Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a concert celebrating the 8th anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on March 18, 2022.
Mikhail Klimentyev | Afp | beautiful pictures
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in power for more than two decades and in that time has carefully built his image as a tough, strong-willed leader who fights for Russia’s interests and restores the country back to normal. into a geopolitical and economic superpower.
However, with his decision to invade neighboring Ukraine, analysts say Putin has made the biggest mistake of his political career and will weaken Russia for years to come.
“Everything he’s done up to this point [conferred] reputational damage to Russia, but it also enhances power. And he just kept going, and going, and going,” Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, told CNBC.
“But right now, he’s really weakened Russia dramatically, in every way,” he said, adding that he couldn’t think of anything that Putin has accomplished in his career. his political career is comparable.
Global leaders are gathering in Europe on Thursday to discuss the war in Ukraine and how to help the country survive a Russian onslaught. An extraordinary NATO summit is taking place in Brussels, as are meetings of EU and Group of 7 (G-7) leaders.
NATO is expected to commit to a “strong increase” in troops along the eastern flank as well as to provide more weapons and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, although the military alliance is reluctant to go any further, out of concern. direct confrontation with nuclear power Russia.
Speaking to CNBC on Thursday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNBC: “President Putin made a big mistake and that was to wage war, to wage war, against an independent sovereign state. “
“He underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the bravery of the Ukrainian people and the armed forces,” he told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble on Thursday.
NATO’s plans to increase support for Ukraine and deployments in Eastern Europe would allow NATO to deal with “any threat, any challenge to our security.”
War Crimes
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has, in a single month, displaced more than 3.5 million civilians from the country, with hundreds of thousands homeless due to relentless bombardment by Russian forces.
The southern city of Mariupol has been hardest hit so far, with the port – a key hub for Ukraine’s exports – still besieged and heavily damaged.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said about 100,000 civilians were still trapped in the city, where water, food, electricity and medical supplies are scarce.
This image provided by the Azov Battalion, shows the theater theater, damaged by shelling, in Mariupol, Ukraine, Thursday, March 17, 2022.
Azov Battalion | AP
Despite deploying continuous attacks and siege tactics in several areas, Russian forces have captured only one city – Kherson – and a fearsome assault on the capital Kyiv has yet to begin. head. In addition, the country’s second largest city Kharkiv has continued to fend off Russian attacks, and the western city of Lviv is now relatively peaceful.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense on Wednesday said Russian forces gained little, despite efforts to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east of the country.
In a statement, Blinken compared the devastation in Mariupol to similar Russian campaigns against Grozny in the Second Chechen War and Aleppo in the Syrian Civil War.
“Russian forces destroyed apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, critical infrastructure, civilian vehicles, shopping malls and ambulances, leaving thousands of innocent civilians,” he said. killed or injured.
Russia has repeatedly said it does not target civilian infrastructure, despite ample evidence to the contrary. CNBC has reached out to the Kremlin for a response to the US allegation that Russia has committed war crimes and is awaiting a response.
Growth is wiped out
Under Putin’s leadership – and so far – Russia’s economy has flourished.
Putin has attracted a lot of foreign direct investment into the country and exploited its natural resources, especially its oil and gas riches, as well as trying to diversify the economy.
During her tenure, however, Russia also suffered economic misfortunes of its own making – such as international sanctions following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, an nerve agent equity in the UK and meddling in the 2016 US election – and some of it got out of control, such as the 2008 financial crisis, the 2014 oil price crash and more recently especially the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, Russia’s economic misfortunes are once again the same misfortunes that Putin himself inflicted on the country with his invasion of Ukraine.
The economy is already reeling under the weight of international sanctions, and on Thursday, when US President Joe Biden meets European and NATO leaders in Brussels, sanctions may even be on the cards. applied to squeeze Russian energy exporters.
A convoy of army trucks moves through the town of Armyansk, north of Crimea. In the early morning of February 24, President Putin announced a special military operation conducted by the Russian Armed Forces in response to a call for help from the leaders of the two People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Sergei Malgavko | TASS | beautiful pictures
The Institute of International Finance said it expected the Russian economy to shrink 15% by 2022, spurred by both official sanctions and “self-sanctions” by foreign companies that have withdrawn. from Russia.
Predicting an economic contraction of another 3 percent in 2023, the IIF said on Wednesday that the war “will wipe out 15 years of economic growth.” Furthermore, it said the impact on the medium- and long-term outlook could be even more severe, with “brain drain” and low investment likely to weigh on.
Putin does not repent
Despite having made limited progress in his invasion so far, Putin appeared undaunted.
Russian forces are now believed to be conducting a period of reorganization before the resumption of large-scale offensive operations on and around Kyiv.
Taras Kuzio, a researcher at the Henry Jackson Society, wrote in an article for the Atlantic Council on Tuesday that “it is becoming increasingly clear that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a terrible miscalculation.”
“He really believes in the Kremlin propaganda fairy tales about the weakness of the Ukrainian military and the willingness of ordinary Ukrainians to greet their invading army with cakes and cookies,” says Kuzio. flowers,” said Mr. Kuzio, declaring that Putin had drunkenly “aid” to the Kremlin.
Additionally, Putin appears to have been unprepared for the ferocity of the international response or the scale of domestic opposition to his invasion, Kuzio noted. “Thanks to these catastrophic miscalculations, Putin is now left with no good option to end a war that is threatening to hasten Russia’s geopolitical decline as a great power.”
Russia has few friends left on the global stage, with the invasion almost universally condemned. Even Russia’s ally China is worried about the likely protracted conflict in Ukraine and its impact on the global economy.
At the United Nations General Assembly in early March, 141 countries passed a resolution demanding that Russia immediately cease its military activities in Ukraine. Only a handful of countries – galleries of con artists including Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria, all run by dictators – support Russia’s invasion. Russia’s allies Cuba, Nicaragua and China abstained in the vote.
Russia is over yet?
Those who closely follow Putin say there are growing signs of despair in Russia’s military campaign and question how far Putin will go to achieve his goals.
“There are profound mysteries about Russia’s intentions,” Dr Ian Lesser, Vice President of the Marshall Fund of America told CNBC earlier this month. “How far will they go? What would they consider a victory?”
“There are all sorts of possibilities, from a complete occupation of Ukraine, which I think most observers would say is impossible, to control of several important political centers in Ukraine, including Kyiv. and possibly including Odesa, or perhaps they had. a larger territorial gambit in mind.”
In such a scenario, he said, Russia would be “very comfortable” an ongoing uprising, which also means ongoing humanitarian costs. “So there are big dilemmas here,” added Lesser.
Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow and director of the Warsaw office of the German Governors Fund, told CNBC on Tuesday that Putin has “really over-extended himself.”
“We may be looking at the end of Russia as we know it,” he said. “But if he survives this, I think what we might be looking at is the foothills of a new Cold War.”
