Putin and the West, the strategy of tension
Audio 03:10
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a video conference at the Novo-Ogaryovo State Residence outside Moscow, Russia, January 19, 2021. via REUTERS - SPUTNIK
By: Bruno Daroux Follow
7 mins
Return on the current tensions between Russia and Ukraine which know a form of appeasement since Thursday evening.
More broadly, the tensions between Russia and the Western countries - the United States and the European Union, focus on Ukraine, but also on the fate of the opponent Alexeï Navalny, or the accusations of cyberattacks by Russians.
But what is the goal pursued by Vladimir Putin?
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Well, we can say that the Russian president pursues a double objective: to consolidate his power internally and to assert the power of his country vis-à-vis the West. Internally, after more than 20 years of almost uninterrupted power, he seeks to perpetuate an authoritarian and very undemocratic system. Hence the severe treatment inflicted on the opponent Alexeï Navalny, evidence of a certain nervousness and therefore weakness of the Putin system.
There is in him a form of rejection of the system of liberal democracy that the Americans and Europeans sought to impose by forced march on post-Soviet Russia in the 90s. An imposition of a foreign model which, according to him, led social and economic chaos, and the country's weakening on the international stage.
To its patchwork also, since the famous glacis of the so-called brother countries of the USSR shattered at the time of the dismantling of the Soviet Union.
Tension as a strategy
Coming to power in 2000, Vladimir Poutine first tried the gentle way with Brussels and Washington.
But the result of this conciliatory approach was the adhesion of some of these former brother countries to NATO, the military organization headed by the United States.
From then on, Putin was convinced or was convinced - hard to say - that it was necessary to be wary of this falsely sweet and excessively lesson-giver West. And little by little, Putin felt that to recover the lost greatness of his country, it was the strategy of tension that paid off in the face of this arrogant West. When he could, he carved out croupiers in US or European positions - in Syria in particular - and approached countries considered hostile or resistant to Western injunctions - we can cite Iran or Turkey.
At the same time, in what he sees as a close stranger, he has sought and sometimes succeeded in re-establishing Moscow's stranglehold - especially in areas populated by Russian speakers.
This approach largely explains the Russian game vis-à-vis Ukraine: annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for Russian-speaking separatists in Donbass, in eastern Ukraine.
And even, as in recent days, deployment of Russian troops on the border between the two States.
Result: tension mounts, Western declarations are harsher.
Save time in the face of NATO
He awaits this peak of tension to initiate a beginning of de-escalation, by announcing a withdrawal of his troops. To scare, to gauge the opponent, then to soften - but to consolidate his position. This is Putin's strategy - which also sends a message that could not be clearer: no question of attacking Russian speakers, no question - because this is his obsession, for Ukraine to join the Western camp by joining to NATO or even by signing an association agreement with the European Union. For Putin, that's a red line, it's "niet".
And in fact, without breaking off a strong dialogue with the West, he gets something de facto.
Kiev's membership of NATO has thus become a very sensitive subject, and even rapprochement with Brussels.
In short, he has succeeded: to gain time and thwart the plans of the Americans, Europeans ... and Ukrainians.
But nothing is settled.
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