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Putin’s regime is an existential risk to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it is not going to cease, simply as Hitler didn’t cease when he captured the Sudetenland. Putin will go additional and received’t relaxation till he destroys the Western world, Leonid Gozman writes.
Hopes for Kyiv’s comparatively fast victory haven’t materialised and the warfare between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on — although that is actually not the fault of the Ukrainians.
The warfare is changing into polarising and calls for for negotiations and compromise are more and more frequent.
These hoping for a compromise with Vladimir Putin don’t totally perceive the character of his regime or him as an individual.
Compromise with Putin is unimaginable, and any peace settlement is not going to result in peace, however slightly to a short lived ceasefire that Putin will use to construct up his forces for a brand new assault.
No peace with somebody who desires you lifeless
Putin began this warfare to not resolve a particular challenge — there have been no unsolvable contradictions between Russia and Ukraine — however to destroy Ukraine as a topic of politics, language, and tradition.
He repeatedly said that there was by no means such a factor as Ukraine to start with, that it was “invented” by Vladimir Lenin, that Russians and Ukrainians are one individuals, and that the Ukrainian language doesn’t exist.
He believes it. In Putin’s thoughts, destroying Ukraine is by no means aggression, however a return to a traditional order.
That’s the reason Ukrainians can’t agree with Putin — or as Golda Meir mentioned, “You can’t negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you.”
Since it might be politically inviable to overtly declare the destruction of Ukraine because the aim of the invasion, the Russian authorities consistently modified their warfare goals.
They first aimed to make sure the proper to talk Russian in Donbas — which nobody encroached on — then destroy organic laboratories designed to make Russian ladies infertile, allegedly created in Ukraine with the assistance of america.
After got here “denazification” and at last, in Dmitry Medvedev’s phrases, the combat in opposition to Devil.
Putin finds your lack of gratitude disturbing
It’s true: right now, Russian propaganda doesn’t discuss in regards to the targets of the warfare in any respect. For Russia, warfare is not the means, however a pure state.
The warfare with Ukraine is just one of three that Putin’s regime wages. The second, no much less essential, is the warfare for the revival of the Empire.
Whereas the Kremlin has been making ready for it for a very long time, it entered the energetic part in 2008, when Russia captured 20% of Georgia’s territory.
Putin, after all, doesn’t search to occupy all of the nations previously a part of the Russian Empire, however he does demand particular rights and management over their international coverage.
Russia takes each alternative to destabilise its neighbours, from utilising the Russian diaspora to bribing politicians and organsing coups.
Putin won’t ever hand over his “rights” to the Empire. He believes that any territory the place Russian troopers shed blood ought to be a part of Russia or its sphere of affect, and other people dwelling there ought to be eternally grateful to Russia.
The shortage of gratitude angers and makes Putin much more aggressive.
Risking world warfare to realize world respect
Nonetheless, the primary warfare for Putin is the one with the West, the place Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and threats to Poland are simply episodes.
In response to the Russian management, the West (or “Anglo-Saxons”) has at all times humiliated Russia, searching for to overcome or decelerate Russia’s improvement.
The motive of humiliation or lack of respect is essentially essential to Putin. And, even when Russia didn’t but exist, this was not a lot of an inter-country wrestle however a religious confrontation between the world’s good, embodied by Russia and the Russians, and evil, that’s the West.
Now, simply as earlier than, so the story goes, the West hates Russia, searching for to undermine its unity and destroy the nation as a complete, and is able to threat a world warfare for this.
The concept of a world confrontation with European civilization didn’t emerge instantly after Putin turned president.
Putin started as a Westerniser and perceived integration of Russia into the “First World” as his mission.
That didn’t work out, however Putin additionally didn’t try to affix the trendy West, however slightly the West of the Yalta Convention instances, when the nice powers might divide the planet amongst themselves.
And since returning to the previous turned out to be unattainable, Putin, whereas remaining in G8, started to pursue an anti-Western coverage, hoping to steer the world’s anti-American sentiment.
However that didn’t work out both: neither China, Turkey, nor Iran accepted him because the chief. That was the time when the wars started: Putin determined to realize world respect and recognition with army drive.
The reign of failure and indifference
Putin wants this warfare for each home and psychological causes.
His reign has been stricken by failures: the demographic state of affairs is worsening, the technological hole is growing, the standard of life is falling, and it isn’t doable to unravel any of Russia’s most urgent issues.
Opposite to widespread perception, there isn’t a assist for his insurance policies or him personally.
Persons are detached; they’ve come to phrases with Putin and his actions and don’t really feel any enthusiasm about it.
The defeats on the entrance or what is asserted as victories don’t provoke a public response, and neither did Putin’s ICC arrest warrant or the drone assault on the Kremlin.
The warfare with no finish permits Putin to suppress discontent — we have been attacked, the enemy is on the doorstep — and never take into consideration the failures, as an alternative plunging into the world of illusions utterly, the place he has been lately.
Peace on Earth can solely be achieved if the Putin regime is destroyed
For Putin, peace is unimaginable. The duty of sustaining management over Russia and preserving self-respect is solved solely in circumstances of warfare.
Peace will make the inhabitants realise the meaninglessness of their sacrifices and, most significantly, give elites a chance to specific, in a single type or one other, their dissatisfaction with Putin’s insurance policies, catastrophic each for them and the nation however helpful to Putin and his entourage.
The dissatisfaction of the elites has been accumulating for years. Subsequently, it doesn’t matter what the prices are, Putin will proceed the warfare, utilizing any negotiations as a respite.
That is precisely what Adolf Hitler would have accomplished if, on the finish of the warfare, the anti-Hitler coalition had agreed to a peace settlement with him.
He might not assist however combat; a secure peace meant the tip of his energy. It’s the similar for Putin.
He doesn’t want peace, however solely a truce. And peace on Earth, as in 1945, can solely be achieved if the regime of Vladimir Putin is destroyed.
Subsequently, the provision of Western weapons and monetary help to Ukraine isn’t charity, however self-defence.
The Putin system is an existential risk to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it is not going to cease, simply as Hitler didn’t cease when he captured the Sudetenland.
Putin will go additional and received’t relaxation till he destroys the Western world.
Leonid Gozman, Ph.D. is a Russian liberal politician, psychologist and political scientist, and a professor at Lomonosov Moscow State College in Moscow till 2020. Now in exile, Gozman was declared a “international agent” in 2022, then arrested and spent a month in jail for opposing the warfare in Ukraine.
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