With Ukraine’s missile attacks on Sebastopol in Crimea on 23 June, Western intransigence over negotiations is bringing the world closer to catastrophe, argues Chris Bambery

We have now reached the height of midsummer madness in the war between Ukraine and Russia after Ukraine fired American-supplied missiles at the city of Sebastopol on Sunday. Russia has vowed to retaliate after the American ATACMS attack on Sebastopol in Crimea, which killed four people, including two children. Around 150 more were injured in the attack.

The deaths and injuries were caused by falling missile debris after Russian missile defences intercepted five missiles carrying cluster warheads, launched by Ukrainian forces; four were shot down and one exploded in the air. Footage carried on Russian state TV showed chaos on the beach in the Uchkuyevka area, as people ran from the falling debris, with injured people being carried away on sun loungers.

Moscow blames America for this attack. The Russian defence ministry immediately said that all ATACMS missiles are programmed by US specialists and guided by American satellites. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated this on Monday, saying that the system ‘cannot be used without the direct participation of the American military, including satellite capabilities.’ While a Ukrainian operative may have fired the missiles, the operation would likely require direct American involvement.

The US Ambassador, Lynne Tracy, was summoned to Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday to be told the US was waging a ‘proxy war’ against Russia and that retaliatory measures would ‘definitely follow’. A White House National Security Council spokesperson said: ‘Ukraine makes its own targeting decisions and conducts its own military operations.’ The Ukrainian government justified the attack by saying Crimea was a legitimate target.

An aide to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Mykhailo Podolyak, claimed that the Crimean peninsula was ‘a large military camp’ that he said held ‘hundreds of direct military targets, which the Russians are cynically trying to hide and cover up with their own civilians.’ But the Kremlin’s defence spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, who called the strike ‘barbaric’ and accused the US of ‘killing Russian children’, also warned that the ‘involvement of the United States, the direct involvement, as a result of which Russian civilians are killed, cannot be without consequences.’ Adding, ‘Time will tell what these will be.’

The attack on Sebastopol comes after Russian president, Vladimir Putin, pledged earlier this month that Russia would retaliate against countries who supplied missiles used to attack Russian territory, stating: ‘If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those [Western] countries?’ Putin added: ‘That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it.’

Earlier this month, the G7 states met in Italy where Presidents Joe Biden and Zelenskiy signed a ten-year security deal that includes ‘squadrons’ of fighter jets, including F-16s. G7 countries agreed to a deal to provide a $50bn loan for Ukraine using interest from Russian assets frozen after Moscow’s invasion. The leaders of Italy and Germany have strongly rejected ceasefire terms laid out by Vladimir Putin to stop the war in Ukraine, as scores of countries gathered at a two-day summit in Switzerland to discuss ending the conflict.

Negotiations torpedoed

As they sat down to meet, Putin stated that he would agree to a ceasefire if Ukraine withdrew troops from four regions which Russia partially occupies and has annexed. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the Russian president’s plan ‘propaganda’ which effectively suggested that Ukraine ‘must withdraw from Ukraine’. German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, dismissed it as a ‘dictatorial peace’. Britain’s Rishi Sunak accused Putin of ‘spinning a phoney narrative about his willingness to negotiate.’ A statement issued at the summit reaffirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity and unambiguously rejected any nuclear threat against the country.

Putin was restating the terms of a peace deal signed by Russia and Ukraine in March 2022 which 

featured an offer by Ukraine not to join NATO in return for equivalent security guarantees. Crucial points of disagreement about Crimea and Donbas, as well as about the practicability of the no-Nato guarantees, remained. But on 29 March, both sides signed a draft and expected to go on talking.

Then, on 6 April British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kyiv, during the horrendous siege of Azovstal. These atrocious events, Russian responsibility for which has been confirmed by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (December 2022) gave Ukraine an additional reason to break off negotiations, a move strongly supported by the West.

According to Davyd Arakhhamia, Ukraine’s chief negotiator at Istanbul: ‘Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they [the Nato powers] are not.’ Johnson promised Zelensky $130 million of military equipment and $500 million in financial aid, while President Biden announced a $800 million military package to Ukraine. The peace deal was dead.

None of this is to exonerate Russia’s criminal invasion of Ukraine which initiated what has become a brutal war of attrition. The UN’s human rights monitoring mission in Ukraine says at least 10,000 civilians have been killed since Russia invaded in February 2022. The real figure, officials say, is likely to be far higher.

However, Ukraine now faces a serious manpower shortage and a lack of conventional weapons such as artillery shells, of which the West cannot supply sufficiency. The missiles America, Britain, France and Germany are giving Ukraine cannot alter these problems. But attacks like that on Sunday can lead to escalation. It is unlikely Russia will respond to that with nuclear weapons, but if we enter tit-for-tat retaliation, matters can quickly escalate out of control.

It is not to side with Putin to say Ukraine cannot win this war. The USA and NATO seem to want to prolong it despite that fact, and to Moscow’s eyes that looks like a proxy war on Russia.

We may well be at the closest point to nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Then the US President, John F. Kennedy, and Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, diffused the crisis via direct diplomacy. The same is required now, but the G7 summit rejected any such move.