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Putin has indeed launched an invasion of Ukraine as a whole, with a very clear goal: it is a question, according to his words, of “demilitarizing” and “denazifying” this country of which, the day before, in a speech by a rare violence of 56 minutes, he had said that he was not a country and that he did not have to want to be one. — For this second term, “denazify,” let’s spell it out right away, because I’ve talked about it often. Putin, I assume, is referring to the “memorial laws”, which since, I believe, 2015, claim that it is a crime to say that Ukrainian nationalists were Nazi collaborators (which they overwhelmingly were, hunters of Jews, mass murderers). My readers may remember what I think of these villainous laws. But let’s say it straight away: if there are people nostalgic for fascism in Ukraine, as elsewhere, they don’t make up more than 5% of voters (and still do), and to say that Ukrainian society as a whole is a society that it is necessary to “denazify” is criminal. — No, the Ukrainian fascists are not even used to justify Putin’s aggression. Putin is looking for something else.
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It is indeed an erasure of the country. Yes, to erase Ukraine, plain and simple. Putin explains that the purpose of his intervention is “to bring to justice” those responsible for what he calls “the genocide” to which the inhabitants of the “republics” of Donbass and Luhansk were allegedly subjected. Obviously, there was never the first trace of “genocide”, but what does he want?
First, he wants, one way or another, to recreate the USSR, and to prevent any possibility of separate development for the countries within the USSR’s sphere of influence. — Belarus is already, in effect, an integral part of Russia. — The Ukraine resisted, trying, against all odds, in untold difficulties, to develop a democratic state. It is this, above all, which is radically unacceptable for Putin. Democracy. — We must not forget that at the same time, Russia signed a treaty of alliance with Aliev’s Azerbaijan (another fascist dictator if ever there was one), against, objectively, Armenia, whose already punished (the word is from Putin about Ukraine’s desire to join NATO) the democratic attempts by letting Aliyev indulge in the ethnic cleansing that we know. He very quickly intervened in Kazakhstan when, in admittedly very troubled circumstances, Nazarbayev was deposed… But there, he left four days later, and not because the new Kazakh president asked him to return to his home country. . No, because he hadn’t realized that Kazakhstan, in fact, for the last twenty years, had passed from one sphere to another: it had been Russian in the XXand century, it became Chinese. And it was China that visibly put an end to the military intervention with a phone call.
China leaves the field open to Putin in Europe, and therefore, in Ukraine. Putin explained in his long speech that preceded the war that once Ukraine was demilitarized, the trials could begin; he explained that the Russian state had the lists of all those responsible for the “aggression”, for the “genocide”, in short, that it would be a matter of a manhunt after which there would be no elite left in Ukraine somewhat independent, and, really, I heard in his words, and in the tone of his voice, in his aggressiveness — I was going to say in his hatred — the tone of the communiqués of the USSR in September 1939 against the Polish government.
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Putin is ready to break with the world. But this rupture, it is already consumed. He is ready for economic ruin. But this ruin is already underway, at least since the annexation of Crimea, without any war, simply by the inertia of endemic corruption which is destroying the country from within. Yes, people’s lives will become more and more difficult. And power, isolated, politically, economically, can only turn against its own population, and, yes, my impression is that, from now on, in Russia itself, we will begin to drive out the “defeatists”, the “pro-Nazis”. (hear the people who spoke out against the war — and, on social media, there are tens of thousands of them). And what I’m afraid of, in addition to the horror that awaits people in Ukraine, is what’s going to happen to people in Russia — because, of course, nobody wants war in Russia, I mean , among the people. And what’s more, with Ukraine: imagine, for the Russians, waging war on Gogol or Bulgakov, Chekhov… That’s the war between the Russians and the Ukrainians. It’s waging war on Gogol… The war, there, at this moment, it’s also happening on the territory of what had been the cherry orchard… That’s that too, this war. It’s unimaginable. Yes, Chekhov, what would he have been today?
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Poutine, aging, visibly sick, angry, at bay, is not going to disappear like that. It needs ever more terror, ever more plunder.
I listened to him talk about his fight against the corruption of the Ukrainian regime… and I said to myself this: in looking back over Russian history, never, really never, since the Middle Ages, have I seen the country whose culture, I can say it, I devoted my life, reduced to such a state of shame. A mafia leader, dividing his kingdom between warlords, himself subject to the Emperor of China… Because, I repeat it once again: the only partners that will remain with Russia are China and its satellites, and, its natural resources, Russia sells them to China below cost (I talked about this in one of my previous columns). Putin is the shame of Russia, he is the ruin of Russia.
We, the West, what can we do? Send UN contingents? But where ? On what front lines? To engrave in stone the territorial aggressions already accomplished? – I do not think so. But economic weapons, which are long and not very visible, are the most effective in the long term.
The long term is all there. But people’s lives are short.
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