“Long live Russia,” the re-elected president shouted on Monday, with barely contained emotion. Vladimir Putin71 years old, before a Red Square flooded with followers gathered to celebrate the third consecutive electoral victory of their leader, who this time obtained more than 87% of the votes according to the official bulletins, after a campaign from which all real opponents were erased, and during which the threats to voters who wanted to abstain or vote blank.
If he completes this new mandate that runs until 2030Putin will have remained in power for more than 31 years, thus breaking the record for Joseph Stalinthe bloodthirsty dictator who subdued the former Soviet Union for 30 years and six months, between 1922 and 1952. In the last 300 years, only Empress Catherine the Great has ruled longer in that country: 34 years and 4 months, in the second half of the 18th century.
Putin won the presidency for the first time in 1999 and since then he has been at the head of the Executive, although to avoid a constitutional rule, between 2008 and 2012 he left the Presidency to his ally and puppet Dimitri Medvedevand served as prime minister, before returning to the Presidency after winning the 2012 elections, the 2018 elections and, now, the ones that concluded this Sunday.
“This character (…) is drunk with power and does everything he can to reign eternally,” the Ukrainian president said this Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country was partially invaded by Russian troops 26 months ago. The war front, which has remained stable since the fall of 2022, is beginning to waver on the Ukrainian side in a dozen points in the east and southeast, in the absence of consistent Western support in weapons and ammunition.
Putin plays
with the theme
of the security of Russia and its environment, and argues that it wants to protect Russians living outside its borders
Apart from the rigged electoral victory and some advances by his troops on the front, Putin has several other reasons to look to the future with optimism. The outbreak of war in Gaza – following the ferocious Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli territory on October 7 and Israel's scorched earth response, under the leadership of its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahuwho maintains a long-standing relationship with Putin – has distracted the West from its interest and solidarity towards Ukraine.
And in political matters, the elections to the European Parliament, at the beginning of June, predict an advance by the forces of the radical right, largely an enemy of the European Union, a result that could further crack the solidity of support from the Old Continent. to Zelensky.
Something similar could happen in November in the United States if Donald Trump, another old acquaintance of Putin, wins the presidency and makes good on his promise to break up NATO, the military alliance that has united Washington with the European powers for 75 years, and whose Support for Ukraine has been essential to contain the Russian invasion so far.
Putin's appetite
“We must act before it is literally too late, because, as Poland reminds us, Russia will not stop in Ukraine and Putin will continue forward, putting Europe, the United States and the entire free world at risk,” he declared last week, in Washington, US President Joe Biden, as part of the visit to the White House of the Polish President and Prime Minister, Andrzej Duda and Donald Tusk.
After reviewing European intelligence documents, and speaking in Paris with several diplomatic sources, EL TIEMPO was able to establish, beyond Ukraine, a general picture of the main focuses in the Kremlin's sights, some of them already active in terms of military tensions.
All sources agree that Moldova, a small country of 33,000 square kilometers and just over two and a half million inhabitants, is the next bite that Putin wants to swallow. In sandwich between Ukraine and Romanianot far from the Black Sea but without coasts on it, already has an enclave of 1,700 Russian soldiers installed in Transnitria, a strip to the east that has claimed its autonomy since 1992, with support from Moscow.
When the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu – in power since December 2020 – began negotiations for her country's accession to the European Union, Putin fired off the provocations. He thinks that, like Ukraine, Moldova should once again be integrated into Russia, as when it was part, like the Ukrainian territory, of the Soviet Union. “A victory for Russian troops in Ukraine – says a detailed European intelligence report – would open the doors to a rapid invasion of Moldova by Putin's army.”
To the east of the Black Sea, in the Caucasus, is Armenia, another small country that was part of the Soviet Union. Entangled in an old conflict with its neighbor Azerbaijan – which produces 1.4 million barrels of oil a day, and that gives it a lot of power – Armenia had 3,000 Russian soldiers in its territory, to support it against the Azerbaijani threat.
But when Azerbaijan unleashed and won a blitzkrieg in 2020, the Russians did nothing and Armenia was inclined to move closer to the European Union, more than enough reason for Putin's diplomatic spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, threatened a few days ago with “irreparable damage” to relations between the two countries, if Armenia distances itself from the Kremlin and approaches the EU.
To the north of Armenia is Georgia, with a 723-kilometer border with Russia that includes two regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which declared their independence from the government of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, in 2008, with the support of 4,000 Russian soldiers who invaded those regions. areas in the face of rumors of Georgia's entry into NATO, and with the excuse of protecting the Russian-speaking population.
Georgia applied to join the European Union on March 3, 2022, days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin wants to avoid that step and, if he prevails in Ukraine, he would carry out the necessary military actions to return Georgia to the Kremlin's orbit.
Two thousand kilometers to the north are the three Baltic countries –Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia– that also became independent from Moscow after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In all of them there is a population of Russian origin that Putin has promised to protect “by all necessary means.”
On Monday, the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro recalled how, in January, “the Institute for the Study of War (ISW, a think tank based in Washington), which follows the conflict in Ukraine on a daily basis, claimed that Russia was shaping its discourse.” to justify a possible escalation over the Baltic countries.”
Just as Adolf Hitler spoke ninety years ago of “Germany's living space” (the Lebensraum, in German) to justify the expansion of its borders, and claimed to want to protect Germans living in neighboring countries, Putin plays with the issue of the security of Russia and its environment, and argues that it wants to protect Russians living outside its borders.
Africa and the Arctic
But Putin's appetite does not end in Europe. The Kremlin is also on the offensive in west-central Africa, where its Wagner group mercenaries serve the governments of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic.
These de facto regimes have been expelling French troops, present in the area to combat Islamic terrorists. And a few days ago, the Niger military junta terminated military cooperation agreements with Washington, which will imply the departure of 1,100 US soldiers.
Renamed in this region as Africa Corps – which recalls the Nazi troops of Marshal Erwin Rommel –, Wagner “is in a logic of predation,” a French military source told Le Figaro: he supports the military junta of the region, in exchange for being able to exploit the natural resources of those countries, which include gold, diamonds and uranium.
Another point in the crosshairs of Putin's expansion strategy is the Arctic. With the acceleration of the melting of the northern polar cap, Russia has been preparing for many months a military plan to gain strength in waters that will now, due to climate change, be much more navigable for both submarines and surface ships.
NATO is restless. Concern is especially great with the new nuclear submarine bases in the Murmansk region, not far from the Russian border with Finland and Norway.
The head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, warned this since August 2022. “In recent years – he said then – Russia has intensified its military activities in the region, establishing a new command for the Arctic, reopening hundreds of old military bases in the Soviet era and building new ones, especially deep-water airports and ports, and using the region to test their most innovative weapons systems.”
The West and its allies have not stood still. Germany doubled its military spending and raised it to 2% of GDP. France has become the second largest arms manufacturer in the world. Japan (the great ally in the East) left behind its pacifist policy with an annual increase of more than 6 billion dollars in defense spending. Sweden – another former pacifist – did the same by doubling military spending and taking steps to almost triple its active and reservist strength.
Two weeks ago, the EU's high representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, urged greater Western support for Ukraine: “If Russia wins this war, Europe will be in danger because (Putin) is not going to stop there.” It should be added that, with the conflict hotspots in the sights of the re-elected Russian president, both Europe and much of the planet will be in danger if Putin defeats Ukraine.
MAURICIO VARGAS
ANALYST
TIME
[email protected] / Instagram @mvargaslinares
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