Both before and during the invasion of Ukraine, Putin multiplied media statements to provide narrative justification for his savage actions. In comparison with the cruel reality of the victims of war, one might think that such declarations are of relatively minor symbolic importance. But as Yuval Harari likes to remind us, symbols are in fact the cement on which nations and their leaders are based. It therefore becomes important to remove from Putin all the veneer of legitimacy that his symbolic declarations could cover. Already before the invasion, in evoking his intention to liberate the Ukrainians from a government made up of “drug addicts and neo-Nazis”, he had used a language that one imagines coming more from the mouth of an unbalanced pre-adolescent than from that of a an alleged head of state. The international community would have benefited from pointing out such inconsistencies with much more intransigence.
More recently, Putin backfired by declaring that Western sanctions amounted to a declaration of war. It should be clearly remembered that the fact that Russia and its oligarchs were able to benefit without embarrassment from the advantages of the Western capitalist system is in fact only based on a kind of tacit agreement stipulating respect for certain elementary rules. By throwing these rules in the trash, Putin has disqualified himself from any participation in this system: he cannot have butter and butter’s money at the same time, and he is solely responsible for the situation of ” breach of contract” in which he placed himself.
If the West refuses to engage in a war on the ground, it must at least ensure that it can win the war of words, and prevent Putin’s childish rhetoric from doing it any good.
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