Putin on the ropes, no way out

by Tom Maertens

Tom Maertens worked on Soviet/Russia issues for many years, including from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, the U.S. Consulate General in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), the U.S. Senate and the White House.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in trouble in Ukraine. Thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or captured, including several generals.

Some Russian POWs told CNN that that the military is widely opposed to the invasion.

Putin has ordered Russia’s military to put its nuclear forces on “special alert,” because of “aggressive statements” by the West.

This is his usual sabre rattling: Putin said he was prepared to put his nuclear forces on alert prior to annexing Crimea (2014), and later told a NATO meeting that any attempt to return Crimea to Ukraine would be met “forcefully including through the use of nuclear force.”

That followed multiple nuclear threats over several years against Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Great Britain, Norway, Poland, Denmark and Sweden.

It seems unlikely the U.S. or the other nuclear powers would respond in kind to a Russian theater nuclear attack; Ukraine is not an ally, and Western sanctions are already destroying Russia’s economy.

There are no obvious off-ramps for Putin that don’t involve losing face. U.S. government research shows that there may be such a thing as “short man’s syndrome“ causing people to compensate for their short stature (Putin is 5’6”) with overly aggressive behavior.

Putin is said to be obsessed with former Libyan Leader Muammar Qaddafi’s fate (assassination); he is obviously a candidate.

Jerrold Post, professor of psychiatry and CIA psychological profiler, judged that the driving force behind Putin’s threats is extreme narcissism and a strong need for power and control.

One of the characteristics of narcissists is lack of empathy for others; Putin has a history as a remorseless killer with no qualms about bombing hospitals and schools, as he is doing in Ukraine, and as when he leveled the Chechen capital of Groznyy and, in 2008, invaded Georgia.

He was likely behind the deadliest attacks inside Russia, a series of bombings of apartment buildings in three Russian cities in 1999 — while I was assigned to Moscow — that killed more than 300 people and wounded 1,000.

Putin blamed Chechens, an all-purpose boogeyman in Russia, but an explosive device similar to that used in the bombings was defused and recovered from an apartment building in Ryazan, Russia.

Three FSB officers were arrested in the act of planting the bombs. When FSB officer Alexander Litvenenko defected, he confirmed that the bombings were carried out by the FSB, then headed by Putin.

They served as a pretext for the Second Chechen War, which promoted Putin’s career. He was appointed prime minister shortly afterwards, and became president when when former President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Litvenenko was later assassinated in the U.K. with radioactive polonium, supporting Yeltsin’s assertion that Russia was “the biggest mafia state in the world.”

In order to justify further military action, Putin is making the false claim that Ukraine, NATO or the US was making chemical or biological weapons inside Ukraine.

Biden has wisely avoided threatening rhetoric, and stated explicitly that he doesn’t want to fight WWIII in Ukraine, but as civilian casualties mount, there will be more calls for NATO military action inside Ukraine.

Moscow’s aggression is not surprising; Russian foreign policy was stated long ago by Czar Alexei’s foreign minister: “expanding the state in every direction.” This is justified as necessary for Russia’s “security,” except that every new border then becomes a source of new insecurity, justifying still more expansion.

As Henry Kissinger explained in World Order, from 1552 to 1917, Russia expanded its territory an average of 100,000 square kilometers annually, a territory larger than many European states. That works out to expanding at an average rate of 50 square miles per day for hundreds of years, beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century.

Following the breakup of the Warsaw Pact (1990), and the Soviet Union (1991), the former states of the USSR recognized Ukraine’s independence — repeatedly. The Russo-Ukraine border treaty of November 1990 guaranteed the existing borders between Russia and Ukraine.

Subsequently, the U.K., U.S. and Russia signed the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 promising to respect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine giving up nukes.

The Minsk Agreement (1991) obligated Russia/Ukraine/Belarus to recognize and respect one another’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of existing borders, while the Russian/Ukrainian Friendship Treaty (1998) fixed the principles of strategic partnership, the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity.

Putin later affirmed that “Every nation has an inalienable, sovereign right to its own path of development ... Russia always has and always will respect that. This applies fully to Ukraine, the brotherly Ukrainian nation.”

Putin violated every one of those agreements.