BREAKING: Putin wants to reconstruct the Romanov empire
Figuring out what's in the heads of Russian leaders has been a favorite and essential pastime of Western intelligence services, from the time of Peter the Great now to the era of Vladimir the Lesser. But sometimes, these leaders just lay it out all on the line in garish fashion.
Just a few hours ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a televised address to the Russian people on the crisis in Ukraine. It was a meltdown worthy of Captain Queeg. The upshot of his deranged musings was that all the parts of Russia which are now independent are so illegally. This applies not only to Ukraine, but to all parts of the former Soviet Union, and even its predecessor, the empire of the Romanovs. The logic of this extends to the notion that not only is Ukraine an illegitimate country, but so are the Baltic states, Finland, and Poland. All of these were "stolen" from Russia with the help of outside agitators and foreign powers.
Putin went on to sign a decree recognizing the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republic. Which, of course, begs the question: If Ukraine is illegitimate, why grant recognition to two further independent states, rather than simply reabsorbing them into Greater Russia? Of course, there's no logic to this, for one simple reason: Putin has lost his mind.
The fact is that President Joe Biden, his administration, and the West in general have outplayed and outmaneuvered Putin at every turn. The US media campaign, fueled by declassification of intelligence to show what the Russians are doing in real-time, has scuppered Putin's strategy of deception and subterfuge. It's hard to create a casus belli when your enemies are revealing your lies to be lies as you utter them.
Nothing which Putin did today makes any logical or strategic sense. He has set the Russian Federation on a course for a new Cold War. However, unlike the confrontation between the West and the Soviets, he begins on the back foot. There's no Eastern Bloc like the Soviets had. Russian troops and nuclear weapons aren't stationed in the east of Germany. Such allies as he has—Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea—are not the kind of allies around which you build world domination. He's propping up an endless civil war in Syria. And China, while it wants to put the US and its allies on the back foot, mostly wants the flow of trade to continue. It won't follow Russia in recognizing breakaway regions, when it has its own restive regions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, as well as Taiwan. Putin couldn't have planned a better way to isolate himself and his regime.
Putin claims that he doesn't fear American and European sanctions. Of course, that's bluster. The Russian stock market had its worse day since 2008. Russia is not an autarky; it is woven into the global capitalist and financial system. And those systems are controlled by the West. Being barred from, say, the SWIFT system would immediately cripple the Russian economy. The ruble would overnight become worthless. Russia would be cut off from access to world finance. It would make it impossible to maintain any conflict, as pay for troops would be in worthless currency. And this is before a sanctioning of Russian enterprises, oligarchs, and Putin himself.
Putin famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. And yet, he's following the same path that the Communists did in 1989. The same results are likely.
The fact that our intelligence has been spot on leads one to wonder how many assets the US and the West have within Putin's circle. I'm sure some conversations are being had right now. The mad tsar should avoid any open windows.