Between the lines of the president’s incendiary declarations, there is still a desire to deal with the West and avoid conflict. The Kremlin has tried to intimidate the White House with weapons and infowar but the harsh response has cornered it
You should always listen to what Vladimir Putin says: contrary to his reputation as an enigma shrouded in mystery, the Russian president is usually very sincere and outspoken about his intentions and fears. His “What should we do, go to war with NATO?”, Exclaimed in front of the cameras, is a rhetorical question on an impossible scenario, revealing a leader who feels more pressed and insecure than assertive and on the offensive. He feels threatened, and he is not afraid to tell his nightmare, that Kiev, supported by the West, takes away from him what he considers his great conquest, the Crimea annexed in 2014 as the first step in the reconstruction of a post-Soviet empire that since then he remained more in the Kremlin’s “geopolitical” dreams. And so, in that first awaited public release after the official response from the US on the Russian ultimatum arrived in Moscow, he shows himself misunderstood, angry and above all frustrated: “Imagine a Ukraine that, once it entered the Atlantic Alliance, stuffed of weapons, are you launching a military operation in the Crimea? Can’t we wage war with NATO? ».
While propagandists and extras of the Russian political theater continue to threaten “asymmetrical” escalations, and to hypothesize doomsday scenarios such as nuclear strikes – violating what became an absolute taboo for the establishment both in Moscow after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. both in Washington – Putin appears more realistic than his courtiers, and in fact he mixes brusque language with signs that can be read in a more prudent key. It is true that he calls in his defense the propaganda myth of a Moscow “deceived, frigated as they say by the people” with respect to the alleged commitment of the Western partners not to enlarge NATO after the collapse of the Wall, a “pact” denied even by the directly concerned Mikhail Gorbachev, but functional to present Russia as a victim and not as an aggressor. But he hopes for a continuation of the negotiations with the West, which he defines as “complex but possible”, and while he launches accusations at Washington and Brussels he also remembers that this is not the official response from Moscow, there is no final “niet” for now. , also because for a “niet” it would not have taken all this time.
Putin notoriously hesitates and thinks for a long time, especially when he feels in trouble, and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promises Anthony Blinken an elaborate and detailed “interdicasterial” response, therefore more likely an attempt to pursue a negotiation than a move to one. impossible war. A long, boring, very technical and very little media negotiation, which takes months and dozens of experts to decide where to place that missile, how many bases, submarines and bombs to own, with how much notice and in which area to carry out exercises and above all to which ones conditions send inspections to monitor the opponent. Because it would be a negotiation between enemies, such as those on disarmament conducted for years by the USSR and the USa, which established not so much peace as the means to avoid being torn apart in a war.
It is the old strategy of “containment”, and it is no coincidence that Putin dusts off this term from the Cold War vocabulary. And that’s exactly where the White House and its allies want to lead the situation. In this game of poker it is time to move from propaganda to diplomacy, from media hype to the discretion of negotiations. Putin was the first to up the ante, with his ultimatum in which he asked NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe. A proposal made to be rejected, the fruit of a brazen diplomacy that the Kremlin has recently liked a lot, which has achieved the result of making itself heard, but now limits its room for maneuver. In fact, the Americans responded in kind, finally satisfying what Putin had been asking him for years: to be taken seriously.
In the following weeks, it was all a lot of new cards: from the planes loaded with American weapons that landed in Kiev (a drop in the bucket in the event of a Russian invasion, but of great television effect), to the rich assortment of possible sanctions, among which those against the family, not just politics, of Putin himself. The hesitations of some European allies, who in any case all signed the response to the Russian ultimatum, were offset by the moves of two allies outside the EU: Boris Johnson who proposes a trilateral military alliance with Warsaw to Volodymyr Zelensky, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan expected in Kiev in the next few days for a negotiation on the common defense, have completed the arrangement of the pieces of the Risiko.
A few weeks later, Moscow finds itself with a Ukraine that has received solidarity and aid from all over the world, a NATO that is increasing its military presence, a Europe that for the first time is discussing giving up Russian gas and a stock exchange. swooping for the flight of investors frightened by sanctions even before a war. In Moscow, a desperate search for a Plan B has been observed, from the recognition of the separatist enclaves of Donbass – which however would blow up the Minsk negotiations – to the military bases in Cuba and Venezuela as an “asymmetrical” threat which, however, does not seem to have had the consent of the interested parties. It is clear that this situation can only be exited in reverse, the problem is to present it as a victory.
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