• Biden Summit threatens Putin with "heavy sanctions" if Ukraine crisis escalates

The world went back 41 years, 11 months and 29 days this Tuesday. The best sample, the headlines of the US press. The 'New York Times' headlined: "Biden warns Putin of economic consequences if aggression continues." The 'Washington Post' headlined on December 9, 1980: "The warnings regarding Poland try to avoid a surprise by the Soviet Union. The journalistic style has changed. Also the support. The headline for 2021 is the website. of the newspaper; that of 1980, of the printed edition, the only one available at that time.

But the backdrop is the same:

the threat of invasion by the Soviet Union

- or its heir, Russia - of a European country to return it to its area of ​​influence. In 1980, it was Poland. In 2021, it is Ukraine. And the United States and NATO are prepared to take very tough measures against Moscow if that happens. History, which

Francis Fukuyama

had said was ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, has risen.

If in 1980, the message was issued by senior officials of the government of the then outgoing president,

Jimmy Carter

, today it was communicated by the head of state and the US government,

Joe Biden

, to his Russian counterpart,

Vladimir Putin

. The two held a two-hour online 'summit' in which much of the conversation focused on Ukraine,

a country that Moscow threatens with nearly 100,000 soldiers

stationed on the common border, which it annexed the Crimean Peninsula seven years ago. and that since then it has suffered a war fed, financed, and sustained by Russia.

Biden, started the conference in the most cordial way

- "it is a pity that we could not see each other at the G-20 summit" -

but he was very direct. According to a brief statement from the White House, the American expressed to the Russian "the deep concern of the United States and European allies about the escalation of [Russian] forces around Ukraine and made it clear that the

United States and its allies will respond strongly. economic measures

and of another type in the eventuality of a military escalation. "The measures that Washington is considering would leave Russia in a situation relatively similar to that of Iran, since they would include the expulsion of Moscow from the international banking payment system SWIFT, actions against the ' oligarchs' who control the economy of that country - and who are very close to Putin - and

the suspension of the purchase by Germany of Russian natural gas

that will travel through the recently built Nordstream-2 gas pipeline.

After the conversation, Biden, in true Cold War style, spoke with America's most important European allies:

Britain, France, Germany and Italy

. Such a display of transatlantic solidarity reflects one of the most striking consequences of international politics in 2021:

No one has done as much for the revitalization of NATO as Vladimir Putin

with his attack on Ukraine since 2014.

The Russian government was slow to give its version of the conversation. The Kremlin's press service stated that

"in general, the conversation has been frank and pragmatic,"

which is often, in diplomatic language, a way of saying that the interlocutors did not agree on anything. Putin's position focused on asking the US for guarantees that neither that country nor its allies will deploy attack systems in countries near Russia. This is a constant in the strategy of Putin and a large part of the Soviet ruling elite, which

considers the expansion of NATO a betrayal

, which has brought that military organization to the gates of Russia, especially when on February 9, 1990 , the then US Secretary of State,

Jame Baker

, promised the president of the USSR;

Mikhail Gorbachev

that NATO would not advance "an inch to the East."

Ukraine wants to join NATO, which would be, possibly, 'casus belli' for Russia. And NATO is not going to play a war for that country. But there is a middle ground that worries Moscow: the progressive weaponry and integration of the Ukrainian Armed Forces within the defense structure of Western democracies.

That is combined with the Russian obsession that the US is surrounding him

. Hence his demand for guarantees that there will be no offensive weapons from the United States or from other countries of the Atlantic Alliance in Ukraine. A few weeks ago, the Russian leader was more explicit when he referred to this situation as "the problem. A problem that is based on"

the possible deployment on Ukrainian territory of attack systems with

a flight time of seven to ten minutes to Moscow, or five minutes in the case of hypersonic systems.

Imagine that. "


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