Would a Russia-Ukraine war affect Latin America?
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(CNN) --
Russian President Vladimir Putin's moves in the coming hours will decide the severity of the crisis for Ukraine, but also determine a potentially huge impact on Americans and on an already deeply unstable world.
Whether Putin launches a full-scale invasion across Ukraine or decides to limit his incursion to sending troops to the two pro-Russian regions in the east that he has recognized as independent, that will dictate the severity of the sanctions that the United States and its allies impose.
Which, they say, will be the toughest ever imposed on Moscow.
Conflict between Russia and Ukraine: what are Putin's goals?
The question of whether Putin has ambitions beyond eastern Ukraine also has far-reaching implications.
His alarming speech this Monday, in which he lambasted NATO for disrespecting and threatening Russia since the fall of the
Soviet Union,
it could plunge Washington and Moscow back into a Cold War-style confrontation after 30 years of relative calm in Europe.
And the developments of the coming hours and days will have enormous consequences for Americans.
A Russian invasion of the rest of Ukraine will increase gas prices and inflation, which have already hit Americans' wallets.
It would also deal another blow to the credibility of President Joe Biden and present an insurmountable challenge to Democrats, who are already at risk of huge losses in this midterm election year.
The omens are very, very dark.
With a signature, Putin cut two more pieces of an independent and sovereign nation on Monday to add to his 2014 takeover of Crimea. Moscow said it would send what it called "peacekeepers" to the regions.
Despite its euphemism, US officials fear the force could be the mobilizing vanguard for the all-out invasion they have anticipated for days.
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Watch a military convoy with cannons advance in eastern Ukraine 0:40
As bad as this flash of mafia geopolitics sounds, things could get a lot worse.
If Putin were to stop here, it is possible that the crisis in Ukraine could be contained.
And even give the Russian president an opportunity to de-escalate the situation and desist from a total invasion of the country after winning new territories in his attempt to prevent Ukraine from drawing closer to the West.
Such a rollback -- perhaps designed to split the United States from less belligerent allies -- could avert a broader global crisis.
In the United States, this interim scenario could also spare its citizens a new and damaging rise in gasoline prices and inflation.
And it would allow Biden to escape another blow to his credibility in a difficult midterm election year.
Yet evidence of Putin's own angry rhetoric on Monday, the presence of up to 190,000 Russian troops on Ukraine's borders, and most assessments by US leaders and intelligence officials suggest that hopes of a limited conflict they are just illusions.
In his speech from the Kremlin, Putin made it clear that he sees Ukraine as a territory indistinguishable from Russia and not as an independent entity, an argument that hardly suggests restraint.
In fact, his speech seemed like justification for a much bigger gamble than a limited foray into the east of the country.
He referred to Ukraine as "an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space."
And he referred to comrades, relatives and people "connected to us by blood."
"Modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia," he added.
How does the international community react to Putin's actions?
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At an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday night, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that Russia's designation of troops it would send to eastern Ukraine as "peacekeepers" was "nonsense".
She said the force was an "attempt to create a pretext for a new invasion of Ukraine."
A speech that put Ukrainians on edge
Putin's propagandistic view of history was neither a declaration of invasion nor an attempt to reunite Ukraine with the Motherland.
But it would be easy to read it as an effort to prepare the Russian people for war.
It surely also portended a long-term attempt to dominate and destabilize a democracy that includes a large number of citizens yearning to join NATO and the European Union.
Putin's most chilling statement was the one that seemed to lay the groundwork for treating any attack on Russian forces due to enter eastern Ukraine as a pretext for a broader conflict.
Which, according to the United States, could lead to the death of thousands of civilians and trigger flows of refugees.
"To those who took and hold power in Kyiv, we demand an immediate cessation of hostilities," Putin said of a government that, unlike him, was elected in free and fair elections.
"Otherwise, all responsibility for the possible continuation of bloodshed will fall entirely on the conscience of the ruling regime on the territory of Ukraine."
Equally ominously, multiple US officials told CNN they interpreted Putin's move on Ukraine's two eastern regions, which call themselves the Donetsk People's Republic and the Lugansk People's Republic (DPR and LPR), as part of a steady march. towards a broader invasion of Ukraine.
"This is Potemkin politics," a senior administration official told reporters on Monday.
"President Putin is accelerating the very conflict that he has created."
As soon as Putin made his announcement, Biden consulted with the leaders of France and Germany, quickly announcing a package of trade and financial sanctions against the two pro-Russian regions.
But he did not immediately deploy the devastating series of measures against the Russian economy that he has promised in the event of an invasion of Ukraine.
US Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer told CNN's Brianna Keilar on "New Day" on Tuesday that the additional sanctions would come as part of a "swift and severe response" to Moscow's actions. .
Hours later, Biden revealed a series of measures against Russia.
Biden got into some political trouble last month when he suggested a "minor incursion" into Ukraine would not unleash the full force of the strongest sanctions ever imposed on Moscow.
Unwittingly, he told the truth about the divisions then between US and European allies about the exact moment when full sanctions would kick in.
Biden later clarified his comment, saying the sanctions would be triggered if "any assembled Russian unit" crossed the Ukraine border.
But again on Monday, administration officials appeared to draw a distinction between eastern Ukraine and the rest of the country.
"There have been Russian forces present in these areas" since 2014, a senior official told reporters.
"So we're going to be looking very closely at what they do in the coming hours and days and our response will be measured according, again, to their actions," the official said.
It was unclear whether the government's position was due to coordination problems with allies on sanctions or whether they were seeking to preserve a last potential point of influence with Putin.
In any case, the Russian leader scoffed at the idea of sanctions in his speech.
It is prudent for the United States to actually punish Russia for what it does and not for what Putin says.
But semantics about what constitutes an invasion risks diminishing the action the Russian president took on Monday.
It is well known that what Russia has described as pro-Moscow rebels in eastern Ukraine were trained by Russia and received their orders from Moscow.
In effect, Putin seized a piece of another country, without giving that state the chance to decide his fate.
This is classic expansionist autocracy using ethnic justifications and false claims that Russians are being persecuted and targeted for genocide, a surprisingly familiar playbook from the horror of the 1930s.
Kyslytsya: Russia's actions violate Ukraine's sovereignty 2:19
Still, the question of what constitutes an invasion of Ukraine may soon be moot.
The United States has accurately anticipated Putin's actions in recent days, including moves in eastern Ukraine.
And he may be right again.
Pressure on the United States Capitol
The Biden administration, which has largely succeeded in building a united front in NATO against Putin in recent weeks, is already facing demands from Capitol Hill for a faster and tougher response to the land grabs, including from some Democrats.
Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that the United States had to put up a flag and correctly define the pending dispatch of "peacekeepers" to eastern Ukraine.
"That is an invasion in any sense of the imagination," he said.
And he added that the most consequential sanctions ever imposed on Moscow must follow immediately.
Two prominent Republican lawmakers have lashed out at the Biden administration.
"As we have said for months, setting the cause for significant sanctions as the time when Russian tanks cross the Ukraine border was a dangerous mistake," said Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the U.S. Foreign Affairs Committee. the House of Representatives, and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
"We must immediately impose real costs for this flagrant act of aggression and flagrant violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Unfortunately, the sanctions envisaged by the White House thus far are the definition of helplessness," the two Republicans wrote.
What are Putin's limits in tension with Ukraine?
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US officials said late on Monday that they expected Russian troops to begin moving into eastern Ukraine and the two rebel regions within hours.
The world will soon discover whether Putin's bitter fury on Monday was the harbinger of a broader conflagration that would end the post-Cold War era and usher in a new era of tension in Europe.
That reality would require a massive rethinking of transatlantic security.
Including the likely sending of thousands of US troops back to bases they abandoned in the 1990s and early 2000s. These deployments would also complicate Washington's desire to pivot its military might toward Asia to wage a new war-style conflict. Cold War against a rising superpower, China.
A protracted geopolitical tussle with Russia would also force US and European policymakers to consider how far Putin might go in his effort to rewrite Europe's borders.
"What worries me is what happens after Ukraine," former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told CNN on Monday.
"We have a real crisis on our hands."
Putin's argument, for example, that the Ukrainians are blood brothers of the Russians is particularly worrying, as it could apply to other countries that include large numbers of ethnic Russians, including the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were previously under Soviet rule.
Any attempt by Putin to extend his principle there could be hugely dangerous, as they are all now in NATO and benefit from the alliance's guarantee of mutual self-defense.
The next few days will show how far Putin is willing to act on his words and he will begin to answer Clapper's question.
The evidence so far looks ominous.