On Friday, both the European Union and NATO implemented new policies to counter any further Russian military intervention in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, including an embargo on Russian oil and the creation of a high-readiness force within NATO.
The EU will impose both political and economic sanctions against Russia unless Vladimir Putin withdraws Russian troops from Ukraine by Monday. EU ambassadors in Brussels began drafting new sanctions against Russia last Wednesday which will ban investment in all Russian state-operated oil and defense companies.
The EU stated on Friday that the sanctions will “prohibit debt financing to defense companies and to all companies whose main activity is the exploration, production and transportation of oil and oil products and in which the Russian state is the majority shareholder.” The EU has held off on banning Russia’s massive gas industry until now.
The EU will not only target Russia’s economy, but has also proposed suspending Russia from participating in international events such as the 2018 World Cup and Formula One races.
NATO also met in Britain on Thursday and Friday and announced the creation of a “spearhead” force consisting of 4,000 troops designed to be rapidly deployed in Eastern Europe if the conflict escalates further. This force will be led by troops from the UK.
Although NATO already has an existing response force, NATO’s secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said, “We will now significantly enhance the responsiveness of our NATO response force. We will develop what I would call a spearhead within our response force – a very high readiness force able to deploy at very short notice.” This would include “several thousand troops, ready to respond where needed with air, sea and special forces support,” Rasmussen said.
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke on the crisis in Ukraine on Wednesday on a trip to Estonia, and called for NATO countries to upscale their defense budgets to strengthen and modernize NATO’s defense force.
“NATO needs to make concrete commitments to help Ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces,” Obama said.
The creation of a high-readiness force within NATO and the EU strengthening sanctions on Russia come after increased reports of Russian troops in Ukraine. The EU imposed sanctions after the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March, but Russia’s continued support of separatists fighting in Ukraine has prompted the West to heighten security measures.
NATO has said that more than 1,000 Russian troops are present in Ukraine, but some rights groups claim that up to 15,000 Russian soldiers have been sent to Ukraine over the last several weeks. Moscow has continued to deny that it deployed any Russian troops to Ukraine.
At the end of August, the United Nations estimated that approximately 2,600 people have died in the fighting in Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict in April – including the 298 civilian deaths on the Malaysian Airlines 17 charter flight that crashed in July.
Collin Heatley is a fourth-year student majoring in history. He can be reached at CH761384@wcupa.edu.