Russia vs the West: Is Putin winning?

PARIS: Former US President George W Bush believed he had a “sense of his soul”. British ex-premier Tony Blair thought he deserved a place at the “top table”. And French President Emmanuel Macron invited him for hours of talks at his official holiday residence. For much of President Vladimir Putin’s two-and-a-half decades in power, Western leaders thought they understood the strategy of the Kremlin leader and argued that Russia merited a place as an international partner.

But that approach was blown apart two years ago on February 24, 2022, when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, consigning to a distant past images such as that of the smiling Russian leader bounding up the steps of Macron’s Mediterranean Fort de Bregancon residence in August 2019 bearing flowers for the French leader’s wife Brigitte. While Putin failed in his initial aim of taking key Ukrainian cities in a lightning offensive that first winter, he now appears increasingly content, seeing off Ukraine’s much-anticipated summer 2023 counter-offensive and controlling key territories in the south and east of the country.

In a symbolic gain for Moscow, the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian troops last week after months of battle. And in a devastating blow to the Russian opposition, Putin’s top critic Alexei Navalny died in his Arctic prison last week. His team says he was murdered. “It’s true to say that President Putin is confident that he can outlast the West and so it’s incumbent on us to show the resolve to prove him wrong,” said a senior Western official, asking not to be named.