Western propaganda #2

Putin is trapped and desperate. Will his friends in the west rescue him?

Simon Tisdall

Russia’s leader and his sympathisers could use old conflicts to distract attention from Ukraine and weaken European unity
Sun 28 Aug 2022 10.00 BST

‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” So wrote American author Henry David Thoreau in 1854. It’s a fate that is rapidly overtaking Vladimir Putin as he struggles to escape the disastrous trap he set for himself in Ukraine.

Russia’s president keeps understandably schtum about his “special military operation”. But indefinite stalemate is not what he expected. He didn’t expect car bombs in Moscow and humiliating attacks on fortress Crimea, either.

Least of all did Putin anticipate 80,000 Russian soldiers dead or wounded. Dying with them is his Peter the Great pipe dream of a “greater Russia”. Extinct already is his reputation as anything other than a killer and a crook.

An endless military quagmire is not a scenario Putin can afford as slow-burn western sanctions corrode his economy and his military’s manpower and materiel are steadily depleted. So what are his options?

He could declare a specious victory, claim the Nato “threat” is neutralised and propose a settlement recognising Russia’s annexation of occupied areas. But he surely knows Kyiv will never willingly accept such terms. He could gamble on a huge battlefield escalation, for example, using Belarus to open a second front north of Kyiv – the region he failed to overrun in February. But it’s uncertain his generals have the capability or the stomach.

He certainly dare not retreat. So as pressure on him grows to produce a breakthrough, Putin may well decide his best option is to raise the cost of the war to Ukraine’s backers – and undermine Kyiv’s resistance that way.

In fact, he has already begun. It’s telling that British, French and German leaders all proclaimed long-term support for Ukraine last week. They know Putin is betting they will buckle.

The context is rising anxiety over Europe’s energy and cost of living crises, largely caused by the invasion and Kremlin cuts to gas supplies. The winter fallout from this coldest of cold wars could prove paralysing.

Yet Putin may just be getting started. He has many means by which to undermine western unity and staying power. Europe is littered with easily exploited potential flashpoints and geopolitical faultlines bequeathed from Soviet times. Likewise, Russia has surprising numbers of allies and sympathisers scattered across a politically fractured European landscape.

So will Putin’s friends in the west help rescue the beast from the east? Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko is already in Putin’s pocket. Moscow ensured the dictator survived after his theft of the 2020 presidential election provoked nationwide protests. Lukashenko will do as he’s told.

Inside the EU, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, is seen as Putin’s Trojan horse. Like many on Europe’s far right, Orbán admires his intolerant nationalist ideology and shares his racist, homophobic outlook. He has repeatedly obstructed EU sanctions. Last month he cut a unilateral gas deal with the Kremlin. Orbán plainly cannot be trusted.

The collapse in June of Bulgaria’s reformist government and subsequent talk of repairing relations with Moscow fuels concern that Putin is gaining leverage to divide the EU.

Italy has plenty of Putin fans, too. Leaders of two far-right parties that are expected to join a ruling coalition after next month’s elections have enjoyed close ties with Moscow over the years. Matteo Salvini’s League formed an alliance with Putin’s United Russia in 2017. Silvio Berlusconi of Forza Italia is a personal friend. Italy’s ousted prime minister Mario Draghi took a tough line on Ukraine. That may change.

Other European far-right (and far-left) insurgent and populist parties identify to varying degrees with Putinist ideology and conservative social values. They echo his hostility to the EU. A definitive European Council on Foreign Relations study in 2016 listed Germany’s Alternative for Germany, France’s Front National (now National Rally), Austria’s Freedom party and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang as “pro-Russian”. Ukip made the cut, too.

“The parties … help legitimise the Kremlin’s policies and amplify Russian disinformation. At times they can shift Europe’s domestic debates in Russia’s favour,” the study said. In Putinworld, such channels of influence are potent weapons.

Putin can also rely on mainstream non-EU politicians such as Aleksandar Vučić, Serbia’s president, for a sympathetic hearing. Vučić has been dubbed “little Putin” by opponents. Serbia has profound historical, Slavic and religious ties to Russia, plus a shared distrust of Nato. The alliance’s 1999 bombing of Belgrade is not forgotten.

The EU and UK fear the volatile western Balkans are a critical pressure point Putin could use to stir up old conflicts and distract attention from Ukraine.

Kosovo, where ethnic Serb agitation is building again, is a case in point. Vučić last week threatened international peacekeepers with intervention. “We will save our people from persecution and pogroms if Nato doesn’t want to do it,” he said. Bosnian Serb leaders tied to Moscow also threaten new ruptures in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosnia has echoed Serbia’s rejection of “hysterical” western sanctions. In March, pro-Putin Bosnian Serb “Night Wolves” bikers cheered the invasion.

Partitioned Moldova and Georgia, with divided populations and Russian troops on their soil, are also potential flashpoints. Another is Kaliningrad, where Putin deployed hypersonic missiles this month to intimidate the Nato neighbours. Estonia, in particular, with its ethnic Russian minority, appears a target.

Putin’s efforts to spread fear and instability, disruption and economic pain – making countries think twice about opposing Russia – extend beyond Europe. His vetoes have left the UN security council frozen in time. Now he and China’s Xi Jinping look set to turn November’s important post-pandemic G20 summit in Bali into a crude west-versus-the-rest showdown over Ukraine. No matter that Russia’s whole argument is based on a lie.

Putin’s reckless brinkmanship at Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant suggests he’ll risk almost anything to win. Quietly desperate, he grows more dangerous by the day.

TMA1 wrote:That is some embarrassing prose cringe right there.  And damn that quote shoehorned in at the start is the most hamfisted segue I have read in a long while. Also amusing as he doesnt even try to blend or hide away his use of a thesaurus.

What few sizzling brain cells I had left have been destroyed by that article. Holy shit, Flaming Python... I cannot really thank you for posting that abomination here. All I can do is look with shame upon perfidious albion and its mentally challenged press.

Edit: Also just wanted to say on a serious note pay attention to how deluded he is. How his view most probably reflects views of neolib and neocon leaders here in the west. They dont have an off button. It's like a bad single mom you see at a grocery store fighting their child, playing power games with the young kid, only making things worse. The mom will not relent, and this will only make the crisis worse. This is what western leaders of our time remind me of. They are weak, effeminate, and as a result they are more dangerous than the toughest old warhawks. Like cops with inferiority complexes and are unstable. Thry often escalate when there is no call to and do the worst damage to the community.

Oh how i wish my leaders could be humbled and wake up to the fact that the unipolar world order is rightfully dying.

limb wrote:Should russia actively encourage Russians living in the baltics to move to Russia so they can increase the population?

Big_Gazza wrote:Bidtler is at it again with his "The Enemy Within" speech.  Just unbelieveable... how far the US has fallen...

Putin Has Left the World No Other Option But Regime Change
HE’S GOTTA GO

The Russian dictator’s deranged “annexation” speech should make it clear to the global community of nations that his staying in power won’t provide “stability.”
David Rothkopf
Updated Oct. 02, 2022 3:35AM ET / Published Oct. 01, 2022 2:01PM ET

Vladimir Putin must go.

His demented Kremlin speech Friday, during a ceremony in which he feebly asserted Russia was annexing portions of Ukraine, made the strongest case for the necessity of regime change in Moscow that any world leader has yet to make.

But it has been clear the Russian dictator must be removed from office for a long time now.

It has been clear because Putin’s actions and rhetoric demonstrate day in and day out that Ukraine can never be secure as long as he remains in office. It has been clear because none of Russia’s neighbors can be secure with a megalomaniacal lunatic next door who speaks of Russian empire and constantly threatens to rewrite the borders of sovereign states.

It has been clear because the world can’t be stable as long as the man who controls the planet’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons is one whose power is unchecked at home, who shows such contempt for both international law and human decency, and whose ambitions are so untethered to reality.

Justice also requires that Putin leave office. He is a serial war criminal, one of the worst the world has seen in the modern era. He has laid waste to a sovereign nation. He is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands. He has embraced the language and practice of genocide. His armies have committed war crimes. Mass graves attest to his brutality. What is more, his crimes are not limited to the human suffering he has unleashed upon Ukraine. Other violations of fundamental laws and myriad atrocities can be traced to decisions he has made—from Russia’s leveling of Grozny in Chechnya to Russia’s active support for and participation in horrors in Syria; from the invasion of Georgia to Putin’s murderous campaign against dissidents within his own country.

Putin, for years, has provided evidence not only to international prosecutors but to every sentient being on the planet that he is not a legitimate leader. He does not deserve to be swathed in the protections normally accorded to foreign heads of state. He has no more claim on them than did past monsters—from Hitler to Saddam to Gadhafi, from Pol Pot to Milosevic.

The dead of Bucha and Melitipol or Izyum make that case with their absence. So do the victims of Russian torture, of bombed hospitals, schools and train stations, of mass kidnapping, and of unceasing terror being visited by Russian missiles, artillery and troops upon innocents—victims of the misfortune of living next door to one of history’s most repulsive miscreants.

No one could listen to Putin’s rambling Friday rant and draw any conclusion other than the fact that the longer Putin remains in office, the greater the damage he will do.

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Ukrainian regional separatist leaders attends the annexation ceremony of four Ukrainian regions at the Grand Kremlin Palace, Sept. 30, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.
Contributor/Getty Images

If the absurd spectacle of a “signing ceremony” asserting Russian control of Ukrainian territory featuring Kremlin stooges and nationalistic chants did not chill observers to the bone, then Putin’s belligerent language condemning “the enemy” in the West and his intimations that he might be within his rights to use nuclear weapons certainly should. He mocked international law. He condemned U.S. “satanism.” He called on Ukraine to negotiate but said that the fate of “Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson” was not on the table, that they would be parts of Russia “forever.”

When President Joe Biden said of Putin in May, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” it was followed by a swift “clarification” from the White House that the president “was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

But as we have gradually come to learn, Biden’s seemingly spontaneous comments on crucial issues of international policy to which he has devoted decades of study—whether they concern Putin or Taiwan—are not gaffes. They instead are expressions of common sense, acknowledgements of reality that diplomats may wish were unspoken, that cannot be the “official” policy of the U.S., but that are signs that the president understands clearly the reality on the ground and U.S. interests.

That is good because tiptoeing around the threat posed by Putin, hoping that accommodating him would lead to moderation in his behavior certainly has not worked. Indeed with every respectful, restrained response to Putin’s aggression or abuses, we have only seen an escalation of his offenses.

The “measured” responses to his aggression of the Bush or the Obama years did not work. Nor did the slavering obsequiousness of former President Donald Trump. Indeed, the ostpolitik of Angela Merkel and the vacillations of French President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders have actually aided and empowered Putin.

No doubt Putin’s allies—like the talking heads at Fox News, the leaders of the MAGA caucus on Capitol Hill, and Putinistas across Europe—will warn that to even speak of the need to remove Putin from office will provoke him, perhaps even lead him to unleash nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against the West. How do we know that? Because that was the response to Biden’s moment of public honesty and realism on this issue.

Many others, including some well-respected foreign policy experts, suggested we should not “corner” Putin with a public stance demanding his removal.

Some of those experts correctly observe that the U.S. has a checkered history seeking regime change. They argue that there are no good alternatives to Putin, and so getting rid of him might produce an even worse outcome, whether that is the chaos associated with a leadership void or a more dangerous leader.

But go back and listen to his Friday speech. It makes clear that we are well past the point where the dangers of his remaining in power are greater than the dangers that might be caused by his fall.

Further, removing the world’s autocrats and thug heads of state has actually not generally produced worse successors. That was certainly true in the cases of Hitler, Mussolini, Milosevic, Pol Pot, and many others.
“...tiptoeing around the threat posed by Putin, hoping that accommodating him would lead to moderation in his behavior certainly has not worked.”

Next, acknowledging that Putin must go is not the same as making regime change a matter of public policy. For governments it can (and largely should) remain an unexpressed goal.

That said, certain sanctions imposed on Russia should remain in place until Russia changes key policies and positions that are indelibly associated with Putin, which in effect will mean until Putin is gone. Certain defensive postures of the west should remain in place until the threat from Russia has abated. We can do more than we currently are to help covertly support Russia’s opposition, especially those whose values align with ours.

Perhaps most importantly, we can ensure that any sort of lasting Russian victory in Ukraine is not an option and that Putin’s terms will never be met, his aggression never rewarded.

With such policies, we can actively encourage the people of Russia to recognize that their country will not have a future as long as Putin remains in power. Putin is assisting on this front. By undertaking a massive military conscription campaign, one that may call up as many as 1 million troops, who will then be under-equipped, under-trained, and likely victims of a war they did not seek against neighbors who are not in any ways their enemies, he has already lit the fuse on a potential national backlash. Millions and millions of Russians will increasingly feel the pain and loss associated with Putin’s war in ways that they did not before, in ways that Russian propaganda cannot hide or dress up.

Protests in Russia are already growing bolder.

Celebrities and business leaders are speaking out more clearly. How long will it be before the security services that surround and protect Putin begin to see the fact that he is a threat to their well-being, to their lives, to the futures of their families?

Accepting the reality that Putin must go is just common sense at this point. Recognizing that reality, we should embrace policies that encourage the conditions that will make it come to pass. We should also prepare for the consequences of such a change and make sure to send Moscow the message that Russia’s neighbors and the community of nations welcome a more responsible Russia—while also making clear that we are ready to defend ourselves against one that makes the mistake of continuing (or making worse) Putin’s policies.

As for making the case to the Russian people that they must act, we need not do that. Putin, with speeches like Friday’s and self-inflicted catastrophes like Ukraine, is already doing that far more persuasively than we could hope to do.

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