Vladimir Putin’s effort to create “Novorossiya” and his subsequent one to force Ukraine to accept Moscow-controlled bandit territories as part of its state have both failed, Andrey Piontkovsky says. And so the Kremlin leader has opened “a third stage” in his war campaign by “openly supporting” these territories and raising the level of military provocations.
The Russian commentator says that
Despite the fact that it has been “clear from the very beginning” that Russia had no plans to fulfill the Minsk Accords, won’t withdraw its forces from the Ukrainian territory or hand over control of the Ukraine-Russia state border adjacent to the temporarily-occupied territory to Ukraine, Moscow has played a diplomatic game intended to muddy the waters by insisting on the question “’who is the main violator?’”
Ukraine has been restrained in its response because its chief European supporters, France and Germany, “have devoted very great significance to the Minsk Accords,” despite the fact that Russian actions made them a dead letter even before they were signed. But now Moscow’s actions have made that clear to all, Piontkovsky says, and Ukraine can respond.
“This is a positive leap forward,” Piontkovsky says. Moreover, as far as the Kremlin is concerned, Moscow will “cease all false talk about the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine and will begin to raise still further the subject-ness of these territories and, in this way, ever more openly show the aggressive nature of its policy.”
Piontkovsky says that he thinks that among Moscow’s next steps will be a change in the leadership of the “DNR” and “LNR,” involving the political “reanimation” of Ukraine’s former president Yanukovych and his prime-minister Azarov [both escaped to Russia after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and currently live there – Ed.] in order to put forward the absurd claim that they and the territories Moscow controls are the legitimate Ukraine and that the rest of the country is in the hands of usurpers.
But more important even than the burden all this will place on the Russian government, this action of “naked aggression” will spark a political reaction from the West. “This is the price which Putin will pay for his adventure,” one he can’t turn away from, at least until after the Russian presidential campaign.
Indeed, given that Putin has nothing to offer Russians except imperial fantasies, he will likely make additional moves in that direction, including toward the incorporation of South Ossetia into the Russian Federation or against his sometime ally Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus.
The Kremlin leader may even launch new adventures in Africa, Piontkovsky says. But “all these steps of Putin” offered by him as evidence that Russia has risen from its knees and is again a world power will, in the end, “lead only to the collapse of the Russian state.”
Related:
- Moscow’s objective – gain land corridor to Crimea by seizing Mariupol, Ukrainian analyst says
- Proposed citizenship law – the way for Russia to annex other countries
- Moscow to start distributing Russian passports in the occupied Donbas
- Putin moves to give his “personal guard” KGB-like functions
- Hitler’s anschluss and Putin’s: Similarities and differences
- Putin’s drive to build totalitarianism with political technology alone collapses, Eidman says
