Opinion

But what madness is this?

photo_camera putin-rusia

The Russians continue to amass soldiers and military equipment along all Ukrainian borders and the Americans say that an invasion of Ukraine is "very likely" in the coming days or hours, while fevered diplomats come and go (the non-essential ones leave Kiev), meet and make proposals such as negotiating on disarmament, manoeuvres, transparency.... as both the United States and the European Union have offered without so far seeming to satisfy the impossible minimums that the Kremlin has set for itself. For just as Spain cannot recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahara, no matter how much it wishes to have an optimal relationship with Rabat, neither can the world give Ukraine to Russia or allow it to turn it into a vassal state with limited sovereignty. That is not Europe.

What is at stake here is the balance that emerged from the end of bipolarity and the Cold War, it is the respect for borders guaranteed by the Helsinki Final Act, which the Soviet Union also signed, it is the principle of sovereignty, it is the rejection of aggression and force as a way of resolving differences. It is coexistence in disagreement as opposed to the imposition of the law of the strongest.

Nobody knows what President Putin wants to do. This has just been acknowledged by a restless Macron, who has elections coming up and wants to play in the Champions League when he is in the First Division. Putin has his reasons but he is not right. He probably did not expect such a strong and above all united reaction from Europeans and Americans. He played at dividing us to the end with disinformation campaigns and even sending letters to each of the 27 EU members, which responded with a single letter signed by Borrell, in a masterful manoeuvre that has annoyed Moscow. He thought NATO lacked muscle (a few months ago Macron also thought so when he said it was "brain-dead") and what he has achieved is to resurrect it with force, delaying by years any project of autonomous European defence, just as the Fukushima disaster still prevents Spain from having a calm debate on nuclear energy, its merits and disadvantages. And if you thought Biden had had enough of foreign adventures after the disastrous end of the 2001 Afghanistan adventure, and was too busy with his domestic political agenda and China, you have also been disappointed. The US-European relationship, badly damaged during the Donald Trump years, comes out of this ordeal stronger.

And if we don't know what Putin thinks, we don't know what Xi Jinping said to him when he received him a few days ago during the opening of the Winter Olympics. China is no doubt pleased to see the US in trouble in the European theatre but I don't think it would encourage him to invade Ukraine because for it the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance given its problems with Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and its ambitions over Taiwan, which it regards as its own unredeemed land. Moreover, China has ten times more trade with Europe than with Russia, and a conflict in the heart of our continent would negatively affect these flows.

Now comes the moment of truth and Putin has to decide, because in Russia it is he who decides everything, what to do: whether to invade Ukraine and defeat it in a few days (but then face a complicated occupation as happened to the US after defeating Saddam Hussein in Iraq), whether to annex selected parts of its geography, for example Donbas or a land corridor to Crimea, all accompanied by the cessation of its gas exports to Europe, or whether to end the military manoeuvres and withdraw its military forces. The latter option is the only one that would allow it to avoid harsh sanctions and preserve what remains of its political and economic relations with the EU, already damaged by the annexation of Crimea.

Time is running out and Putin's daisy must have fewer petals left with each passing day. I guess that no matter how many psychophants around him are eager to tell him what they think he wants to hear, it is clear to him - because he is no fool - that the hard way we will hurt each other very, very badly. And that Russia will bear the brunt of it. His calculation must be whether it still pays to gobble up Ukraine and in the process make the absorption of Belarus irreversible. That is the stakes.

It is madness.