D.The West has no intention of dying for Kiev but, on balance, neither do the Russians, who cheer from home for a war they don’t want to fight in. This, the great Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev explains to La Stampa, is the real bitter defeat of Vladimir Putin, who bet on hard power to lose all the soft power gained in a decade of propagand in less than three months.to.
Finland and Sweden embrace NATO. Is it a geopolitical mistake that distances peace, as Putin argues, or an obligatory path?
“It is the disappearance of the gray zone between Russia and the West, a buffer that created a political identity. It included Finland and Sweden but also Ukraine, the largest of the former Soviet republics, Belarus before the protests against Lukashenko, different countries that maintained relations on both fronts and were proud of their neutrality. Today in its place are the barricades. What has changed is the point of view on Russia, after the aggression against Ukraine nobody wants to risk it. As the Finnish president said, if Putin is looking for someone responsible, he has to look in the mirror“.
The Russian president threatens retaliation. Are you afraid of a nuclear world war?
“I don’t think so, no analyst really believes it. But to exclude it is impossible ».
Three days ago, the phone call between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart Sergej Shoigu hinted at a negotiating window. Everything to be redone?
“That phone call came after the contradictory news of the previous days, the specter of proxy war and the New York Times background on alleged US involvement in the elimination of Russian generals, later denied by President Biden. We are still there, America supports Ukraine but does not seek war with Russia, rather it aims to prevent Moscow from using tactical nuclear weapons. As for the negotiations, the White House has made it clear that Kiev will determine what peace, when, how“.
Could Putin be content with a referendum in Donbass and a lasting peace for a farewell to arms?
“It is not clear. At this point, perhaps, Putin can accept a simulacrum of victory, explaining that he had aimed only at the Donbass. But I don’t know how Ukraine could accept it. In addition to the terrain on which the Russians and Ukrainians face each other, there is also, very importantly, the economic level of the war, where Russia faces Western sanctions. The American Congress has made it clear that the only possible stop to the sanctions depends on a specific request from Zelensky and today there are no indications in this regard “.
Did it take three months of death and destruction to utter the word peace?
«Europe did not want this war, it knew that it would have an impact on its identity and its economy. Washington did not want it either, as it aspired to detach itself from Europe to think about China. Putin had bet that he would win easily, but time has played against him. Today Ukraine is more armed and more homogeneous. No, the sanctions alone would not have been enough, Moscow expected them but did not give up on the invasion. A comparison was needed “
What weight do sanctions have, assuming that Europe goes ahead together on this?
«Sanctions do not change Russian foreign policy. Putin was ready to suffer them. Of course, they complicate the internal situation of the country: but will it be enough to make the Russians rebel? We do not know. There was no regime change in Iran. But if the goal was for Europe to emancipate itself from Russian gas and oil, then yes, we are on the right track. The problem is the timing. It is now clear that the deeper we go into the war, the more asymmetrical the impact of sanctions on the various countries becomes: they must be renegotiated on a case-by-case basis. It won’t be tomorrow, but in the end we will succeed ».
How much consensus does Putin have?
«Russia is a big Putin fan club but the fans didn’t think they were going to the front, they weren’t prepared for the war which in fact has been called a special military operation. Putin’s popularity did based on the euphoria of Russian Crimea but no one was ready to die. The consensus is still there, also fueled by the paranoia of the Russophobic West, but it is a passive consensus. There are no volunteers who enlist, no Russian claims the patriotic war like the Ukrainians do. There is no massive anti-Putin front, but this war has changed the cards: it has undermined international respect for the sacrifice of the Red Army in World War II, which in defiance of patriotism is fighting a neo-colonial war today, and has violated the cult of the Russian language that so many now reject. Two pillars of identity in ruins: Russian military heroism and culture ».
Yet there are many in the West who are reducing Moscow’s responsibilities.
“There are those who do not deny the aggression of Moscow let themselves be carried away by anti-Americanism, it is true. But I don’t think anyone can really admire Putin yet. On the contrary, while Zelensky wins the battle of the image on social networks, the Russian president no longer has the pulse of young people, he appears distant, an angry old man with no more soft power: Putin has lost the culture war ».
The warring war, on the other hand, at what point is it?
“We are in the middle but we don’t know exactly what. It is clear that Russia has not achieved its objectives on the ground, it has missed the special operation envisioned as a two-week blitz to end with the overthrow of the Kiev government and has not taken the Donbass. At the same time, Ukraine has successfully defended itself but it is not clear when it will succeed in ousting the Moscow army. It seems to me that at the point where we are, peace is an unrealistic hypothesis and that instead a long conflict lies aheador”.
Is the West still a prisoner of the ghost of the USSR, as Milan Kundera wrote in 1983?
“Putin’s strategy is not to brush up on the USSR but on historical Russia. Most Russians rejoiced at the end of communism but did not understand the subsequent collapse of the country. Nostalgia is not about communism, it is nostalgia for grandeur. In Ukraine it takes place today the dissolution of the last continental empire, the Russian one, the only survivor of World War II in the form of the Soviet Union, which extended the empire with the control of the territories. We are witnessing the final act of decolonization from the USSR, a tail of the European one: it will end in the same way“.
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