Tensions in eastern Ukraine exploded into open conflagration this week, with the OSCE registering hundreds of violations of the Minsk ceasefire, and the Donbass republics evacuating thousands of civilians to Russia and calling up reservists. The US is the major beneficiary from the conflict and it needs Russia dragged into it, observers believe.

The security situation in the self-proclaimed Donbass breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk began to deteriorate rapidly on Thursday, with the Donetsk and Lugansk militias and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation mission in the region reporting shelling by artillery, mortars, sniper attacks, and attempted bombings.
The escalation in the Donbass comes following months of claims by Western officials and media that a “100,000 troop-strong” force of Russian military personnel is being primed to launch an out-of-the-blue invasion of Ukraine.

Dragging Russia into the conflict would benefit the United States, Clackson explains, as this would allow Washington to “put more sanctions on Russia and to isolate” the country in the eyes of the international community. This would also enable Washington to grab a chunk of Russia’s share of the European energy market, and increase demand for US weapons.

“There are commercial interests were Russia to invade Ukraine, which is, in my opinion, why the United States continues to push to provoke Russia to take such a step,” the observer says.
At the same time, a Russian invasion of Ukraine is “very unlikely and possibly completely impossible,” Clackson notes, given the immense economic damage and harm to its reputation that such a decision could inevitably cause.

The US “is no doubt encouraging the recent attacks against Donetsk and Lugansk because it dreams of dragging Russia into a full-on armed conflict with Ukraine,” says Alan Bailey, a UK-based political analyst, concurring with his colleague.
“Carrot on a stick: Threaten the Donbass citizens and compel Russia to go in. Once Russian armour crosses the border the large sanctions package much publicised by the media here becomes active and they return to ‘Plan A’ of trying to break the Russian economy, which is their only route to their aims because Russia cannot be beaten militarily,” Bailey says.
Not everyone in the West wants to see the war in Ukraine, Bailey notes, noting that this is especially true in the case of European powers like France and Germany. “But even though they are sovereign countries in the region, they are minor players to events and can sadly have little impact. Washington wants a new war so that it can drag Russia in, tell the whole world ‘look we’re right! Russian invasion! Russian aggression!... Buy our weapons, let us build bases in your country.’ Washington cannot tolerate competition, and is compelled to try to stamp it out before it gets to the point of having to accept it – and this is what we are witnessing now,” the observer believes.
The interests of the European nations are not of particular concern to Washington, says Tiberio Graziani, chair of Vision & Global Trends, a Rome-based think tank.
“We must make a distinction with regard to the West. There is the real West which is the United States, then there are the European states which constitute, on a mainly strategic level, the sphere of influence of the United States towards the east. The European states are objectively subordinate, despite their economic and industrial strength, both militarily (through NATO) and politically, to the United States,” the Italian observer stresses.
“The United States and the West don’t particularly want to make any concessions to Russia, particularly regarding Ukraine’s potential entry into NATO. The West doesn’t want to be seen as agreeing to any of Russia’s demands for this reason,” the observer argues.
As far as the Donbass conflict and hopes that full-blown hostilities can be avoided through the Minsk Agreements, Graziani is convinced that the US and its allies “never believed in” the peace deal, and won’t rush to its defence now.

“Washington does not want there to be agreements between the parties because its strategy – a parody of the Roman ‘divide et impera’ (‘divide and rule’) – provides for the construction of ‘arcs of crisis’ in various areas of the planet, in order to maintain world hegemony, however endangered by the resilience of the Russian Federation and the rise of People’s China,” Graziani says.

At the same time, “the humanitarian disaster [in the Donbass] is deliberately obscured and neglected, because the goal of the US-led West is to create as much problems as possible for Russia through a series of provocations, even at the cost of human lives,” the observer concludes.