Pyotr Kozlov The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by President Vladimir Putin, a nuclear-armed authoritarian leader, poses what appears to be a completely unsolvable challenge for Western diplomacy. While Russian gliding cruise bombs and ballistic missiles have been falling from the sky onto peaceful Ukrainians for two and a half years, Kyiv’s Western allies have been unable to overcome their internal disagreements to decide whether to negotiate or fight Putin. The more visible this indecision is, the more brutally Russia will strike at Ukraine.
Economic sanctions were not enough to bring Putin to his knees and make him pliable. For the Kremlin, large-scale economic restraints were a touchy, but predictable step — and therefore not an existential threat. Instead of gas and oil money from the West, a stream of money from China and India poured into Russia, allowing the Kremlin to buy the loyalty of Russia’s hesitant elites, give more money to the population, and finance large-scale munitions production.
Putin, a Soviet KGB officer, paranoid of any dissent, felt his confidence and stability grow after he was elected to another presidential term this year. Conveniently, his main opponent, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, mysteriously died in prison shortly before election day. The special services — the FSB, heirs of the Soviet Chekists; the Investigative Committee, headed by Putin’s Leningrad State Institute contemporary Alexander Bastrykin; and the Rosgvardia.