.

 

The detailed demands, Moscow stressed, are essential, without which tensions will not be diminished in Europe, and the crisis over Ukraine defused. However, the world could be assured, Moscow reiterated, that it has no intention whatever of planning an invasion of Ukraine. Demands include an effective Russian veto on future NATO membership for Ukraine. Other elements relate to the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe alongside the withdrawal of multi national NATO battalions from Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. 

None of those demands were met with ingratiating deference. Russia does not, after all, control with the
EU or NATO and its allies, led by the United States, envision for Europe; total abandonment of the Baltic states and the rest of eastern Europe to the kind remonstrances of the Kremlin to convince former satellites that their futures lie with a resumption of their former devotion to a mighty Russia's formation of a strong Europe.

According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Russia and the West must begin with a clean slate to rebuild relations gone sour. Russia being fully prepared to begin talks as soon as possible. As far as the Kremlin is concerned, its position is one of response to threats to its security from Ukraine's increasingly warm relations with NATO and its aspirations to join the alliance. 

The best possible scenario the Kremlin envisages if that NATO  return to the situation that existed before May 1997; predating the accession to NATO of any of the former communist states in east Europe; that NATO relinquish any military activities in Ukraine, eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Wait for it.

Ukraine’s foreign minister has asked Canada to help strengthen its defences amid escalating tensions with Russia, while NATO warns Russia will face “high impact” sanctions if it attacks

Balancing the  Scales

"We have worked and paid taxes in this country, our parents built it up."
"How can it be that we are turned away [at area food banks] and those who just arrived get what they need?"
Marianne Rymann, 62, client, Essener Tafel, Essen Germany

"If you fight back, you're a Nazi."
"[The charity] was not founded to deal with the chaos of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel's refugee policy but to meet the demand that was already there."
AfD party Facebook campaign in defence of food bank decision 

"[We] felt compelled to ensure reasonable integration [after having seen an] increase in the number of migrants in recent years [with the proportion of foreign citizens rising dramatically]."
"We want German grandmothers to continue coming to us."
"[For the time being new customers will be restricted to Germans] until the scales are balanced again [between locals and foreigners]."
Jorg Sartor, manager, Essener Tafel 

Graffiti sprayed on the door to the entrance of the food charity in Essen. Photo: DPA

German authorities, when the government decided to open its doors in an unrestrained fashion to all the migrants that managed to make their way through Europe to their preferred destination in Germany known for its social networks, planned to distribute the 1.2 million arriving between 2015 and early 2016 evenly across the country so the cost and optimization of integration opportunities would be shared by all communities.

Many of the migrants had ideas of their own, where many among them decided to leave those designated homes and to move on instead to other areas, some of which had already received and were coping with a fairly dense concentration of migrants. The city of 600,000 people that is Essen has experienced a growth in its Syrian community from 1,300 in 2015, as an example, to close to 11,000 currently.

"It is a challenge", explained Peter Renzel, an official with the city of Essen. Most migrants live within the working-class districts of the north. "Some districts carry a disproportionate burden", he elaborated. To the extent that several food banks have taken steps to limit tensions that arise when needy Germans seeking assistance come hard up against Syrian migrants seeking the same, amidst rising tensions.

A Tafel Deutschland location in Berlin. Photo: Tafel Deutschland/Dagmar Schwelle

New rules have arisen segregating immigrants and Germans approaching the food banks for assistance, by time or by day. One of these food banks have gone further, banning young men from signing up entirely. The majority of the migrants that have streamed into Germany have been single, unattached young men looking for economic opportunities; in the process overwhelming Germany's social assistance programs.

Jorg Sartor is an ex-coal worker in retirement, since his mine closed. He has operated the Essener Tafel food bank as a volunteer for the last dozen years. Germany has about 930 food banks in operation, all dependent on the work of volunteers. And his is the only food bank exercising this new policy. The door of Mr. Sartor's food bank and its eight delivery vans have been defaced with Nazi graffiti in reaction to his decision to put a stop to allowing foreigners to sign up for assistance.

"It's absurd", he says.

One in three food bank users were foreigners until three years ago, he explained. But by last November that number changed to three in four. Leading him to decide to block any greater numbers of non-Germans from signing up so the food bank could continue to serve those foreigners already on its lists, only.

The problem is that Chancellor Merkel's government which generously opened its doors to over a million migrants and immigrants, decided that the burden of integrating them would fall where it might, and typically that burden has fallen on Germany's poorest regions. Where everyone competes for subsidized apartments, school placements, and free food from food banks.

Recently, many of those Germans who had lined up outside the food bank called Mr. Sartor a "people's hero". "He stands up for us", Peggy Lohse, 36, a single mother of three, stated. She might have been referring to the groups of young migrant men who sometimes simply elbowed their way to the front of the line. Leaving her to return home empty-handed on more than one occasion.

And according to Ms. Lohse, that kind of entitled assertiveness so intimidated some of the older German women that they simply stopped coming to the food bank for help altogether.

The word 'Nazis' sprayed on one of the charity's trucks. Photo: DPA