President Putin is scoring massive “own goals”:
The world is united against President Putin while sympathetic to his victims. Even the Taliban get it. The Government of Afghanistan, which they now run, formally called for "restraint by both parties" in the crisis and expressed concern about the "real possibility of civilian casualties." Observers are distinguishing between Putin and his people who are now bravely stepping into Russia’s squares at grave personal risk to protest against their leader.
All of NATO is united and Finland, Sweden, and many others want to join NATO now. Ukraine has joined NATO’s Cyber-Defence Centre as a “Contributing Participant”.
Putin has united the right and the left in the US, in the UK and across Europe.
Putin succeeded in the impossibility of getting the German public and political leadership to turn on Angela Merkel and question whether her soft-touch approach to Russia may have contributed to the problems we see today. Meanwhile, Germany is giving American Neo-Cons everything they ever asked for: bigger defence spending, closing Nord Stream 2, talking about providing troops and weapons to the war effort.
The world has united behind the Western liberal values he had complained were a threat to him. American diplomats are now flying to Venezuela to reopen the dialogue because of Putin’s actions.
The Russian economy has been de-platformed. The Russian Ruble has lost more value than during the Russian Financial Crisis in 1998 and Russia’s credit rating has been slashed to junk and is on a par with Angola and Nicaragua (which observers point out is wildly unfair to Angola and Nicaragua). Central banks are boycotting Russia’s FX reserves. Russian Banks are going bust. The public cannot access cash. Russia is cut off from SWIFT. Western banks, Amex, Visa, Microsoft and pretty much every app no longer works in Russia. Grindr, however, is still on because it has turned out to be an amazing backchannel, allowing Russian soldiers to communicate battleplans to the West. The Russian public are having to queue for money, food. Almost all commercial airlines are no longer available. Russian ships are banned from ports. Many Western firms have cut Russia off. Star link is allowing regular Russians to connect to the internet against Putin’s vociferous objections.
We have new heroes: Zelensky, Ukraine’s President and Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian MP. Like all real heroes, as Joseph Campbell taught, they didn’t want the job, didn’t seek the limelight, would rather be doing something else. But, when the crisis comes, they step up and do what’s necessary to protect others rather than thinking of their own interests. Zelensky captured it when he said, “I need ammunition, not a ride”, which signalled his decision to stay and face the enemy himself. Rudik learned how to handle an AK 47 and posed barefoot, holding the weapon in the safe position, not in a victorious position. The “girl with the pink toenails” became an icon of fortitude and authenticity in this conflict with one photo.
Even the previously friendly Oligarchs are now opposing Putin. Their ill-gotten gains are being rounded up and redistributed. That kid is now tracking their superyachts as well as their private jets. It will be a supreme irony if the UK government ends up housing Ukrainian refugees in their London mega-mansions per the request made by the Mayor of Lviv. The Russian billionaires are either begging him to stop the war or explaining how serious the outcome will be. Oleg Deripaska said, "This is going to be like 1998 crisis but three times worse and will last three years."
Russians are now protesting against their President in numbers (4500 a day are being arrested) in spite of the profound risks to their persons. The NYT’s reported an exchange at one protest. ““You came to support fascists” the officer asked the crowd, a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for the war. “What fascists?” the crowd asked. The officer then gave an order: “Arrest everyone.””
The Pope called Putin out and says this is not a “special military operation” but a “war” while the war is splitting the Russian Orthodox Church. The one religion that really matters in our modern secular times is sport and Russians are now banned from almost every major sporting event worldwide.
He has alienated his new best friend Xi in China. Less than a month ago Xi agreed that their friendship had “no limits”. Today it definitely has limits.
There is now a risk of a nuclear exchange and nuclear events at both Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia. These are serious enough that the Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, volunteered to go to Zaporizhzhia personally and physically stand between the two sides.
The road signs in Ukraine read “This way to The Hague Putin”. He now losing 1000 soldiers a day.
Every single thing is going wrong for Putin.
Now the bad news.
The bad news is that we may be suffering from as much hubris as Putin is. The West played a part in the outcome we are seeing today. Relationships never fail because of one person. Anyone making an assessment of the current state of play needs to consider this possibility. Watch Vladimir Pozner’s lecture from 2018 called “How the United States Created Vladimr Putin” and read the quote from Herman Goering Pozner cites. Also, read Putin’s People so that we understand the difference between his people and the Russian people.
Conclusion: Francis Fukuyama once declared that Western values and institutions won the Cold War. Putin challenged the Post Cold War settlement and now has a resounding answer. Russia definitively loses. That means the West must now take responsibility for steering the world through the horrible aftermath of all this. The West has three tasks now. None are easy. None should be taken for granted.
1. Ensure Putin does not deploy nuclear weapons or encourage nuclear events.
2. Prepare for the consequences of Putin’s actions. (See the next instalment: The Good News Is…( Part 2)).
3. Hold the mirror up and consider the part we played in this terrible tragedy as we consider how we will reconcile with the Russian people once this tragedy ends. Putin may be heading to The Hague but the rest of us have to head off a continuation of this fight between Russia and the rest of the world.
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The cornered animal is sometimes (often) the most dangerous. Putin may be done in the long term. In the short term, the struggle to avoid the use of nuclear weapons will be real. At present, we do not know what lies beyond this war. I continue to hope that people around Putin will remove him before he damages the world irreparably.
Wow, complete propaganda. Zelensky is not a hero, he’s head of a puppet CIA backed government who instigated the 2014 Color revolution. There are no honest, good people in this fight, they are all power crazed psychopaths: Putin, Zelensky and all of NATO. Grow up.