Vladimir Putin is surely enjoying waiting to see what further retaliation the United States and its allies plan after his latest defiance of international law. Russia’s seizure of three Ukrainian naval vessels seeking to enter the Sea of Azov to reach Ukrainian ports is clearly a deliberately thrown-down gauntlet.
The timing is surely significant. On Friday, Putin will be with the world’s other leading heads of state at the G20 meeting in Argentina. President Trump and the Europeans have the option of berating the Russian leader in public. This might provide Putin with the excuse to stage a walk out, thus ratcheting up current tensions a further notch or two. Alternatively, tough talking with the Russian president may take place on the sidelines of the G20.
The Moscow line on this latest confrontation with the Ukrainian government is that it is responding to the arrest by the Ukrainian coastguard of a Russian trawler in its territorial waters. Moscow had closed the Kerch Strait, the only link between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea for “security purposes”. The three Ukrainian naval vessels had entered Russian territorial waters off Crimea illegally. This, of course, ignores the reality that in 2014 Moscow seized the Crimea from Ukraine. This came on top of a Kremlin-backed insurgency in the ethnic Russian Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The US led the imposition of international sanctions for these naked acts of aggression.
There was something very chilling about the way that Putin set about his Crimean land grab. The peninsula was infiltrated by armed individuals wearing green uniforms without any insignia whatsoever. Putin denied that he had any knowledge of these men. Yet once Ukrainian troops had been surrounded and disarmed by what they termed “the little green men”, these same soldiers appeared in Russian uniforms, paraded in front of Putin and were praised by him for “liberating” the Crimea.
Putin meant the exposure of his blatant lie to have the widest coverage. It was not simply his way of showing off to a generally enthusiastic Russian public; it was also a demonstration to the international community that his sheer untrustworthiness once more made Russia a world power to be reckoned with, to be feared for its sheer unpredictable nature.
The irony is that Putin’s mercurial politics have actually become entirely predictable. He may be seeking to restore Russia’s place in the world. But his real motive is to combat what he chooses to see as the encroachment of Western military and economic rivals on territory that has traditionally been under powerful Russian influence if not indeed physical control. The picture of a beleaguered Russia has much historical truth. The Americans and the British may pride themselves on the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, but the real bill in terms of tens of millions of dead and wounded and utter destruction was in fact paid by the Russians. Without the Red Army, it has to be doubted if Washington and London could have beaten the ferociously effective German war machine.
It is still little over 70 years since the slaughter of what Russians called “The Great Patriotic War”. They have not forgotten. Putin playing tough with Trump may cost ordinary Russians through sanctions but still in living memory, they have had to endure far worse.
