Paying the price for Putin’s foolish pride
Conducting an orderly retreat is the hardest thing to do not only in war but also in politics, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is learning.
His desire to avoid humiliation gets in the way of rapid disengagement from a losing battle, which was why he waited until two days before Monday’s Ukrainian presidential election to say that he would respect the result. And even then he said ‘‘respect’’, not ‘‘recognise’’.
The Ukrainian election went well. Petro Poroshenko, a minorleague oligarch with business interests in Russia, won convincingly in the first round, and 60 per cent of voters showed up at the polls. Even in Donetsk province, where most city centres are occupied by separatist gunmen, seven of 12 district electoral commissions were able to operate normally. It’s a good start on stabilising the country.
So why didn’t Putin say ‘‘recognise’’, when that is clearly what he will have to do in the end if Russia and Ukraine are to have peaceful relations? Why prolong the uncertainty about his intentions in the West, where the belief that he is an ‘‘expansionist’’ bent on recreating the Russian/ Soviet empire takes deeper root with each passing day?
The answer is pride – and Russia will pay a significant price for Putin’s pride.
Last week Prince Charles enlivened his royal tour of Canada by telling an elderly Polish immigrant that Hitler’s relentless take-over of European countries in the 1930s was ‘‘not unlike what Putin is doing now’’. Charles is well known for saying silly things, but what he said in Canada sounded quite sensible to many people in the West. That’s a big problem for Putin.
Putin’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine, though completely illegal, was not the first step in a plan for world conquest. Russia is a relatively poor country of only 140 million people.
But it is a regrettable fact of life that the Hitler analogy has a powerful grip on the popular imagination throughout Europe and North America, and Putin’s aimless belligerence has been setting him up in Western minds as the next Hitler.
He was very cross when his tame Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by protesters after he obeyed Putin’s demand to break off trade talks with the European Union. Putin punished Ukraine by annexing Crimea, and started doing some heavy breathing about Ukraine’s eastern provinces as well.
He encouraged pro-Russian gunmen to seize government buildings in eastern Ukraine, and warned that he might intervene militarily if the Ukrainian Government used force against them. He moved 40,000 troops up to Ukraine’s eastern border on ‘‘exercises’’.
It was quite pointless, since he could neither annex the eastern provinces nor remove the government without actually invading, but he was very cross.
After three months, the damage to Putin’s and Russia’s image was starting to pile up.
Simple-minded people like Prince Charles were talking about a new Hitler. Terrified Poles, Estonians and other Eastern Europeans who used to live under the Soviet yoke feared that they might be next, and demanded Nato troops on their soil.
Clever people in the Western military-industrial complexes saw an opportunity to sell more of their wares.
In early May, Putin sobered up and called off the fright campaign. He said the Ukrainian election could be a move ‘‘in the right direction’’.
He publicly urged the proRussian gunmen in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces to postpone a planned referendum on union with Russia. He even said he was withdrawing his troops from Ukraine’s borders. But he didn’t really withdraw the troops. He didn’t use his influence to force the separatist gunmen in eastern Ukraine to postpone their referendum, and he didn’t actually say that he would recognise the Ukrainian election as legitimate.
Putin wanted to walk away from the game, but it would have been too embarrassing to do a complete about-face. So he left the pot of fear and suspicion boiling for another three weeks.
Finally, only two days before the Ukranian election, Putin said he would ‘‘respect’’ the result, and his tanks started to pull back from Ukraine’s border. Too damned late. There won’t be any more Western sanctions against Russia, but Putin has managed to resurrect the image of Russia as a mortal threat to its neighbours. It will not lie down again soon.
European defence budgets will stop falling, and the integration of the armed forces of the various new Nato members in Eastern Europe will accelerate. Leadingedge technologies like missile defence will get more funding in the United States. Foreign investment in Russia is already declining, and the countries of the EU will move heaven and earth to cut their dependence on Russian gas exports.
Putin has already turned to China as a new customer for Russian gas, but it will never pay as well as Europe did. He used to be able to play the Europeans and the Chinese off against each other, but that game is over. Nato sees him as a wild card at best, and at worst a real threat. The master strategist has lost his touch.