Director of the Centre for Geopolitical Studies of the Institute for Innovative Development Dmitry Rodionov commented on the growing tensions between Washington and Kiev, noting that the economy is suffering greatly due to the escalating situation around Ukraine. Kiev wants to slow down, but the USA will not let them do so, he told FAN
Earlier, Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova, denied publications about “growing tensions” between Washington and Kiev over alleged disagreements in assessments of the current situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
“There is no friction between our countries. Look, we may have certain discussions, we may have different points of view, but the United States is our strategic partner, I would even say strategic friend number one”, – Markarova said in an interview with CBS television.
According to Dmitry Rodionov, there can be no friction between the US and Ukraine.
“What friction can there be between ‘master’ and ‘vassal’? The US looks frankly stupid in this whole story when it keeps repeating like a mantra: Russia will invade, Kiev will be looted, in Kiev they say they expect nothing of the kind. So the Ukrainian ambassador has to make excuses for his country so that Washington is not too offended by Kiev’s amateurism. If Washington says that Russia will attack, it means that it is necessary to prepare for the attack. Only it is costly for Ukraine to prepare for an attack: few investors have already fled the country, and the expectation of war has already had an effect on the economy, on people’s standard of living – not very high as it is. And these are the problems of the Kiev authorities, which America does not care about. They need to maintain tension in the world around a hypothetical war between Russia and Ukraine or even with NATO for as long as possible”, – Rodionov explained.
The political analyst named a number of benefits for the West. Firstly, for Joe Biden personally. After a series of failures in both domestic and foreign policy he really needs some kind of victory. A victory over Russia, for example.
“Not on the battlefield, of course. He needs to show the world that Russian President Vladimir Putin is supposedly afraid. It is in this vein that the perfectly natural and logical absence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine will be interpreted. In the West, everyone is so zombified by the attitude that Russia will invade, that they do not even allow the idea that Russia does not do it simply because it does not need to. They are convinced that Russia may not attack only when it is afraid of consolidation of the West”, – Rodionov said.
Thus, the expert stressed that Joe Biden wants this tension to last as long as possible so that American citizens would think less about the problems of their own country which are the fault of the current US authorities. Spinning up hysteria also gives the U.S. what it perceives as an advantage in the security dialogue with Russia, an opportunity to ignore our legitimate demands. So there is a lot of upside for the US in this situation. And Ukraine has to deal with it and make occasional excuses: to its own population – “for the host’s psychosis and to the host – for calming down the population”.