The news is good for the Russian despot. His tenacity in the Ukrainian affair is starting to bear fruit. When launching his tanks there, a little over two years ago, Vladimir Putin had tragically underestimated the potential for resistance of a people governed by a comedian who we would simply never have imagined as leader of war. Putin had also counted on the indiscipline of an organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which the French president had just declared “brain dead”. His invasion brought the alliance out of its coma, made it more active than ever, bringing in two new members, Sweden and Finland.
Anyone other than him would have recognized having gone too far and would have actively sought a way out. But Putin is stubborn, which is another word for “determined,” or “resilient.” For several months, it has been eating away at the front line, a village here, a village there, exhausting a Ukrainian army itself lacking ammunition, while, for its part, in addition to Iranian weapons, North- Korean and Chinese, he can count on a people accustomed to deprivation and resigned to the fact that its economy will primarily serve the war effort.
Putin has always held the course towards a key date in the war calendar: November 2024. The American presidential election can change everything. Donald Trump re-elected, American aid to Ukraine will suddenly stop, Europe will not be able to take over alone. Trump has repeatedly announced that he will resolve the issue within 48 hours. He has the formula: offer Putin to keep all the conquered territory.
Those who have already negotiated with the Russians know the rest. They will say yes, but only if we give them more. In this case: probably the entire territory adjoining the Black Sea, up to Odessa. If President Volodymyr Zelensky refuses, the Russians will occupy him and, having said that, will judge whether to push further. The Ukrainian drama will therefore be played out in the American ballot boxes. If the election were held today, Trump would easily be elected.
The Russian dictator sees much bigger than just Ukraine. At home and around the world. And he has time. Stalin’s record for longevity — 30 years — is within reach. Re-elected (sic) last March, at the end of his mandate, in 2030, he will reach his 31ste year in power and, if his health allows him – he will be 77 years old – nothing will prevent him from running again until 2036.
A ton of documents, the Kremlin Leaks, made public in February, demonstrate the extent of the propaganda apparatus deployed internally – and in the occupied territories in Ukraine – to promote its policy. Around fifteen organizations employing 4,300 employees have a budget of $880 million to disseminate the dominant ideology. These range from patriotic TV series to youth organizations and video game design. My favorite: the players are part of a special Russian unit thinking of repelling an alien offensive. But they discover that the aliens are the products of an American military experiment gone wrong.
Extolling Russian virtues is one thing, but it is important to devalue the competing currency: Western democracy. By presenting it as decadent and corrupt, of course, but above all by pushing all the available buttons to make it truly dysfunctional. Russian intervention online for Trump’s benefit during the 2016 election amply demonstrated this, and the Russian apparatus has never stopped adding salt to all the wounds that divide democratic societies.
Of course, the KGB worked on this during the Cold War, but without the computer tools now used. What is new for two years is the coordination with Beijing in the dissemination of false anti-Western news in NATO countries and their massive diffusion in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia predisposed to believing everything. the misunderstood about the former colonizers.
A file just published on this subject The Atlantic gives the example of the fake Russian news relating to the discovery, at the time of the Ukrainian invasion, of clandestine American laboratories manufacturing viruses from bats, for military purposes. The pro-Trump American right has not only spread this nonsense to the point that one in four Americans believe it, but China has also repeated it on all its networks. Information generated by Moscow and Beijing is regularly presented in southern countries as proven, indisputable.
European intelligence services, whose statements are obviously subject to caution, reported this month that the Russian offensive is moving beyond the Internet to take direct action. The Russian services, directly or indirectly, are suspected of having set fire to a British munitions warehouse intended for Ukraine in April, of having caused the explosion of a similar warehouse in the Czech Republic and of setting fire to the factory of a German company exporting military equipment to kyiv. More than 160 firefighters were mobilized.
The activity extends beyond the Ukrainian question alone. According to European services, the desire to harm the normal course of things in the West is part of the strategy. The Swedes suspect the Russians of having orchestrated a series of train derailments. The Czechs believe them responsible for sabotaging their railway signaling system. In Estonia, they are credited with sabotaging the cars of a minister and journalists. The Lithuanians believe them responsible for interruptions of GPS service used by civil aircraft.
According to analyst Keir Giles, of Chatham House in London, “these targeted attacks aim to disrupt society, but also to gauge our reactions. These are tests.”