What 15 August 2020 showed about Europe's shifting security map
A retrospective on a day of troop deals, an appeal from Minsk to Moscow and a rebuff for Washington at the UN.
What did the neighbourhood around Ukraine look like on 15 August 2020? It was a day when security arrangements to the west and east of Kyiv were both in motion, and when a diplomatic setback for Washington was still fresh.
In Warsaw, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak signed an agreement to redeploy about 1,000 U.S. troops from Germany to Poland, bringing the total there to 5,500. The agreement also provided for a potential increase to 20,000 U.S. troops if Poland came under threat.
To the north, the protests in Belarus were drawing in Moscow. President Alexander Lukashenko issued an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he no longer considered the protests a threat to Belarus alone. Statements from both sides contained a pointed reference to the Union State between the two countries. Meanwhile, opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was in exile in Lithuania, called for more protests.
A rebuff at the UN
The day before, on 14 August 2020, the United Nations Security Council had firmly rejected a U.S. bid to extend a global arms embargo on Iran indefinitely. Only the Dominican Republic backed the U.S. resolution, far short of the nine votes required for adoption. Eleven of the 15 members, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, abstained. Russia and China opposed the extension but did not need to use their vetoes.
Taken together, the reports from 14 and 15 August 2020 pointed to a region where military deployments were being reshuffled, a neighbouring leader was looking to Russia for support, and allies were not always aligned on sanctions policy.
