What struck me about Putin's speech was his unbridled anger. This is a guy who is normally able to control his emotions, but he seemed to regard Ukraine as an ungrateful child, having the audacity to claim a cultural heritage of her own. In his addled mind, whatever Ukraine had was given to it by the Soviet Union, including Crimea, and the country had no right to think differently. It didn't matter that he messed up a little bit in his telling. Crimea wasn't "given" to Ukraine until 1954, long after Lenin had been embalmed and put on display in Red Square.
Even more surreal was the way in which this speech was given. It was apparently supposed to be a discussion, but after rambling for over an hour, his ministers were at a loss of words as to what to offer in response, other than their agreement. Sadly, one minister stammered a bit, unable to properly express what exactly Putin wanted him to say, so Vlad coached him from behind his white desk, as the speaker stood 20 meters away in the opulent white hall of the Kremlin. If there was any doubt Putin wanted Russia to return to the Soviet days, it could be dismissed after this presentation. Stalin couldn't have controlled his ministers any better.
There had been talk of dissent in the ranks before the speech. There was none afterward. Even the loquacious Dmitri Peskov seemed at a loss for words the day after, not quite sure himself what President Putin meant when it came to the boundaries of the newly created states of Donetsk and Luhansk, other than they now existed.
Since no major confrontation has yet taken place, the West has been slow to impose sanctions, targeting the usual suspects while giving themselves some room to maneuver in negotiations, which apparently will still take place between US Secretary of State Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov this week. But, Biden didn't mince words either in his speech, calling out Putin's many lies, but leaving the door open for a peaceful resolution to this crisis.
Not surprisingly, the Donald chose to come down on the side of Putin, calling him a real genius, and wondering if the Russian strongman has a few "peacekeepers" to spare for the southern border of the US. Good thing Trump is no longer president. It reminds me a bit of the president that Putin installed in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution had run its course. Viktor Yanukovych didn't last long, four years, and was ignobly forced to retreat to Russia, where he has hung out since as a friend of Putin, hoping that one day he might be reinstalled as president.
What Putin doesn't seem to realize is that all Ukraine ever wanted was economic prosperity. It never really sought to disassociate itself culturally from Russia. People just wanted greater opportunities, especially when they saw how well their fellow Eastern European neighbors were doing after joining the EU en masse in 2004. It was only after Putin put his hammer down, like the Norse God Thor, stripping Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, and instigating a fatricidal war in the Donbas, that Ukrainians no longer wanted any part of Putin's Russia. A native language long regarded as a peasant language now became a matter of pride.
Additionally, Ukraine sought to restore the Patriarchate of Kyiv in 2019, which Putin regards as particularly offensive, even going so far as to say Ukraine has no religious or cultural identity of its own. Needless to say, that isn't true. Long before Ivan conquered the heartland of Old Rus and established the Russian Empire as we know it, Kyiv had a patriarchate and a culture of its own. Unfortunately, no representative of Ukraine was afforded the opportunity to rebut Putin personally, but Ukrainian President Zelensky responded tersely the next day.
It's hard to say how far Putin will go. Right now, he just seems to be extending his southwestern flank into rebel-occupied territories and hoping that the West takes pause of his actions. However, most pundits believe it is only a matter of time before he crosses the red line established by the infamous Minsk agreement. At that point, we will see a full-fledged war in Ukraine that will force the West to act, no longer able to simply issue threats.
In my wild imagination, I saw NATO forces raining down missiles on the Russian forces, blowing out the bridge to Crimea and laying siege to the port, effectively cutting off the assault and allowing Ukrainian forces to mop up the Russian forces stranded in their country. However, this would only lead to WWIII, much in the same way the German invasion of Poland led to WWII. While I well imagine NATO would prevail, it would do so at a great cost in lives throughout Eastern Europe, and this is something Western leaders are assiduously trying to avoid. For that matter, I don't think Russians want to see such a war either.
Putin seems to be very much on his own in this regard. He was able to extort support from his ministers, and I'm sure has hardliners like Zhirinovsky on his side, but most Russians see Ukrainians as their brothers and sisters, not their enemies, and such a brazen act would not go down well in Russia.
Mostly, Putin is using the threat of war to hide his own massive shortcomings: a country ravaged by COVID that is reporting a staggering 170,000 new cases per day, and an economy that has failed to lift the lives of the average Russian to even that of his fellow Ukrainian. He clings to power like a desperate man, having to catch his breathe several times during his overlong harangue. Hardly the "real genius" that the Donald applauds. What we saw Monday night is a would-be emperor laid bare, much the same way Yanukovych was when he fled Kyiv, whose nude portrait was subsequently put up for auction at Saatchi Art. As the Donald would say, sad.
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