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A string of recent high level negotiations between the West and Russia are not as fruitless as they are deemed by their participants and political commentators.
It's true that no agreement on any of the key issues has been reached during the negotiations held in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna, and 100,000 Russian soldiers are still located along the Ukrainian border. No agreement save for one may turn out to be the most important.
From the ultimatums issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the counter-stance of the West (U.S., NATO and the European Union as one voice), one may infer that both parties realize that Ukraine is now part of the West.
Neither Russia nor the West may be ready for this. Even Ukraine is not ready, despite striving for such a reality more than others. But that doesn't change anything. Ukraine is no longer an "in-between," buffer or gray-zone state as had been the case until 2014.
This new truth will not be changed by the fact that the West currently is not ready to offer Ukraine EU or NATO membership in the foreseeable future, with or without a new Russian military invasion.
Beginning from 2014, the large-scale war waged by Russia on Ukraine has not ceased, claiming 14,000 Ukrainians. This grueling war has not impacted the civilizational choice of Ukraine toward the West. On the contrary, it has been entrenched in society as never before.
In November 2021, 58 percent of Ukrainians said they supported Ukraine joining NATO. In 2014, that figure was 51 percent. Moreover, 59 percent of Ukrainians do not think that Russia will abandon its aggressive policy toward Ukraine provided Kyiv give up on its intention of joining the EU and NATO.
Putin's intentions of receiving premature guarantees of NATO's non-enlargement are yet another proof of Ukraine belonging to the West. However, he is undertaking attempts to reject and change the reality against Ukrainian's will, relying on (paradoxical as it may sound) the West.
Thus, the historic moment of this situation lies in the question about whether the West will abandon its own member, as has already been the case once.
In 1983, the world famous Czech-French writer Milan Kundera described such a precedent as "a kidnapped West or the tragedy of Central Europe."
What he had in mind was power-sharing in the wake of World War II, when countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, which had always been associating themselves with the West in historical, cultural and political terms, were "kidnapped" from the West, finding themselves in the East, in the Soviet sphere of influence. Here Kundera also emphasized the fact that this took place with the silent acquiescence of Western countries themselves, which did not look at Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary as part of the West. This was evident during anti-Soviet uprisings in 1956 in Hungary and in 1968 in Prague, which were quelled by the Soviet troops' invasion of these two countries.
For the past eight years since the Revolution of Dignity happened in Ukraine, Russia occupied Crimea and Donbas. The entire world has had the opportunity to watch the same symbolic drama unfold in Europe, which was previously described by Kundera.
Ukraine now is the place where the civilizational border of the West and Europe runs.
Moreover, in the Russian drafts of agreements with NATO and the U.S., the Kremlin put Ukraine in the same boat with Central European states, which joined the Alliance after 1997. Putin wants the region to be NATO-free regardless of the membership status of any given country. He recently highlighted the "historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians."
The Kremlin insisted that the United States promised Moscow that NATO will never enlarge to the East—an agreement that was never made by the U.S. or any other nation.
Fortunately, unlike 1945, 1956 or 1968, the West does not remain silent today and has not ditched Ukraine with acquiescence, yet. The current and possibly new sanctions, readiness to negotiate with Russia at any level and in any format combined with the supply of weapons to Ukraine corroborates this point.
However, these efforts are insufficient.
"If Ukraine is to survive as an independent state, it will have to become part of Central Europe rather than Eurasia, and if it is to be a part of Central Europe, then it will have to partake fully of Central Europe's links to NATO and the European Union," wrote Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, about the new world order.
It doesn't mean that today the West is obliged to fight Russia because of Ukraine. However, so as not to repeat the hideous tragedy of Central Europe, the West should help Ukraine to not only prepare for defense, but also to be resilient.
And such resilience now can be brought about by what Brzezinski said—Ukraine's deeper economic, infrastructural and political ties to the West, particularly Central Europe.
In practical terms this has been already reaffirmed by the gas reverse deliveries in Ukraine from Slovakia and Hungary, trade with Poland, the export to which in 2020 exceeded that to Russia with this advantage being still maintained and by the successful operations in Ukraine of such companies as the Hungarian-owned OTP and WizzAir and the Polish-owned PZU Group and LOT.
Not only Ukraine is in need of these ties. They may provide an incentive for such projects as the Three Seas Initiative and the Bucharest Nine, which would help rethink the relations between the old and new West, adding value to the latter, in particular to Poland and Romania.
All of these steps make for a multilateral democracy in action and division of labor that are supposed to cement the Transatlantic community, in particular its Eastern flank, which in recent years has turned into a springboard for Russia and China in a new great power competition with the West and U.S. in particular. In other words, the entire West needs ties within Central Europe.
The consent to Putin's ultimatums is not part of realpolitik for the sake of peace and security in Europe. It would be treason.
Should Putin's ultimatum be complied with, the West will effectively betray its allies along the whole Eastern flank all the way from the Black Sea to the Nordic countries. That is why the true realpolitik for the West currently is to keep its word to Ukraine and not allow the new tragedy of Central Europe to be repeated.
The West seems to be waking up.
Dmytro Tuzhanskyi is director of the Institute for Central European Strategy (Ukraine), Think Visegrad Fellow 2020 and IVLP alum.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
