Its Ukraine invasion was destined to be a geopolitical catastrophe for Russia’s interests but
and his circle were probably right to see Ukraine’s growing attachment to the West, its development as a democratic, market-based economy under a rule of law, as a threat to their own survival.
The Putin regime has been a friend to the Russian people and their interests in about the same way the Hitler regime was a friend to German interests. The damage inflicted has been astonishing.
In fact, the war makes sense only as a play to keep Mr. Putin in power, first by delivering an easy and popular victory; when that didn’t work, by using the failed war to militarize society and ban opponents.
The ironies are rich for the self-proclaimed realists, who keep insisting Western blundering forced Russia into war to defend its objective interests.
Those objective interests consisted of, until Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine, 60,000 Russian soldiers still being alive; those interests consisted of NATO being a sleepy and unaggressive alliance, without Sweden and Finland.
Those objective Russian interests consisted of Ukraine itself being better known for corruption than a ferocious fighting spirit, and having an aging Soviet military rather than a modern Western one.
After a year of fighting, Hitler and Napoleon are still nowhere in sight. The big threat to Russia’s geographical and state survival turns out to come from Mr. Putin himself.
Igor Girkin,
the Russian nationalist provocateur who helped start the war in 2014, is slightly redeemed by bestowing on Mr. Putin the sarcastic title of Russia’s “unique strategic advantage.”
After a year of war, despite accusations to the contrary, the West actually has a strategy: It’s focused on making Mr. Putin own the failure of his war until the temperature in Moscow becomes too hot for him and his allies and they change course.
Not without argument and often suboptimally, NATO has avoided visiting the war directly on Russian soil, and has limited the weapons provided to Ukraine to do so, to avoid giving substance to Mr. Putin’s claim that war was forced on him or that Russia itself is under threat.
The endgame is implicitly aimed at Mr. Putin and his relationship with his body politic. The West turns on its head last century’s…
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