The Times: The West must learn from history and deal with Russia in a new way

A report published by the British newspaper The Times urged Western leaders to change their ways of dealing with Moscow, saying that reading history requires that, and that the West's problem is not Putin but Russia itself.

- written by the newspaper's Europe editor, Peter Conrady

- stated that Russia will not give up asserting itself as a dominant power in its vast geographical area if Putin or any other Russian successor continues to rule.

Conrady, who was the newspaper's correspondent in Moscow during Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, said;

The last president of the Soviet era The international community must somehow defuse tensions with Russia.

The roots of Russian violence

He explained that the roots of Russia's wars since the 1990s lie in the unfinished business of 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated into 15 republics along often arbitrary internal borders and transformed overnight into borders between sovereign states, noting that this left a legacy. Sama is represented by the presence of 25 million people of Russian descent who find themselves living in foreign countries.

The writer adds that this peaceful transition only - and to a large extent - postponed the violence;

The Chechens, whose homeland lies within Russia itself, were later brutally crushed in two bloody wars when they tried to get out of Russia, the second of which helped Putin consolidate his power.

His 2008 invasion of Georgia was ostensibly to protect the Ossetians (a pro-Russian minority) from what Moscow claimed was a "genocide" by the Georgian authorities.

But it was Ukraine's "loss", says Conrady, that irritated Putin in particular, due to its size and shared origins with Russia more than a thousand years ago.

Most Russians' point of view

Conrady asserts that Putin's conviction, repeated on the eve of the "invasion" last February, that Ukraine did not have a real state of its own reflects not only his view, but the view of many of his compatriots;

Some 64 percent of Russians saw themselves and the Ukrainians as representing "one people," according to a poll that month.

This was not only the result of decades of Kremlin propaganda, but also centuries of close cultural, historical and linguistic ties.

The writer noted that faltering attempts to integrate Russia into the West took place in the 1990s, but the Kremlin remained wary of joining an alliance in which it would be a junior member while its nuclear arsenal secured a seat at the world table.

The writer cites the opinion expressed by the famous American diplomat Henry Kissinger, who blamed America for pushing the Kremlin into a corner by expanding NATO to its borders.

Kissinger insisted that it would have been better if Ukraine (with a population of 44 million over an area larger than France) had remained a neutral buffer zone between Russia and the West.

Narrow interest in the West

However, Conrady says, there has been little discussion in the West about the failures of Western policy since Russia launched its "invasion", and attention has focused on the progress of the conflict, and Ukraine's resistance to the "invaders" brutality.

Western leaders, with the exception of French President Emmanuel Macron, have remained largely silent about how to deal with Russia now and when the conflict ends.

Policymakers in Washington and London seem inclined to hope that the Ukrainians will solve the problem for them on the battlefield by expelling Russian forces from their country;

Shortly afterwards, Putin's humiliating departure from the Kremlin.

He stressed that the tensions of recent years between East and West are unlikely to disappear with Putin leaving the Kremlin.

A call for constructive action with Russia

Russia will emerge weak and isolated due to its disastrous military adventure in Ukraine, but regardless of who succeeds Putin, America and Europe will have to find a way to work constructively with the country that has dictated its course over the past two decades, and it is inappropriate to allow it to remain angry and cast a shadow. on Eurasia.

Conrady concluded his report by calling on Russia to change itself, just as Germany and Japan did after World War II, and as Western European countries did after accepting the loss of their colonies, and urged Russia to abandon its imperialist mentality like previous empires before it, and accept that Ukraine and its other former lands have gone their own way. It must learn to create its own greatness through its domestic achievements and not at the expense of its neighbours.