There will have been grim smiles in Chechnya when Russia's UN ambassador told an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Sunday that the Ukrainian government should "cease war with its own people". In the smoke and mirrors of this revived Soviet-style diplomatic double-speak, the Ukraine cannot seek to enforce, thus far rather weakly, the rule of law against dissident thugs, but Russian can mount a brutal region-wide clampdown in Chechnya costing thousands of lives in the face of substantial disaffection. Moscow claims that the occupation of government buildings in eastern Ukraine by masked gunmen, is a purely local action by Ukraine's ethnic Russian community who wish to become part of the motherland. It denies that it has had anything to do with any provocative acts. It still says that the division-strength force just across the border in Russia is on extended maneuvers. Unfortunately for the Kremlin's publicists, who do not so much spin the truth, as turn it completely on its head, what is happening now in eastern Ukraine is very close to a carbon copy of the events leading up to the Russian takeover in Crimea. A lot of the alleged pro-Moscow Ukrainian volunteers who have mounted these attacks, look very similar to the Russian special forces, who spearheaded the takeover in the Crimea. Were Vladimir Putin to use the legitimate attempt by the interim government in Kiev to retake control of official buildings, including police stations, as an excuse for open intervention, he would be in flagrant breach of international law. The penalty will be more and deeper sanctions. The cost to Russia, in the short-term at least, will be considerable. The Kremlin can stop the gas flow through the Ukraine to Europe, to avoid the already deeply-indebted Ukrainians siphoning off more supply for their domestic needs. But that would be a repeated breach of contract with European customers. Because most of the long-term deals were struck when the Russians could still link the price of gas to crude oil, Moscow has been earning over the odds for its gas. Though they may be casting around for alternative supplies, European customers may be quietly glad to have escaped high cost contracts on which they are can declare Force Majeur. And besides the summer is coming and gas demand will plunge. Putin's timing could not have been worse. The Russian economy will be losing significant income. Moreover the financial cost of the occupation of the Crimea, in terms of assumed pension and welfare obligations and the need to demonstrate how much more prosperous is the population under Russian rule, is imposing additional strain on an already-weak economy. The irony is that many ethnic Russians living in neighboring countries are considerably better off than in Russia itself.. Genuine nationalist rhetoric among Latvia's large Russian minority has petered out as the economic benefits of EU membership have filtered through. Ethnic pride has so far been trumped by concerns to better family and professional life within a still largely prosperous Europe, through which Latvian Russians can move freely. In truth, Putin has little to offer expatriate Russians over his borders save nationalist heroics and the roar and grind of Soviet-era armor. He may imagine he is restoring national self-esteem after the string of international humiliations of the immediate post-communist era. It is more likely however, that he is further risking what is left of his country's economic prosperity.
