Fear of Vladimir Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of ‘total war’
Analysis: That Angela Merkel has gone to Moscow speaks to the sudden gravity of the situation in east Ukraine
Ian Traynor
GuardianUK
Friday 6 February 2015
In Brussels and other European capitals, the fear of Vladimir Putin is becoming palpable. The mood has changed in a matter of weeks from one of handwringing impotence over Ukraine to one of foreboding.
The anxiety is encapsulated in the sudden rush to Moscow by Angela Merkel and François Hollande. To senior figures closely involved in the diplomacy and policymaking over Ukraine, the Franco-German peace bid is less a hopeful sign of a breakthrough than an act of despair.
“There’s nothing new in their plan, just an attempt to stop a massacre,” said one senior official.
Carl Bildt, the former Swedish foreign minister, said a war between Russia and the west was now quite conceivable. A senior diplomat in Brussels, echoing the broad EU view, said arming the Ukrainians would mean war with Russia, a war that Putin would win.
Announcing the surprise mission to Kiev and Moscow, Hollande sounded grave and solemn. The Ukraine crisis, he said, started with differences, which became a conflict, which became a war, and which now risked becoming “total war”.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister and until recently the head of Nato, publicly voiced fears that Putin could expand what is seen as Soviet revisionism to countries now in Nato and the EU. In the Baltics, Putin might risk a little exercise in “hybrid warfare”, he said, just to test how the western alliance would react.
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