Vladimir Putin threatens and speaks disrespectfully about the Ukraine war. The Russian dictator’s belligerence is a danger to the world. A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.
While the West is struggling hard with the consequences of its sanctions policy against Russia – as can also be seen from yesterday’s extremely venomous debate in the Bundestag – its President is undeterred. In his speech at the economic forum in Vladivostok, Vladimir Putin claimed that the war in Ukraine has brought his country “only advantages” so far. But that is not just disrespect for the families of the tens of thousands of fallen Russian soldiers, it is also a lie. A report by high-ranking government officials to the Kremlin that has now become public reveals how things really are in Russia’s economy beyond the dictator’s triumphant performance. The lack of western technology will throw Russia back by “one or two generations”. The report puts the feared slump in economic output by 2023 at up to 12 percent compared to the time before the war.
Russia’s imperialism and its president’s belligerence are a threat to the world
But unlike Western democracies, where citizens take their (justified) desperation and anger onto the streets, Russia suffers in silence. Putin and his KGB ensure peace as a grave in the country. The billions in additional revenue from energy sales to Europe, which Putin boasts about, will soon be gone when no more gas and oil find their way to Western customers. The markets are already thumbing their noses at the warlord: gas was cheaper yesterday than it was before the Kremlin announced on Friday that it would turn off the gas tap completely.
The agreement signed by Putin the day before shows how badly it is necessary to cut off the Kremlin regime’s income from financing its war adventures Doctrine of the “Russian World”, which unabashedly postulates: Russia is where Russians live. In the Baltic States, with their large Russian minorities, but also elsewhere, people may have understood that for what it is: a threat. Western sanctions are not a threat to the world, as Putin claimed in Vladivostok. But Russia’s open display of imperialism and its president’s belligerence.
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