Putin doesn’t just want a little more territory in Ukraine, Piontkovsky says. He wants to control all of Ukraine, and Ukrainians will fight to prevent that. And he doesn’t just want a small accord with Washington but a new Yalta something President Joe Biden will never agree to.
Thus, if Putin intended what he has done so far as a form of blackmail, he has landed himself in a dead-end,
“Now he must either end the insane hysteria and give up first, thus losing the game of chicken he has launched, or proceed to escalation, something that will be suicidal for the regime.”
According to Piontkovsky, the latter is more probable. Indeed, he says, not only are Putin and his entourage inclined in that direction, this “fatal decision has already been taken [as] they are so under the influence of imperial insanity” and, acting as “the best students of Brzezinski,” assume they have to have Ukraine if Russia is to be an empire.
[/boxright]“Poke-and-probe.” Why Russia is massing troops & military hardware along Ukraine border
Moreover, if the US were to back away from Ukraine, its obvious weakness relative to Putin would cost it support around the world. And because of all these reasons, the US won’t back down but will not only supply Ukraine with weapons and advisors but inflict real damage on Russia “above all of an economic character.”
If Putin openly invades Ukraine, what will follow will not be some economic sanctions, “but total economic war,” Piontkovsky says. Russia will lose access to SWIFT, it will face an oil embargo, and it will see the countries of the West move to seize “’the Russian trillion,’” Russian money now in Western banks and Western real estate.
Those moves will so affect the Russian elite that it will no longer be willing to follow Putin unquestioningly. The Kremlin leader may think he is in complete control of his own house, but these pressures will demonstrate to him and the world that he is not. Of course, the mediocrities immediately around him will back him, but many further away won’t.
Even before a shot is fired, the Russian economy is teetering, the analyst continues. The ruble exchange rate is collapsing. But if the West wages economic war against Russia, that country will face “an economic catastrophe the regime won’t survive.” Those intoxicated with Russian imperialism may think otherwise but they are wrong.
There are probably enough people in Western capitals who will go along with this, but the leaders of the key countries now, the United States and Türkiye, aren’t among them. Consequently, Putin has almost certainly made yet another miscalculation that will lead him to disaster.
Further reading:
- Putin to turn a deaf ear to Biden’s words, Portnikov says
- Amid military build-up, Russia escalates hunt for “Ukrainian extremists”
- “Poke-and-probe.” Why Russia is massing troops & military hardware along Ukraine border
- “Kremlin behaving toward Ukraine now the way it did toward Georgia before 2008 invasion”
- Transfer of Russian military units towards Ukraine’s border to be finished by end of April, – Ukrainian Intel
- Tensions escalate in Donbas and on Ukrainian border
- Invading Ukraine now could spark protests that would threaten Putin regime, Russian commentator says
- Disinformation build-up: pro-Kremlin media reinvigorate their focus on Ukraine
- Four Ukrainian soldiers killed in Donbas as Russia continues troop buildup and escalates propaganda
- War scare is Putin’s natural element
- Amidst Russia’s loud sabre-rattling, US delivers military hardware to Ukraine
- Ukraine’s Territorial Defense volunteers prepare to support army in case of Russian invasion
- Moscow will be ready for a war against Ukraine ‘in a month,’ Feldenhauer says
- Biden phones Zelenskyy amid Russian troop build-up along Ukrainian borders and escalation in Donbas
