Putin: a nuclear threat to the world and Ukraine?
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(CNN) --
Millions of lives could be destroyed to satiate Vladimir Putin's Cold War obsession.
Less than three weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine--a historic outrage 30 years in the making--the world is staring in horror at the barbarity, human tragedy, appalling destruction and global repercussions caused by the orders of a man.
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The fate of Ukraine clearly underscores that even 20 years into the 21st century and despite promises from the world to learn from history, a lone autocrat who has ruthlessly designed a political system to eliminate dissent and reality itself has the power of causing immeasurable human loss and misery.
Putin embodies Russian ultranationalism, says analyst 1:19
Putin's apparent willingness to bomb Ukraine into submission and his clearly gratuitous targeting of innocent civilians who he insists are Russian relatives mean the humanitarian disaster is probably just beginning.
More than a million refugees have already fled their homes, according to the United Nations.
Millions more are likely to follow, as family lives, jobs and communities are shattered.
That is without the thousands of civilians who are sure to die in a protracted Russian blitzkrieg.
While there is speculation about Putin's goals and moods, and great public interest in the courage of the Ukrainians who vow to resist the invasion, it is critical that the world properly understand the basic reality of the apparent war crimes that are now being happening in Ukraine.
In a Kyiv suburb on Sunday, two young children and two adults were wiped out by Russian bombardment as they tried to flee.
"A family died... in front of my eyes," said Oleksandr Markushyn, mayor of Irpin.
Meanwhile, the dead lay unburied in the smoldering remains of Kharkiv, a city of 1.5 million people that was under prolonged bombardment that served as a warning of Kyiv's likely fate.
Other Ukrainians were trapped by the shocking Russian bombardment of humanitarian corridors.
Photos and videos of Ukrainian men loading their families onto evacuation trains and going out to fight are reliving the trauma of a continent's blood-soaked history.
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If the harrowing video from Ukraine were in black and white, it would be easy to mistake it for a historical newsreel from World War II, the last time a sovereign nation inflicted similar scenes of devastation and cruelty on another in Europe.
And it all flows from the mind of a Russian president apparently motivated by his own historical scars as a KGB officer in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell.
Putin, seeking to redraw the post-Cold War map of Europe, has now crafted the counterpoint to those joyous scenes three decades later in his relentless bombing raids designed to revive Russia as a superpower.
Ukraine's future looks increasingly bleak
The events of a bloody weekend underline that, despite the impressive escalation of sanctions by the West that are strangling the Russian economy and the courage of Ukrainian civilians who are resisting and the pleas of their president, Ukraine's future is gloomy, as Putin has raised questions about its continued existence as a nation state.
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The world condemns Putin's war
The colossal sanctions from the West could eventually stir up enough opposition inside Russia, where citizens are struggling under a collapsing economy, to topple Putin.
Arms shipments to Ukraine from the West will certainly increase the cost of the invasion and possible occupation for Moscow's forces.
This is what the Russian media shows about the war with Ukraine 3:40
But the reality that the West will not intervene directly to avoid triggering an escalation with Russia that could trigger a nuclear exchange gives Putin an advantage and deepens the Ukraine tragedy.
Sooner or later, the outside world may find itself witnessing a massacre that it couldn't prevent.
This dire possibility was raised in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's latest harrowing appeal for help on Sunday.
"We are human, and it is your humanitarian duty to protect us, to protect civilians, and you can," Zelensky told the world.
"If they don't, if they don't at least give us planes so we can defend ourselves, that one conclusion remains: they also want us to be killed very slowly."
Putin continues to dictate events
As the US talks with Poland about a plan to send its Russian-made warplanes to Ukraine and a full embargo on Russian oil exports is discussed, the West is close to reaching the limit of what can be done without unleashing a direct conflict with Putin.
Thus, US messages begin to emphasize the magnitude of what has already been done to help.
That includes the Western sanctions that have returned the Russian economy to the bleakness of the Soviet era and the stockpiles of anti-tank and anti-aircraft rockets dumped on Ukraine in the West's new proxy war with Russia.
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As Americans cursed Putin over the weekend with gasoline surging above $4 a gallon in some states due to an invasion-shattered oil market, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on the "State of the Union" CNN that the savagery of the Russian leader was still dictating events.
"Vladimir Putin has, unfortunately, the ability -- with the sheer human resources that he has in Ukraine and the superiority that he has -- the ability to keep grinding things out, against incredibly resilient and brave Ukrainians," he told Jake Tapper.
Speaking from Moldova, a US non-NATO ally who fears he could be next in Putin's line of fire, Blinken seemed to be looking to a post-invasion future in which a Western-backed Ukrainian resistance could make Putin's troops pay a heavy price.
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"I think we have to be prepared for this to last for some time. But simply winning a battle is not winning the war. Taking a city does not mean that you are taking the hearts and minds of the Ukrainian people," Blinken said.
“On the contrary, he is destined to lose.
The Ukrainian people have shown that they will not allow themselves to be subjugated by Vladimir Putin or the Russian government."
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, also emphasized the severity of Western sanctions, but noted that Zelensky's request for immediate EU membership was unlikely to be rushed.
"No one doubts that these brave Ukrainian people and President Zelensky's outstanding leadership, all fighting for our common values, belong to our European family," von der Leyen told Tapper.
"And with the request, President Zelensky launched a process. This process will take some time."
Putin's Personal Crusade
The way Putin single-handedly pushed his country into war, crushed domestic dissent and berated seemingly bewildered national security advisers on television has underscored how much of the Ukraine war is a personal crusade.
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His unhinged and ahistorical speeches about the war -- including his false claims that he is trying to de-Nazify Ukraine -- have raised concerns about whether a leader once seen as a ruthless and cold broker for Russia's national interests has turned slipped into a parallel mental reality.
That, along with nuclear threats from him, has caused concern about how far a desperate Russian leader might go, effectively making his own political survival dependent on a war that is turning into a quagmire.
“Now you are either involved in a conflict where you will either win an expensive military victory, followed by an expensive occupation that you cannot afford, or you will be caught in a long-term military quagmire while simultaneously facing a second front, which is a economy in free fall in their own country,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said on “State of the Union.”
These maps explain why Putin invades Ukraine 2:47
"So the combination of these two things, I think, puts us in a very dangerous place. And that is that he is going to have to do something, some escalation, some amplification of this crisis, to restore the strategic balance, in his view, with the West." And I worry about what those things could be."
So far, in the two and a half weeks since the invasion, Putin has done nothing but escalate, despite a calm Western reaction to his nuclear provocations.
It is unclear how he would react to the possibility that Poland or Romania could provide fighter jets to Ukraine, a step that appears to bring two former Warsaw Pact nations closer to indirect conflict with Russia.
The history of the invasion, however, shows that however much pain the new Western steps may inflict, they are unlikely to stop Putin from voicing his obsession that Ukraine should never be allowed to join the West, even if it means blow her and her people to pieces.
As Zelensky said in a new video message on Sunday night, "The aggressor's audacity is a clear signal to the West that the sanctions imposed against Russia are not enough."
Vladimir Putin
