Ukraine: A hand-to-hand refugee crisis Putin will be a war crime

By Craig Hooper

A large-scale military operation may not have broken out, but the humanitarian costs of Russian aggression against Ukraine are already rising. On Friday, pro-Russian leaders “stationed” by Moscow in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk announced via video message that will evacuate 700,000 civilianssending them to an uncertain future: to a Russia that seems utterly unprepared to face the impending humanitarian crisis.

Plans by Russian-funded media showed some buses – including children – departing, and Moscow sent a high-ranking emergency bureaucrat to “welcome” them, announcing that Refugees arriving in Russia will receive a meager 10,000 rubles (about $ 130). Furthermore, there is no indication that Vladimir Putin has prepared the infrastructure to support these refugees or others emerging from an impending war.

The West has repeatedly tolerated Vladimir Putin provoking humanitarian crises without imposing sanctions on him. This has happened in Georgia, Chechnya and elsewhere. And this tactic must change. This time, the West has the right to demand that Russia demonstrate whether it is properly prepared to meet the needs of displaced refugees from eastern Ukraine.

If Russia invades Ukraine, Putin’s failure to respond to a major humanitarian crisis will have to be prosecuted as a war crime – with the West moving rapidly to seize Russian assets to meet the thousands of casualties it will cause. displacement.

700,000 refugees: “drop in the ocean”

By moving about 190,000 troops near the border with Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has shown that Russia is fully capable of managing a logistical military challenge. However, Russia has devoted little money and little of its know-how to preventing refugee / migration flows from turning into a huge humanitarian crisis.

Last year, when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBR) stopped some 1.7 million immigrants at the country’s southern border, the Biden government withdrew more than $ 2 billion from other priorities just to channel them to cover the cost of caring for 20,000 unaccompanied children. Humanitarian aid is a significant expense.

It’s a bad omen if Russia seems reluctant to protect people to whom it attributes Russian ethnicity. With billions in foreign exchange reserves, only gross malice would ignore the humanitarian consequences of an unwarranted invasion of Ukraine.

The indignation over this situation must be expressed here and now. If Russia invades Ukraine, the number of refugees will increase as millions of Ukrainians move to the western borders and Europe. Even if 10% of the 41 million Ukrainians seek safety in Europe, the West will have to answer and then force Russia and its oligarchs to pay for the care of these people.

If the West does not send a “signal of indignation” to Russia right now, it will give Moscow an opportunity – at a later stage – to cultivate anger against the West for its failure to deal effectively with Russian aggression.

Give “space” to Samantha Power

The United States has an important tool at its disposal to highlight Russia’s humanitarian “fiasco.” Through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Leader Samantha Power can send a simple message: that Putin’s inability to deal with a humanitarian crisis is a war crime. Although somewhat prone to exaggeration and “supervision” as it tends to self-promote, Power is a voice that knows how to extend the impact of a message. This may be her time.

However, in order to effectively manage the Russian aggression supported by various media, USAID will need a lot of money, and in fact, immediately. As an organization that “provides timely and effective humanitarian assistance, providing relief to those affected by disasters and complex crises,” USAID responds to 75 crises in more than 70 countries each year by providing food, water, housing, health care, and assistance to all. distressed “.

Congress was satisfied with the Agency’s underfunding. After “four years of proposed cuts in Presidential assistance programs abroad,” the troubled USAID will need as much support as possible to upgrade and prepare for the coming challenge. Putin seeks to prevent the West from getting involved in this aspect of the crisis, hoping that the Allies will lose time and energy through partisan confrontations, in the escalation of which Russia may also “get its hands”.

This crisis will belong exclusively to Putin

If Russia invades Ukraine, Moscow ‘s inability to provide assistance to refugees should be prosecuted as a war crime. And while the United States and its allies will have to resort to provocations and “dirty” political games to extract financial resources that will serve to address the humanitarian crisis that Putin seems ready to “unfold”, these efforts should not be in no case should they be considered a “stigma” for democratic principles and values. Yes, the West has allowed Putin to inflict lesser-scale humanitarian catastrophe in other areas without imposing sanctions, but this time we can not blame the West for anything.

This time the responsibility lies solely with the Russian president.

If traditional state funding is hard to come by, the West will have to innovate by seizing Russian assets linked to Putin to deal with a humanitarian crisis in Moscow that appears to be affecting all of Eastern Europe.

Read also:

* The first buses carrying people evacuated from Eastern Ukraine arrived in Russia

* Ukrainian crisis: More than 40,000 arrive in the Rostov region of Russia