Vladimir Putin's incessant war

2022-03-05T18:57:03.104Z

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The Russian president thinks he is strong enough to challenge the West because everything we have done, or rather failed to do in the last 22 years, has taught him that we are weak

22 years ago, a cruel war brought Vladimir Putin to power.

Since then, war has remained one of his main tools, which he has used without hesitation throughout his tenure.

Vladimir Putin exists thanks to the war and thanks to it he has prospered.

Let's hope that the war is now what finally ends with him.

In August 1999, an unknown Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister when his predecessor refused to approve a re-invasion of Chechnya.

Putin was willing to do so, he gave the army carte blanche in exchange for their unconditional support and allowed them to avenge the humiliating defeat of 1996 by blood and fire.

On the night of December 31, 1999, an aging and depressed Boris Yeltsin resigned and handed over the presidency as an offering to the newcomer.

In March 2000, after his famous promise to "pursue terrorists to the toilet," Putin was elected president.

He has remained in the post ever since, with the exception of the four years in which he was prime minister again (2008-2012).

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine, live

When the second Chechen war started, I returned to the country as a volunteer for an NGO.

In February 2000 I had dinner with Sergei Kovalev, the great Russian defender of human rights, and I asked him the question that was on everyone's mind: Who was this unknown president?

Who was Putin?

I still remember Kovalev's answer word for word: “Do you want to know who Vladimir Putin is, young man?

Vladimir Putin is a lieutenant colonel in the KGB.

And does he know what a KGB lieutenant colonel is?

Absolutely nothing".

What Kovalev meant was that a man who had never risen higher, had never even reached colonel, was a small-time agent, incapable of strategic thinking, of seeing beyond the immediate.

And while Putin, after 22 years in power, has vastly gained in stature and experience,

A Russian tank captured by Chechen fighters, in the Chechen city of Grozny on August 16, 1996. Volodya Svartsevich (REUTERS)

From a tactical point of view, however, Putin soon showed great talent, especially in exploiting weaknesses and divisions in the West.

It took him years to defeat the Chechens and install a puppet regime in government, but he succeeded.

In 2008, four months after NATO promised to open a path of accession to Ukraine and Georgia, Putin assembled his armies to carry out "maneuvers" on the Georgian border, invading the country in five days and recognizing the independence of two " separatist republics.

Western democracies sputtered vague protests and did virtually nothing.

In 2014, when the Ukrainian people, after a long and bloody revolution, toppled a pro-Russian president who had turned his back on Europe to align himself with Moscow, Putin rushed to invade and annex Crimea,

the first brazen occupation of a European territory since World War II.

When our shocked and perplexed leaders reacted by imposing sanctions, Putin launched a rampage, stirring up riots in Donbas, a Russian-speaking region of Ukraine, and using his troops covertly to crush a weak Ukrainian army and build two new “republics.” splinters in which a low-intensity war has been waged ever since.

Thus began what the French would call their

and used his troops covertly to crush a weak Ukrainian army and build two new breakaway “republics” in which low-intensity warfare has been waged ever since.

Thus began what the French would call their

and used his troops covertly to crush a weak Ukrainian army and build two new breakaway “republics” in which low-intensity warfare has been waged ever since.

Thus began what the French would call their

fuete en avant

, his flight forward.

At every step, the West condemned him and tried to punish him through soft and ineffective measures, in the vain hope of dissuading him.

And with each step, he curled up and moved a little further.

And a little more.

Physically, Putin is a small man, and growing up in post-war Leningrad must have been difficult for him.

Of course, he taught her one thing: that the smallest boy should hit first, hit hard, and keep hitting.

Thus, the big ones will learn to be afraid of him and will back off.

This is a lesson he knows by heart.

In 2020, the United States military budget was about 750,000 million dollars (about 685,076 million euros), the total budget of Europe, 378,000 million euros and Russia, 61,700 million dollars.

And yet he inspires us much more fear than we inspire him.

That is the advantage of fighting like a cornered rat and not like a chubby boy, who has been softened by diet Coke, Instagram and 80 years of peace in Europe.

Putin must have been overjoyed when the United States and Europe, eager to end the war in Donbas, quietly let Crimea disappear from the negotiating table and, in effect, allowed its illegal annexation by Russia.

He saw that the damage caused by Western sanctions, although real, was not very deep, and that he was going to be able to continue developing the army and increasing its power.

He saw that Germany, Europe's biggest economic power, was unwilling to part with its gas and the market for its cars.

He saw that he could buy European politicians, including a former German chancellor and a former French prime minister, and install them on the boards of Russian state-controlled companies.

He saw that even the countries that in theory opposed his advances continued to repeat the mantras of “diplomacy”, the “zero reset”, the “need to normalize relations”.

He saw that, whenever he pressed, the West allowed itself to be overwhelmed and servile, hoping to achieve a "deal" that never quite came: Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump, the list is long.

Putin began to assassinate his opponents, at home and abroad.

When it happened here, we screamed, but we never did anything else.

When Obama, in 2013, mercilessly ignored one of his own “red lines” in Syria and refused to intervene after Al Assad used poison gas in a residential neighborhood in Damascus, Putin took notice.

In 2015 he sent his own forces to Syria, expanded the naval base he already had in Tartus and got a new air base in Hmeimin.

For the next seven years, he used Syria as a testing ground for the army, invaluable field experience for officers that allowed him to hone tactics, coordination and equipment while bombing and massacring thousands of Syrians and aiding Al Assad. regain control of large swathes of the country.

Two citizens walk through the destroyed city of Aleppo, in Syria, on March 10, 2017. JOSEPH EID (AFP)

In January 2018, he began to directly confront Western powers in the Central African Republic, where he sent the Wagner Group mercenaries.

It is the same thing that he is currently doing in Mali, where the military junta, with Russian support, has just forced the French mission against ISIS to leave the country.

Russia is also actively involved in Libya, disrupting Western attempts to bring peace to the country and deploying forces along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, a position where it can be a direct threat to European interests.

On each of these occasions, we have protested, we have gesticulated and we have done absolutely nothing.

And each time, he has taken good note.

Ukraine represents the moment when he has finally decided to put his cards on the table.

It is clear that he thinks he is strong enough to openly challenge the West with the first unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state in Europe since 1945. And he thinks so because everything we have done, or rather failed to do in the past 22 years, has taught him that we are weak.

Putin may be a tactical genius, but he is incapable of strategic thinking.

Our leaders have refused to understand him, but he has not been interested in understanding us either.

Completely isolated for the last two years due to covid, he seems to have become increasingly paranoid and imbued with his own pan-Slavic, neo-imperialist and orthodox ideology, which began as a totally artificial creation to give a minimum veneer of legitimacy to the corrupt regime. of the.

It seems that he has bought his own propaganda about the Ukrainians.

Did he think they would welcome the Russian "liberators" from him?

That they were just going to give up?

If so, he was very wrong.

The Ukrainians are fighting and, despite their huge disadvantage in numbers and weapons, they are fighting fiercely.

teachers,

office workers, housewives, artists, students, DJs and drag queens are all taking up arms and going out to shoot Russian soldiers, many of whom are nothing more than children who have no idea what they are doing there.

Ukraine does not give up an inch of land, and it gives the impression that Putin will not be able to seize his cities without razing them, as on his day he razed Groznyi and Aleppo.

And don't think that just because Kiev is a European city, Putin will not dare to raze it to the ground.

The bombings have already started.

and it seems that Putin will not be able to seize their cities without razing them, as he once razed Groznyi and Aleppo.

And don't think that just because Kiev is a European city, Putin will not dare to raze it to the ground.

The bombings have already started.

and it seems that Putin will not be able to seize their cities without razing them, as he once razed Groznyi and Aleppo.

And don't think that just because Kiev is a European city, Putin will not dare to raze it to the ground.

The bombings have already started.

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After the initial shock, Western democracies—finally!—seem to have grasped the existential threat Putin poses to the postwar world order, Europe, and our way of life that he so despises.

Devastating sanctions are being approved, despite the economic cost they are going to have for us.

Weapons have already started arriving in Ukraine.

Germany seems to have realized overnight that her security can no longer depend on the kindness of others and that she needs a real, functioning army of her own.

Russia is becoming overwhelmingly isolated in the international community, and both its economy and its capabilities are going to suffer considerably.

But this is not enough.

As long as Putin remains in power, he will continue down this path, pushing ever harder and doing as much damage as he can.

Because he despises the West and because his power is based exclusively on violence: not only the threat, but its systematic use.

It's the only behavior he knows.

Can we truly believe that his nuclear threat is nothing more than a bluff?

Can we afford it?

As long as he rules Russia, no one will be safe.

No one.

The only way out of this crisis is to make Putin's failure in Ukraine so disastrous for Russia and its legitimate interests that his own ruling class has no choice but to remove him.

And in that sense much more could be done.

It seemed that the priority of our governments was to punish the Russian oligarchs, but they have to understand that Putin despises them and does not give a damn about their opinions and their assets;

he considers them mere gold mines that he can exploit when it suits him.

Western sanctions must target the people who put Putin's decisions into practice: those in charge of the administrative and security apparatus.

Not only the few dozen people who are already in the crosshairs, but the thousands of second-level officials of the Presidential Administration,

the military and security services.

These people are not billionaires, but they are billionaires and they have a lot to lose.

Let's ruin the lives of these several thousand people, and let them judge who is to blame.

That their mansions in England and Spain be seized, that vacations be banned in Courchevel and Sardinia, that their children be unceremoniously expelled from Harvard, Yale and Oxford, so that they have to stay in Russia, with no way out and no imported goods where to spend your stolen money.