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As talks over the war in Ukraine sparked fever and fears of invasion grew last week, a world leader remained firmly on the battle: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
No, Putin was not on vacation. The Kremlin leader made few public comments about an international crisis that had reached a ‘boil’.
Last Wednesday, the United States and NATO provided written responses to Russian security demands, offering Moscow what US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described as a diplomatic departure from a dangerous escalation path to war.
And then, nothing. On Thursday, Putin spent the day visiting the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery on the anniversary of the lifting of the Leningrad Siege, the Soviet-era name for St. Petersburg, laying flowers at a mass grave containing the remains of his older brother. , Victor, who died as a baby during the blockade.
On Friday, Putin chaired a national security meeting. But again, the Kremlin published a brief excerpt of Putin discussing a new foreign policy document.
While Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov offered some brief assessments of the letter, saying the Russians had “no positive reaction” to the main point of the obstacle, the Kremlin’s call for a halt to further NATO expansion to the East while it was it is clear that the world will have to wait for a more complete response from Putin.
And Putin can wait. While Western leaders have worked on the crisis in Ukraine, Putin is a man who faces very little internal political pressure.
His political opposition has been sidelined or put in jail, he has a delicate state media and should not think about any re-election campaign in the near future. He should not consult an undisciplined parliament on foreign affairs. That makes him the only man making decisions for Russia.
On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron made a phone call to Putin about the Ukraine crisis. Putin told Macron that “he was the only one with whom he could have such a deep discussion.”
The summary of the Kremlin’s call signaled Putin’s dissatisfaction with the US and NATO responses, saying that “they did not take into account Russia’s fundamental concerns such as preventing NATO enlargement, refusing to deploy weapons systems near the Russian border.” ”.
State Department officials said Monday they had “received a written message from Russia,” but on Tuesday the Kremlin said there had been a “mix” on the issue, insisting that Russia had not yet sent its response. main ”United States.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the message from Russia “is still being prepared”.
Macron, who is preparing for a presidential campaign, was not the only one who dealt with the crisis.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a special effort to engage Putin, inviting the Russian president to attend a summit and offering to mediate between Russia and Ukraine.
The Kremlin said Putin had agreed, depending on the resolution of the “epidemiological situation”, and no date had been set, although Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters Thursday that he had been informed by the Kremlin that it would happen after Putin returns from Beijing Olympics starting on February 4th.
So he holds Putin all the cards? Will he spend his time during the Winter Olympics, where he will be a guest of Chinese President Xi Jinping? Is he a tactical expert, or a weak strategist?
Anticipating Putin’s master plan may be fun for experts, but the Russian president has made his intentions very clear for a very long time.
There is no need to read Putin’s mind. His words speak for themselves.
In 2007, Putin filed his main grievances at the Munich Security Forum. His argument? The expansion of the NATO alliance to include former members of the Warsaw Pact and the Baltic states was an act of aggression against Russia.
“I think it is clear that NATO enlargement has nothing to do with modernizing the Alliance itself or ensuring security in Europe,” he said.
“On the contrary, it is a serious provocation that lowers the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: “Against whom is this expansion aimed?”
And then there was the stationing of U.S. missile defense assets in Europe. In Putin’s view, the missile defense, which Washington described as a confrontation with rogue states such as Iran and North Korea, was in fact designed to lower Russia’s nuclear deterrent.
Worse, Putin said: “I am convinced that historians of the future will not describe our conference as a conference in which the Second Cold War was declared.”
Called “Cold War Lite” or “Cold War 2.0”, that conflict has gradually gained momentum since then, through successive crises: the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the war in the Donbas; the Kremlin’s intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015; Russian interference in the 2016 US elections; Salisbury poisonings 2018 in England and so on.
Putin also constructed a justification for the summer war when he published a 5,000-word historical essay, arguing essentially that Ukrainians and Russians were one nation. Independent Ukraine, according to him, was an “artificial division” of the two peoples and therefore not a real state.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov said Putin and his government “will not rush to trial.”
Now that the Second Cold War is threatening to turn into a very hot war, the world must wait to see if Putin’s next move signals a turnaround in global affairs.
Source: CNN
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