Putin weighs next moves after recognizing rebels
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised the stakes in the Ukraine standoff by recognizing the independence of rebel regions in the country’s east, and a key question now is whether he will stop at that or try to move deeper into Ukraine.
Putin signaled his readiness to up the ante in an hourlong address to the nation that cast Ukraine as an artificial construct, a U.S. “puppet” that has “robbed” Russia of historical lands lost in the Soviet collapse. But at the same time, the Russian leader appeared to keep the door open for diplomacy if the West agrees to Moscow’s security demands.
Russia wants the U.S. and its allies to keep Ukraine and other ex-soviet nations from joining NATO, halt weapons deployments there and roll back alliance forces in Eastern Europe — demands the West has dismissed as nonstarters.
On Tuesday, Putin offered a streamlined version of his top demands, saying Ukraine should renounce its bid to join NATO, partially demilitarize and recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Given NATO’S position to keep an open door to potential new members, Putin said, one way out of the impasse would be for Ukraine to drop its plans to join the alliance and adopt a non-aligned, neutral status.
Putin, who quickly received permission from the Kremlin-controlled parliament to use military force in Ukraine, also insisted he has not yet sent troops into the rebel regions, despite Western leaders’ claim to the contrary.
Asked how far Russian troops could push if sent to the rebel east, Putin responded coyly that “it’s impossible to forecast a specific pattern of action — it will depend on a concrete situation as it takes shape on the ground.”
The U.S. and its allies have responded to Moscow’s latest move with new sanctions and threatened even more crippling penalties in case of an all-out invasion, including tough financial restrictions and draconian bans on technology imports. But Putin shrugged off the threats and said Washington would inevitably ramp up sanctions anyway to contain Russia.
“Putin has grown tougher, more aggressive,” said Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, explaining that Putin could ponder a future offensive to capture territories in southern Ukraine all the way to the Black Sea port Odessa but won’t rush it.
Putin sees himself as a “great collector of Russian lands” a view that drives him to take brazen steps that would harm national interests, Oreshkin added.
The Russian leader’s no-holds-barred approach comes as Russia has amassed over 150,000 troops that surround Ukraine on three sides in what the U.S. sees as a sign of an imminent invasion.
In a long rant, Putin scathingly described Ukraine as a creation of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin and other Communist leaders of the Soviet Union that unfairly included big swaths of land that once belonged to Russia. He derided Ukraine’s effort to shed the Soviet-era legacy in the “decommunization” effort, and said sarcastically that the country should be named after Lenin.
“We are ready to show you what the real decommunization would mean for Ukraine,” Putin added ominously in an apparent signal of his readiness to level new land claims.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also openly questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. He said Tuesday those principles are only valid in relation to governments that represent entire nations and contended that the “Ukrainian regime” falls short of that.