“Allying with Putin against the Islamic State would be a devil’s bargain,” by Oleksander Turchynov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, The Washington Post, December 3:
…it is understandable that Western governments should want to form the broadest possible international coalition, including with Russia, to defeat those responsible. But shared grief is not the same as shared interests. …
Russian President Vladimir Putin has direct interests in Syria as a regional ally, a market for Russian military exports and a base for the Russian navy’s Mediterranean fleet. But his approach is influenced by wider considerations, one of which is to prevent another authoritarian regime from succumbing to the demands of its people. As we well know in Ukraine, Putin is determined to resist the tide of global democratic change and willing to use violence against other countries to stop it. He sees freedom as a threat to his own hold on power and an indication of advancing Western influence. Russian policy in Syria is framed by an attitude of strategic hostility toward the West and its values.
While the Kremlin pretends to be fighting terrorism in Syria, Russia itself merits designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Its aggression against Ukraine has cost more than 8,000 lives, including the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas and the murder of political opponents carried out by its special forces and Russian-sponsored terrorists. It was a Russian-supplied Buk missile that reportedly shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July of last year, resulting in the loss of 298 innocent lives. More than 1.5 million people in Ukraine have been internally displaced as a result of illegal Russian aggression. The Russian state has shown itself willing to carry out the assassination of regime critics, both at home and abroad, using terrorist methods. …
Russia has already invoked the grand alliance against Hitler as a precedent for fighting the Islamic State. Be in no doubt that it will also demand a new Yalta as the price of cooperation now. In his recent speech to the United Nations, Putin praised the post-World War II agreement that began the division of Europe by recognizing the territorial gains Stalin achieved under the Nazi-Soviet pact. The town of Yalta, of course, now lies in Russian-occupied Crimea as a poignant reminder that the past lives with us. All Putin needs is for the West to drop sanctions and accept his land grab in Ukraine for the circle to be complete.
…the greatest long-term threats to a peaceful and liberal world order remain Russian terrorism and the determination of a revanchist Kremlin to impose a new sphere of influence and systematically try to destabilize its neighborhood, not only in Ukraine but also in the Caucasus, the Baltic states, Poland and the Balkans. The civilized world must defeat terrorism, not selectively but in all forms and on all fronts.