Fear causes significant distortions in our projection of the image of the enemy. For example, from Putin Many things can be said with meaning: he is a man without mercy, with little concern for the lives of others, obsessed with power, little friend of dissension and for whom the end justifies any means.
Another thing is that it is the monster that controls everything from a supernatural intelligence and whose word is truth revealed from Bolgorod to Kamchatka. On June 17, coinciding with the proposal in kyiv of Emmanuel Macron, Mario Draghi and Olaf Scholz to speed up Ukraine’s accession procedures to the European Union, Vladimir Putin, perhaps surprised by the news, declared the following: “We are not in the least concerned. The European Union is not a military organization like NATO, and our neighbors are very free to choose their trade alliances. It is in our interest that they enjoy the greatest possible prosperity.”
These words by Putin at the annual summit of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum They went a bit unnoticed. Perhaps they seemed too pretty to be true.
[Ucrania se retira de Severodonetsk y entrega una zona clave del Donbás al Ejército ruso]
Perhaps they showed a man too sensible for our preconceived idea of him. Indeed, to Russia It does not have to matter that Ukraine enters the European Union de facto when it already has all its economic and political support.
It doesn’t change your situation at all. The European Union it has no military agreements between its members and, apart from that, if someone offers to do the dirty work in the post-war period, of course Putin will not only not care, but should thank them.
We know, because you have repeated it a thousand times, that Russia’s aspirations for Ukraine do not end with the donbas as they did not end up in Crimea at the time. Russia wants its neighbor to simmer.
Go snatching territory from which to continue a new offensive after enough years. Even if he succeeds in closing his hold on Donetsk and Lugansk, It is unlikely, almost unthinkable, that Putin will not once again use the excuse of “denazification” and the insult to Russian-speakers to launch a new attack in a reasonable time.
The objectives to be resumed
When the objectives of the “special military operation” had to be reassessed and adjusted to reality, Russia announced its intention to take Donbas and create a corridor to Transnistria. More than two months later, they are still trying the first.
Things are going relatively well for them in the last days, but wars are not linear. As for the “corridor”, the story is different.
Ukraine continues to control part of Zaporizhia, is ten kilometers from the capital of Kherson and maintains the entire Odessa region, bordering Moldova. There is very little chance of moving the entire Russian military force from Donbas to the Kherson-Mikolaiv-Odessa front.
Much less considering that US HIMARS are already on Ukrainian territory and can attack troop movements, trucks and tanks from eighty kilometers away. A reset units of that magnitude would take months and could only happen in the context of a ceasefire in the area, something that Ukraine smells and does not want to concede.
Now, sooner or later, in as many years as it takes, Putin will come back and want the rest of the Ukraine that, historically or ethnically, he considers his: Zaporizhia, Dnipro, northern Kherson, Odessa…and, of course, Kharkiv, the largest Russian-speaking city in Ukraine and already a main target frustrated in the first offensive. Virtually all of these territories are badly damaged by artillery and bombing and require very expensive reconstruction.
The European Union seen as a liberating check
That is where the European Union comes in, for Putin. That reconstruction cannot be done Ukraine on your own.
He has no means. Russia, for its part, even after a possible armisticeIt would be enough to make the occupied territory habitable again.
If the European Union admits Ukraine to its fold, it would be forced to face remodeling expenses that neither Ukraine nor Russia can afford. With the european fundswith indirect aid, whatever, the reconstruction of Odessa, Kherson, Mikolaiv, Kharkov, even the outskirts of kyiv and the bombed areas around Lviv will be paid by Brussels.
Ideal so that, years later, Russia has an efficient, new and rehabilitated country to try to invade again. While the NATO don’t put your missiles there -and the Kremlin will take care of shaking up the nuclear scarecrow to avoid it-, everything looks like honey on flakes. It looked like that to Putin on June 17, nine days ago, and it certainly still looks like that because, effectively, the entry of the European Union into Ukraine does not harm Russia at all and can potentially be of great help.
Now, another thing is kremlin. Putin repeated on a couple of occasions that what he was expressing in St. Petersburg was “his opinion of him.”
Let’s grant that Putin’s opinion is not just any opinion in Russia. Let us also grant that the messages from the Russian administration are sometimes confusing, to say the least. A week after his leader was perfectly calm about Ukraine’s entry into the European Union, the Russian ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir A. Chizhovhas considered that said entry was a provocation and a way for the “Anglo-Saxon front” to use Brussels as a screen against Russia.
Change of idea
What seemed irrelevant to Putin, even good news, now seems offensive to Russia. It is also true that absolutely everything seems to be an offense to Russia because how can you explain it to your public opinion that you have sent tens of thousands of your best young men to the slaughterhouse needlessly.
It is most likely that, once again, we are facing a propaganda attack. The “monster” Putin does not care about the European Union and all the bills that are paid to Ukraine, better for everyone.
Now, he was probably rash in declaring it so bluntly. Because he is human, because you are wrong and because it does not always measure each act or word in detail.
Then, in the Kremlin, they have changed the message because it better suits the complaining Russian public position. What’s important?
No one is going to lift a finger against Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. In fact, it is likely that since Moscow is seen as a huge European mistake: admitting an unstable partner in its internal politics, threatened by a superpower and whose economy is in ruins.
Beyond moral satisfaction, we Europeans will get little out of this alliance. The decision of the 27 to support the requests of Ukraine and moldova “if they meet the requirements” does not really add anything new to the conflict. Sooner or later, the EU itself will have to face its own dilemma: admit that these requirements are almost impossible to meet and still go ahead, or wait for Ukraine to get out of the media spotlight to sweep all these declarations and commitments under the rug.
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