Putin and the West: From curiosity to cataclysm
PARIS, France — Russian President Vladimir Putin's two decades of relations with the West, initially marked by fascination over what the ex-KGB agent stood for and then bursts of cooperation, have now reached a point of no return with his invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
The attack has created an indelible rupture between Russia and the European Union and United States as long as Putin stays in power, with Moscow now likely to turn to China as its main ally.
But this appeared in no way inevitable — Russia spent much of Putin's rule as a member of the G8 club of top nations and he claimed that in 2000 he even suggested to US president Bill Clinton that Russia could join NATO.
When Putin was promoted by an ailing president Boris Yeltsin in 1999 from security chief to Russian prime minister and then his successor, the West had little idea who he was.
At a meeting with Putin in June 2001, US president George W. Bush famously declared that he had looked the new Russian leader in the eye and "was able to get a sense of his soul."
Putin remained an enigma for most Western capitals.
But despite the crises prompted by the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014, cooperation continued often intensively.
Few Western leaders have invested as much in a relationship with Putin than French president Emmanuel Macron.
He argued in a famous interview with the Economist magazine in November 2019 that NATO was brain dead and Europe needed a strategic dialogue with Russia.
Examining Russia's long-term strategic options under Putin, Macron said in the interview that Russia could not prosper in isolation, would not want to be a "vassal" of China and would eventually have to opt for "a partnership project with Europe".
Macron notably described Putin as a "child of Saint Petersburg", the former Russian capital built by Peter the Great as a window onto the West.
Even last weekend, Macron was engaged in frenetic last minute diplomacy to prevent catastrophe, even trying to broker a summit between Putin and US President Joe Biden.
'Chosen unilaterally'
But announcing the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Putin went back to a litany of historic and recent political grievances to justify the move.
He notably repeated his arguments that Russia had been stabbed in the back by the West with the "cynical deception and lies" over NATO expansion.
In a landmark 2007 speech to the Munich security conference, Putin had lashed out at the role of the United States, saying a world of "one master, one sovereign" was "pernicious" for all.
But for Macron only one person is now to blame for the situation. "War has returned to Europe, this was chosen unilaterally by President Putin," he said Saturday.
Former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who had more experience with Putin than any other Western leader during 16 years in power and could also converse with him directly in Russian, said: "Russia's war of aggression marks a profound turning point in European history after the end of the Cold War."
Russia now finds itself targeted by the toughest sanctions ever agreed against Moscow by the EU, US and UK and facing the collapse of key projects such as the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany.
'Junior partner'
Its airlines are being refused the right to fly over the territory of some European countries, its teams are no longer welcome for matches and even artists who fail to condemn the invasion risk being ostracised in the West.
"We have reached the line after which the point of no return begins," Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Russian television.
For now, Putin may find some solace in his relationship with China, although Beijing conspicuously abstained over a UN resolution condemning the Russian aggression rather than echoing Moscow's veto.
"Cut off from West, Russia has no choice but to become junior partner of China," argued Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform.
"Beijing is ambivalent on invasion — it won't criticise Russia in public and blames the US — but values stability and territorial integrity."
Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, forecast "wide-ranging" repercussions of the invasion which marked the "end of post-Soviet era for Russia" and heralded a period of "much more reliance on China".
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday secured Turkey's crucial backing for Ukraine's NATO aspirations after winning a US pledge for cluster munitions that could inflict massive damage on Russian forces on the battlefield.
Washington's decision to deliver the controversial weapons — banned across a large part of the world but not in Russia or Ukraine — dramatically ups the stakes in the war, which entered its 500th day Saturday.
Zelensky has been travelling across Europe trying to secure bigger and better weapons for his outmatched army, which has launched a long-awaited counteroffensive that is progressing less swiftly than Ukraine's allies had hoped. — AFP
Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with ATACMS long-range missiles is "a grave mistake", Russian ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov says Wednesday.
"The White House's decision to send long-range missiles to Ukrainians is a grave mistake. The consequences of this step, which was deliberately hidden from the public, will be of the most serious nature," he says in a statement. — AFP
President Vladimir Putin says Sunday that Russian forces had made gains in their Ukraine offensive including in Avdiivka, a symbolic industrial hub.
"Our troops are improving their position in almost all of this area, which is quite vast," he says in an interview on Russian television, an extract of which was posted on social media on Sunday. "This concerns the areas of Kupiansk, Zaporizhia and Avdiivka." — AFP
The regional governor says debris from a drone destroyed over the Russian region of Belgorod, which borders Ukraine, fell on homes and killed three people, including a young child.
The air defense system "shot down an aircraft-type UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) approaching the city", says Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that the falling debris destroyed several homes.
"Most importantly, three people were killed, one of them a small child," he writes on the Telegram messaging app, accompanied by pictures of a house reduced to a pile of rubble behind red and white police tape. — AFP
Ukraine's air force says on Tuesday that it had destroyed 27 of 36 Russian attack drones overnight in the south of the country.
Ukrainian forces downed 27 "Shahed-136/131" drones in the southern Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa regions, the air force said on the messaging platform Telegram.
In all, Moscow had launched 36 of the Iranian-made drones from the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014, it says. — AFP
The Kremlin claims on Friday Russian forces never targeted civilian infrastructure after Ukraine blamed Moscow for a missile attack that killed over 50 people in the eastern village of Groza.
"We repeat that the Russian military does not strike civilian targets. Strikes are carried out on military targets, on places where military personnel are concentrated," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says in his daily briefing. — AFP
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