Russia vs West: is Putin winning?

CONFIDENT: STRATEGIC DEFEAT OF MOSCOW ‘IMPOSSIBLE’ We must resolve to prove him wrong – senior official from a Western country.

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 holiday residence.

For much of President Vladimir Putin’s two and a half decades in power, Western leaders believed 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 on February 24, 2022, when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, consigning to a distance 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 Frenchman’s wife.

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 summer 2023 counteroffensive and controlling key territories in the south and east of the country.

“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 official from a Western country, asking not to be named.

Putin declared in December that Ukraine “does not have a future” and – in an interview broadcast on Thursday with right-wing US talk show host Tucker Carlson – that a strategic defeat of Russia is “impossible”.

Western leaders insisted that defeating Russia in its war on Ukraine is the only option, with Macron saying last month that Europe’s priority must be to “not let Russia win”. Analysts say only drastically ramped up Western support for Ukraine can change the momentum.