 Tensions continue to mount in Europe. It's been a hectic couple of days with a lot of press conferences, announcement of sanctions, a lot of it starting on Monday evening when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would recognize the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. And from there, there's been a chain of events. What's going to happen in the next couple of days? It's hard to tell, but we'll be discussing the implications in this episode of Mapping Fault Lines. We're joined by Prabir Purkayas. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So as you know, over the past few days, there's been a lot of developments, a bit difficult to actually piece them together. But let's start with one key moment, which is that Russian President Vladimir Putin heard his key officials from various sectors talking about the Lugansk and Donetsk people's republics. All of them recommended that these should be recognized. He followed it with his own official announcement, also got permission to deploy troops. So let's first start with what you see is the implication of this move for Russia, for Ukraine, for the whole of Europe. You know, there are two sets of fault lines, since we call it the mapping of fault lines. Two sets of fault lines here. One is what Putin has referred to as the fault lines within Ukraine itself. And I think that's very important. And he's gone into a lot of history for that, which we'll come to later. Second is, of course, the larger fault lines, which is NATO versus Russia, in this case. And that has been simmering. And we've been talking about it earlier as well, the positioning of missiles, the NATO exercises in borders of Russia. And what Russia has also talked about in Putin has talked about in this speech is also about what NATO's plans were with respect to Ukraine, that though de facto it was a part of NATO, de facto it's a part of NATO, though officially it was not a part of NATO, that exercises were being done, bases were there, that they called it training facilities and so on. So I think these two fault lines need to therefore be also talked about separately. First is going back to the Ukrainian fault line. There is a history of Ukraine, which I'm not going to get into, which talks about the Rus and how Kiev was built by essentially Lenin and Stalin and how the Soviet Union had a faulty constitution, which allowed the dissolution of Soviet Union by Elsin. It's not because of the constitution that happened. Let's not get into that. But the reality is that Ukraine was, even if you read the word Ukraine, that's really borderlands. So in fact, some people say it should be called the Ukraine, like we call the Netherlands. So living that part out, Ukraine in the last 75, 80, 100 years would be called at best a multinational entity, whether it is a part of Soviet Union or later, a multinational entity meaning there are more than one ethnicities within Ukraine. A significant part of this was of course the Russian ethnicity, but more important, Russian speakers who were not Russian ethnicity, but the first language of Ukraine for a lot of people was Russian. Now this is the other fault line within Ukraine that post the Maidan 2014 basically overthrow of the government that existed and the Maidan dictated government that comes into place. We know behind the scenes, it was Newlands who was doing it. She even said, if you remember F dash dash K, EU and so on. So if you see that was really usurpation of usurping power by a certain group, which took advantage of the Maidan unrest and came into power and in that it was backed by a lot of quote-unquote nationalists as they now say in the world sentiments, which meant ethnic nationalism, which were very strongly anti-Russian, banning of language of the Russians to be taught in schools, first language etc being completely only Ukrainian. So even in shopping you had to use only Ukrainian. So whole lot of things came in and they attack on Russian newspapers and Russian television station and we are talking here of the language, we are not talking of the ethnicity here, plus also attacks on ethnic Russians. So all of this has been the fault lines within Ukraine and one of the reasons Zelensky has not been able to move on the Minsk Accord, which was basically what Lugansk and Donetsk region's demand was was autonomy, regional autonomy, autonomy of these two regions within Ukrainian state, that has been completely sabotaged or not proceeded on by Ukraine because of the street power of the fascist forces in Ukraine. So that has been the backdrop and there have been bombings, attacks, shelling, sporadic, more intense or otherwise going on. As you can see if you take the 18th, 19th, 20th figures or 18th figures, the maps of the OSCE observers are there and you can see the shelling is more inside the rebel hell territories as they have been called, that this is where most of the bombings and explosions were taking place, which is shelling. And this is what has been something that Putin has raised, that the shelling continuously you are trying to do this, you are eradicating the Russian language and ethnicity within Ukraine, you are constructing it as a state of Ukrainian ethnic nationalists, which are really fascists, he doesn't use the word in this form and also the street power that has been used time and again against Russian ethnicities, which is also the expression that you see in the attack of the Donbas region, particularly on the rebel hell territories. So this is the background which he has used and said yes to protect Russian ethnic and Russian language speakers, we have decided to now provide them protection. Now if you take the West, West has always argued the United States, European Union, the Russian forces are anyway there. Now they we know that they really were not there in the form that we now see. So of course there is a distinction between people who are ex-servicemen going there and fighting or Russian soldiers going there in planes, clothes or whatever between and officially Russian army moving in. So here you have a formal movement of Russian army and it does seem that if you take that into account immediately the shelling from across the line of control has reduced maybe not significantly but definitely it has visibly reduced. So it does seem that there is that part of it. What happens to rest of the Donbas region, which is also the official geographic boundary of Donetsk and Lugansk, only one third of this is under rebel control or the two entities which have declared independence since 2015. So this under their control, the two thirds which are not under their control but under Ukrainian government control. What happens to that is the big question. Otherwise it is in some sense rearrangement of the pieces but within the existing boundaries itself. So it's not in that sense a change as the European Union would like to say it's an invasion, this has happened, that has happened, Biden was predicting this. Since they all have claimed it was already Russia was there, they cannot call this an invasion. They have predicted everything. Also one thing they had not predicted is Russia will invade the rebel health entities because according to them rebel health entities were anyway with Russia and under Russian arms occupation. So given that this so-called invasion as Russian armist movement moved into Donetsk and Lugansk seems to not meet the criteria of invasion they had talked about earlier. Though now they are saying see we have already predicted it but yes if the line of control which is there between the rebel troops in this case the two breakaway provinces governments which Russia has recognized if that line of control is crossed we will have to say Russia is moving into Ukraine and there is an invasion even if it is support of the Russian ethnic population or a Russian speaking population it will have to be considered as an invasion and therefore it will draw a different kind of response. If you see most of the countries have said yeah it's not to go they should not have done this and so on but there is really nothing more they have said. The Chinese also haven't come out in condemning it or supporting it. In fact they're condemned to sanctions actually said that sanctions. Sanctions are yeah but if you look at it nobody is going to go either way if we're not already a protagonist like European Union and the United States is. So the question that is there is will they move on sanctions as you talked about or will Russian army move into the region that the Ukrainian government controls. I think these are the two questions that is there we can talk about the sanctions first before we go into what are the other possibilities. Right so probably talking about the sanctions and other responses we've seen Biden giving a speech yesterday the European Union foreign ministers agreeing on a sanctions package. The characteristic seems to be that in most cases those targeted are lawmakers who are involved in this process of recognition of these republics certain banks any institution which might have commercial you know dealings with these two republics and of course the big ticket announcement which was that Germany is going to pause the Nord Stream 2 project. So starting with the Nord Stream 2 and looking at some of the others are these actually very substantial blows to Russia or are they just sort of symbolic. You see Nord Stream 2 project means a lot to Germany. How much does it mean to Russia? Open question because Russia has the option of certainly selling its gas to China and in the next 10-15 years that seems to be its major market. So they have an option for European Union their option is either to buy LNG which is much higher in price try to get something from North Africa again might be pipelines and so on expensive cannot be done in a day or go back to Nord Stream 1 and what is coming from Ukraine already or the Yamal pipeline which is coming actually from Russia but across Poland. There are three pipelines from which European Union receives gas. If I leave out the Southern alignment which comes to Italy that that's basically one is Nord Stream 1 existing pipeline the one which is to Poland Yamal pipeline and then the third one which is coming from Ukraine which Putin has said the infrastructure of that is very poor it is leaking methane into the atmosphere causing global warming as the world always talks about. So that is why we are not so interested in selling further gas to Ukrainian pipeline but we will continue to honor our incremental 2025 of course unless there is a war then of course all bets are off. So looking at that Nord Stream was supposed to fulfill the future requirements of Germany as gas price rises so will electricity price rise in Germany and maybe other countries also. Now the net impact of this is a major cost of the people in winter months comes essentially from the price they pay for electricity and heating so Germany is going to be hit. So re-looking at this factor what it means is from Russia as the major supply of gas European Union could move now to North Africa and the United States more expensive gas but cutting their dependency on Russia. Now this is one of the objectives that United States had in the Ukrainian embryo because they wanted that to happen so that European Union becomes dependent on the United States higher price of gas both are desirable for United States and not on Russia that could be one of the outcomes of what's happening and the last part of it and I think that's also important to register that this gas the relationship between European Union gas and Russia erstwhile Soviet Union predates the stopping of Cold War it happened in fact at the height of Cold War in fact in 80s when the if you remember the Star Wars scenario was very much present the red gas coming from Soviet Union to European Union started was worked out as a part of a long-term understanding that European Union or Europe required gas coming from Eurasia essentially from Russia and that is something that should be protected outside the political conflict that it might be happening so it's interesting with the collapse of Soviet Union what should have been more easy has now become much more difficult and that that is the interesting development that finally European Union seems to have succumbed to the United States in all of this because they don't have an independent policy and if I may quote who was the first chief of NATO he said the objective maybe it was a joke but it's a quite a serious joke objective of NATO is to get US in Germany down and Russia out this is the objective of NATO that it seems though NATO had to withdraw from Afghanistan rather ignominiously it seems that through this crisis they are somewhere close to achieving that objective again except the fact that we are now far closer to a nuclear exchange possibly between United States and Russia which would be in the end of civilization or the world that we know it this is something which does not seem to be full figuring into our discussions or the world's discussions on what the crisis is all about thank you so much for being we'll be tracking this issue very closely in the coming days as well until then keep watching news click and people dispatch