What does Putin achieve in the Great War? Why the event should understand and recognize its obsession with Ukraine - dictator biographer

Video Day Short also explains why it is important to develop a single understanding of the motives of the Russian dictator in the war against Ukraine for the most effective confrontation between Putin in the Western countries. HB gives a complete translation of his new column. *** Almost six months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the West, there are still many differences regarding the motives of Vladimir Putin. It is not only a matter of academic interest.

If we cannot agree on why Putin decided to invade Ukraine and what he wants to achieve, we will not be able to determine what the victory or defeat of each side will be, as well as outline the possible endshpil. At some point, like all wars, the current conflict will end. Geography condemns Ukraine and Russia to live with each other, and not change it. In the end, they will have to find modus vivendi.

This is also true of Europe and Russia, although they can take decades before the loss has been deprived of the damage. Why did Putin put so much on such a risky pranks that at best bring him a shaky control over the destroyed lands? At first they said that he was not full of mind - "crazy", as the Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom Ben Wallace said. We have seen Putin reads the heads of defense structures, squeezing at the other end of the six -meter table.

However, shortly afterwards, the same officials were shown already sitting next to him. The long table was a theatrical effect - the Putin version of the Nixon "Theory of Crazy", the purpose of which is to show it so irrational that everything is possible, even a nuclear war.

Subsequently, Western officials claimed that Putin was scared of the prospect of democratic Ukraine near the borders of Russia, which threatened the foundations of his power, demonstrating to the Russians that they could live differently. At first glance, it seemed plausible. Putin has hated "Colored Revolutions", which since 2003 led to a change in regimes in several states of the former Soviet bloc.

However, the attractiveness of Ukraine as a model is limited-due to deeply rooted corruption, the lack of the rule of law and the endurance of millionaire oligarchs by disproportionate power. If this is destined to change, the Russian intelligentsia can pay attention, but most Russians - those who feed on state propaganda and are Putin's political base - to spit. The invasion was also provided as a direct imperial seizure of land.

The cursory mention of Peter the first in early summer was perceived as a confirmation that Putin would like to restore the Russian Empire, and if not, the USSR. In other cases, prudent people are mostly from Eastern Europe, but not only decided that Ukraine is just the first step. "I will not be surprised," the former Swedish minister told me last week, "if after a few years Estonia and Latvia will be next in line.

" Given that Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century", this may seem logical. But he also said: “He who does not regret the collapse of the USSR has no heart. And the one who wants to recover in his former form has no head.

" Even if left aside the fact that even modest successes in Ukraine are difficult to Russian, the attack on the Baltic States or Poland would have led them to a direct conflict with NATO - which is the last thing Moscow wants. (like the event). In fact, the Putin invasion is due to other considerations. It was stolen in Ukraine long before he came to power. Back in 1994, as the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, he expressed his indignation that Crimea was "annexed" to Ukraine.

"Russia won the Crimea in the Turks!" - he said in the same year the French diplomat, referring to the war between the Ottoman and Russian empires in the 18th century. What made his outlook truly toxic is the prospect of Ukraine's full membership in NATO, outlined at the 2008 Alliance summit.

The current CIA leader Bill Burns, who worked as a US Ambassador in Moscow in those years, then wrote in a secret dispatch in the White House: “Ukraine's accession to NATO is the most striking of all red lines for the Russian elite (not only for Putin).

For more than two and a half years of my conversations with key Russian players, from the Ambals in the Kremlin's dark corners to Putin's most different liberal critics, I have not met anyone else who would consider Ukraine in NATO as a direct challenge to Russia's interests . . . Current Russia will answer. " Changing each other, the administrations of US presidents ignored Burns's warnings, and Putin answered.

In 2014, he annexed Crimea; Then the separatist rebellion in the Donbass was imprisoned; Finally, in February 2022, he began a brutal unannounced war to conquer Ukraine. NATO expansion was only the tip of the iceberg. In two decades, Putin has accumulated many other images to the West. By the end of 2020, when the planning of a new attack on Kyiv began, the circle was closed. The young Russian leader who once so struck Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who supported George Bush Jr.

after September 11 and insisted that Russia should be with Europe and the Western world, gradually turned into a merciless opponent, convinced that the United States and the United States and Their allies are allegedly determined to "kneel Russia. " Western politicians reject views such as paranoid. However, the problem is not in the intentions of the West, but in how they are interpreted by the Kremlin.

Putin's goal is not only to "neutralize the Kiev regime", but also to show that NATO is powerless to stop it. If it exterminates the Ukrainian culture in Russia -occupied territories, it is not a side damage for him, but a bonus. Whether he succeeds in the battlefield, which, in turn, depends on the degree of western support during the fall and winter, when the reduction of energy supply and rapid increase in the cost of life can put Western partners of Ukraine in a difficult situation.

Moscow does not need to achieve so much so that Putin can claim victory. Russia is enough to control the entire Donbas and the Land Bridge in the Crimea. Undoubtedly he would like even more. If Russian troops seize Odessa and the Black Sea coast adjacent to it, it will make Ukraine in vain. But even more modest successes would show the limits of US power. It is possible that Ukraine will be able to prevent it with firm support. But even here the situation is far from certainty.