For a moment this week we seemed to be watching a live poker game. At one side of the table sat Russian President Vladimir Putin, a particularly cunning actor known for his ability to produce creative, surprising and powerful moves. On the other side sat the president of the United States. A slightly older actor, but with the mentality of a tough sheriff, who did not hesitate to call Putin a murderer. An invasion of Ukraine would be a multi-casualty move. The West would not sit back. “The human cost will be enormous. The Allies will impose unparalleled sanctions on Russia. The price will be very heavy. “
The battle was fascinating. Sometimes even breathtaking. In the face of Putin’s old-school poker, which was limited to the transfer of forces on the Russia-Ukraine border accompanied by sophisticated deception games, Biden presented contemporary internet poker in the form of fine intelligence, which time and time again revealed Putin’s cards in real time. Whether it is Russian false allegations about the alleged withdrawal of military forces stationed on the Ukrainian border, or a cyber attack on the banks designed to sow panic in the Ukrainian public. In response to every Russian move, detailed counter-American intelligence was presented including satellite imagery, which proved the opposite. The quality of American intelligence in this matter has been consistent and clear for two months. As early as December 3, the Washington Post published an intelligence document estimating that Russia was planning a multi-frontal attack that would include about 200,000 troops. The document was also accompanied by satellite images showing Russian forces gathering at four points near the border.
This week did not prevent the military-political-diplomatic poker game from continuing in a charged atmosphere, ranging from hope to anxiety. Between the two cowboys, the sub-players ran back and forth, led by Vladimir Zalansky, the president of Ukraine. He himself is a young and promising player, who has so far shown surprising resistance to Putin’s sticks and tricks. Zalansky, a formerly talented comedian, kept trying to lower the stakes on the table by repeating the amusing mantra that there are no signs that the Russian president is about to order an invasion of his country, despite the fact that 150,000 Russian military soldiers are on the border. From time to time, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz and the Polish Foreign Minister entered the room for a moment, coming to check that no one was suddenly going to turn the table and start firing. Yes, it was a dangerous game. There was the smell of burning dust in the air. The feeling was that the game could at any moment become a duel at noon.
If we do not soon see what is known as “miscalculation” on the Ukrainian border, the feeling is that this game of poker may continue for many more weeks. Russia’s military muscle demonstration is now expected to intensify and expand, far beyond Russia’s borders. Some of it we saw already this week. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu landed in Syria this week to watch supersonic fighter jets and missile ships coming from the Russian northern navy. All this in an attempt to convey a consistent and lasting message to the NATO alliance and the West, that as much as it depends on Putin, times have changed. What was will no longer be. Russia’s military power will now also be reflected in the political arena.
In this respect, the crisis in Ukraine is a tool. Although an important and significant tool, only a tool on the way to a much broader goal: a change in the world order that has prevailed in the last thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union. And for him, this order in which the West looked down on Russia must change. Yes, even if Russia was weak in the first years after the disintegration, it is only a temporary matter. Russia, in Putin’s view, has been and still is an imperial DNA-worthy power that reflects its historical greatness. And now, thirty years after the fall of the USSR, the time has come for a change.
The feeling is that this game of poker can last for weeks. The Russian military muscle demonstration is expected to intensify and expand
Artificial separation
Putin has been trying for years to get the message across, without much success. One of these attempts took place in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference. In recent years, the Munich Conference has become an event in which all the top international-political-security leaders rub shoulders. A lot of things were cut there in informal hallway conversations, a lot of important speeches were delivered. And in a kind of coincidence, the Munich 2022 conference opens today. But Vladimir Putin, the man everyone is trying to crack what’s going through his mind, will not be there. He has already announced that he will not be coming. Chances are he will not suddenly change his taste but will remain spawned in the Kremlin, next to a long table that has undergone a thorough disinfection. However, in his spirit he will definitely be felt there.
Already in Putin’s speech at the Munich Conference in February 2007, there were all the characteristics that heralded the current crisis with NATO and Ukraine. All the main messages were there. Even then, Putin claimed that NATO was pushing its forces eastward toward Russia’s borders, wondering what the hell happened to the promises made by Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Where did the guarantees for NATO non-expansion go? Russia, Putin said at the time, is a country more than a thousand years old that has almost always pursued an independent foreign policy. And this tradition, he said, is not about to change.
Seven years later, in 2014, Putin followed the vision and conquered the Crimean peninsula. Seven more years have passed and today he stands with 150,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border, on his way to realizing another chapter in his imperial vision. In an article published last summer, entitled “The Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians,” he argued that he was convinced that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in cooperation with Russia.” In the same article, he stressed that he would never allow Ukraine to become “anti-Russian.” The thing is, Putin was late for the train. Since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine is no longer his. The Western influence that has permeated there over the past thirty years, in parallel with the development of a sense of freedom, sovereignty and independence, is irreversible.
But these feelings stand in contrast to one of the deepest paradigms of Russian culture. A paradigm derived from a 16th-century monk Filopei of Peskov, according to which Moscow is the third and final Christian empire. “Rome the first and the second have fallen, the third is standing on a stake and the fourth will not be,” the prophecy states. The first empire was Rome which adopted early Christianity and fell to the barbarians; It was followed by Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire that fell to the Ottomans. While the third is Moscow or Russia, the heir to the Byzantine Empire. It holds the original true Christianity, and represents the true values against the corruption and decay of the West. This Russia, as we know it today, was born in the ninth century in Kiev. Its roots are in the Principality of Kiev-Ross, which is located within the territory of Ukraine. Therefore, for Putin, the separation between Russia and Ukraine is artificial and impossible. And as mentioned, in Putin’s article he claims that this separation is a result of the infiltration of Western influence, which “poisoned the wells” in Ukraine.
To what extent does this concept permeate the military moves that Putin is now leading? Hard to know. But it is also difficult to avoid the thought that alongside the cynicism and cruelty, deep down he is fueled by this vision. It is no coincidence that one of Putin’s famous photos, alongside those in which he rides a horse in the prairie or is photographed with a tiger – is the one in which he is seen dipping in a cross-shaped ice pool during the Feast of the Discovery.
The crisis in Ukraine, it seems, will accompany us in the coming days and weeks. There will be ups, downs, snatches and threats. Many crisis points and numerous opportunities for miscalculation are expected.
But it has quite a few things that seem planned well beyond the military plane. This week, the Russian State Investigation Commission, an internal investigative body parallel to the FBI that focuses on investigating serious crimes, announced that it had begun a criminal investigation into the use of illicit methods of war following the exposure of mass graves in the Donbas region. According to the investigation, hundreds of civilians – men, women and children – were shot in 2014 following the spread of war in the Donbas region.
Rumors of mass graves in Donbas have been running since 2014. Delegations of researchers from around the world have already visited the site. Evidence was collected from local residents. But it is no coincidence that the decision to open an investigation in Russia has just been made. There is quite a bit of opportunism in this, not to mention irony, reminiscent of the demand to explore mass graves in conflicts in the Balkans. Eight years after the massacre, Vladimir Putin suddenly takes to heart not only the murdered Russian Donbas residents, but also Western interrogation methods. All to produce the narrative that will allow him to later justify not only the statement that what was done in eastern Ukraine is genocide, as expressed this week to German Chancellor Olaf Schultz; But to retrospectively adopt all the arguments that the West used to justify NATO intervention in Bosnia that angered Putin so much at the time. Back then, Russia was not in a military and political position that allowed it to confront NATO. Closing a more perfect circle for Putin would be hard to find.