Only one man decides whether war will break out in Europe. Sanctions don’t seem to bother the Russian president, as he keeps the West in check with his troops. What goes on in the brain of former spy Putin?
In Russia, parents wave goodbye to dark green trains. Partners are left apprehensive about their loved ones’ business trip. A young woman from Vladivostok wondered on social media what her boyfriend, a marine, would do after all, 7,000 kilometers from home, on the border with Ukraine.
Russians have the same questions about troop building as people in the West. For them too, it remains to be seen whether their 100,000 compatriots at the border will be ordered to invade Ukraine if negotiations continue to fail – talks between Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and his US counterpart Blinken failed again on Friday.
There seems to be only one man on Earth who knows what’s coming. And that is precisely Vladimir Putin’s intention.
Even Russian negotiators during negotiations with NATO and the US gave the impression of not knowing what Putin’s battle plan is. When they spoke of ‘professional negotiations’, Putin was quick to say he saw no reason for optimism. When they said Russia had no plans for an invasion, Putin said he was considering “military-technical measures.”
Some Russia analysts, who always have a prediction ready, confessed that they too are groping in the dark. “My conclusion from days of talks in Moscow about ‘what Putin really wants’ is that nobody knows,” sighed Russia expert Sergey Radchenko of Johns Hopkins University.
bitter
One thing is certain: former KGB member Putin has been bitter about the balance of power after the Cold War for thirty years. Russia is still the loser: seven of the eight former members of the Warsaw Pact are NATO members. And, more importantly, on the Russian border, former Soviet republics prove that democracy is possible on this continent.
Putin asks louder and louder, but to no avail, for recognition of what he sees as the Russian sphere of influence. “Nobody wanted to listen to us. Well, now listen,” he shouted in 2018 at the presentation of an arsenal of new nuclear weapons. In an animated video, Putin’s nuclear missiles rained down on an area around Florida. But everyone kept going.
That is different now. The West has been all ears for weeks as the Russian military has surrounded Ukraine. For the first time since German reunification, the US and NATO are talking to Russia about the balance of power in Eastern Europe.
A victory in itself for Putin, according to an experienced analyst for the Russian president: opposition leader Alexei Navalny. “Instead of ignoring this nonsense, the US is accepting Putin’s agenda and rushing to the negotiating table,” Navalny wrote this month from his penal colony. time. “Like a scared schoolboy bullied by a senior boy.”
But the West better listen, writes Dmitri Trenin, a former army officer and director of the Carnegie Center Moscow. History teaches that if a large, defeated party has not been included in the post-war order, or if it has not been offered a place in it that it finds acceptable, in time it will take action aimed at destroying the order or, at the very least, its significant modification.’
After Ukraine’s departure from the Russian sphere of influence, Putin is showing more determination than ever to protect former Soviet republics from democracy. Putin propped up Belarusian dictator Lukashenko and sent thousands of troops to Kazakhstan this month as the population there rose up against autocratic leaders.
But Putin knows that his main demands will not be met: the Western alliance will not exclude countries from accession and cannot make promises about withdrawing troops from its own member states.
Rejection
For now, Putin says he will not settle for compromises. Even a moratorium on Ukraine’s accession to NATO is not enough, said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov.
Rejection is possible what Putin is after. Then he has his justification for ‘military-technical measures’, the definition of which only he himself will determine.
Putin has been preparing the Russian economy for a confrontation for years. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and imposed sanctions on the West, Putin has allowed reserves to grow to $620 billion in foreign exchange and gold. During the same period, the EU has only become more dependent on Russian gas. By cutting off Russia from international payments – a sanction considered in the West as ‘the nuclear option’ – the EU would no longer be able to pay for Russian gas. And then Europeans quickly get cold.
western division
Putin was able to watch with satisfaction this week as Western unity, as so often, turned out to be less close than had been suggested. Macron sulked from the line of defense by suggesting that the EU should start talking to Russia itself, without the US. Biden slipped by saying NATO countries were unsure how to respond to “a minor raid.” After which the Ukrainian government became restless. “We want to remind the great powers that there are no small incursions and small nations,” President Zelensky tweeted.
The negotiations themselves and Western divisions are, for Putin, meager proceeds from one of the largest troop movements in Europe since the Cold War. But with military measures, he risks his popularity in Russia, and possibly the lives of Russians as well. Vladimir Putin may not know yet what Vladimir Putin’s next move will be.