Bernard-Henri Levy:
In the space of a few days, everything has changed.
According to NATO sources, a thousand Russian soldiers have been on the move in the vicinity of Lugansk for several days now.
Several dozen Russian tanks, including a division flown in from Pskov, crossed the border and, since August 25, have been on maneuvers.
With complete impunity Moscow’s aircraft violate Ukraine’s airspace on a daily basis, flying over the now-encircled positions of the forward units of Kiev’s army.
The Russian navy is endeavoring to open a new front against the strategic port city of Mariupol on the Azov Sea, in the southeastern corner of the country and far from the separatist zones, with a view to clasping the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine in a pincer movement.
It even appears, according to news reports not yet confirmed, that the Russian army has established a field headquarters in Pobeda, 50 kilometers from Donetsk.
In short, the separatist pantomime is over, and it is toward a new reality that we may be headed: the reality of the first real war in Europe in decades, the first aggression of one sovereign state against another that the former intends to dismember and reduce to vassal status—the very things that the construction of Europe, its reunification, and the end of the Cold War were supposed to have made impossible.
In the face of a dizzying escalation that is gathering speed by the hour, what should we do?
Take the full measure of the threat, first of all.
Use the right words to describe what must indeed be called an aggression—one no longer cold but warming and that may one day, God forbid, become hot—against a European country and therefore against Europe itself.
Move beyond the carefully metered, diplomatically gradual, and cautiously targeted sanctions at which Russia has scoffed and that have in no way cooled its warlike ardor.
And, above all, heed the appeal of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for three very specific things:
Resumption, this Thursday in Cardiff, of the process of rapprochement with NATO, which would have the virtue of making his country’s borders inviolable.
Delivery of the sophisticated weapons without which, as recognized by a growing number of people (in Europe, by Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite; in the United States, by senators John McCain and Robert Menendez, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), Kiev’s army, despite its courage and determination, cannot hope to hold out for long against the elite commandos infiltrated by the Kremlin.
