The American media continue to heat up the situation around relations between Russia and Ukraine.
Samuel Charap, a senior political analyst at the Washington-based think tank Rand Corporation, said alarming headlines that Russian troops are building up along the Ukrainian border are already flickering as deja vu – the same thing happened in the spring and last year.
“If Russia’s tactics seem to be a repetition of the past, then so does the US approach to the unstable situation in Ukraine. US policy usually boils down to offering Moscow a stick and Kiev a carrot. The successive administrations tried to use the instruments of coercion – mainly sanctions or the threat of their use”, the political scientist emphasized.
Also, according to Charap, “the current build-up of Moscow’s military power in recent months has been accompanied by much tougher rhetoric, which suggests that this time is different.”
The expert suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin “may think that Ukraine is at an inflection point and that the time has come to raise the stakes.” But at the same time, the US presidential administration needs to understand that America’s leverage is extremely limited.