Putin continues his tug-of-war with the West – Pierre Haski

Vladimir Putin remains master of the dangerous game he triggered three months ago with the aim of changing the balance of power in Europe: one day he pushes the continent to the brink of war, the next day he softens the tone and declares that he wants to give it a chance to diplomacy, not excluding, surprisingly, meeting the president of the United States, Joe Biden.

This permanent contradiction is an integral part of the confrontational approach chosen by the Russian president, which plays on the nerves of his opponents as much as on their rejection of the war.

Putin’s great strength is that he has carried out the most massive military deployment in the last thirty years while his interlocutors have no idea how far he is willing to go. Total invasion of Ukraine, limited war in the Donbass or a step back if he can get political gains? He is the only one who knows the answer, and decides.

In this game, all means are allowed: military intimidation, disinformation, the spectacularization of an announced battle that does not take place. Until two days ago everything seemed to be moving towards war. Russia and the two separatist republics of Donbass had multiplied the accusations that could have served as a pretext for an offensive: a pseudo-genocide, bombings attributed to the Ukrainian army and even the civilian population of the separatist areas forced to take refuge in Russia. The front seemed to burn inexorably.

Instead, on February 20, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on the phone with Putin twice, as well as with Joe Biden: they both accepted the principle of organizing a summit, potentially extended to all the protagonists of the affair, first and foremost Ukraine. .

On February 21, a working group will try to save the fragile ceasefire in the Donbass, then the heads of Russian and US diplomacy will meet in Europe to prepare for the summit. The threat is therefore theoretically paused.

Can we say that the possibility of a war is averted? Nothing is less certain, because Putin has set the bar very high in his security claims compared to Ukraine, Europe and NATO, and he will not really ease the pressure until he has achieved something tangible. From this consideration another question arises: what is the price that Ukraine and Westerners are ready to pay to avoid a war?

To complicate matters are the ghosts of history. In 1938 in Munich (where the security meeting took place over the weekend) the British and French premier Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier practiced the so-called pacification (appeasement) towards Nazi Germany: today there is a school of thought that cries out for pacification about any hypothetical concession to Putin. Historical parallels have their limits, but they are inevitable.

For Macron, who remains at the forefront, as for other Westerners, it is difficult to understand how far to go in the field of concessions without weakening the security of Ukraine. No one can blame him for this attempt to avoid a war, but the price to pay cannot be a capitulation to the threat of force. The way is narrow, but at least, so far, it has made it possible to avoid the worst.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)