Putin Will Go as Far as He Can and Even He Doesn’t Know How Far That Might Be, Polish Senator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – Unlike most leaders who either accept existing borders or have limited ideas about what they might like to add to their countries, Bogdan Borusewicz says, Vladimir Putin will advance as far as he can until he is prevented from doing so by resistance from others. In its absence, even “Putin himself doesn’t know how far he can go.”

            When Ukraine did not resist in Crimea, Putin advanced; when it did in the Donbass, Putin stopped, the Polish senator says. And that makes the divisions in the West over how to handle the Kremlin leader especially worrisome. Putin could easily move in any  number of directions (ru.espreso.tv/article/2018/06/27/vyce_marshalok_senata_polshy_bogdan_borusevych_putyn_poydet_nastolko_daleko_naskolko_emu_eto_pozvolyat).

                He will exploit weakness and division wherever he can find it because his goals are virtually unlimited; and his pursuit of them, Borusewicz says, is thus a continuing threat not only to Russia’s neighbors but to the international community. 

            Had Ukraine been a member of NATO, he continues, Putin would not have launched his aggression there because that would be like aggression against Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, something that will not happen as long as the Western alliance exists and the United States remains in it, Borusevich says.

            Any countries outside of that alliance or a decision by Washington to distance itself from NATO as Donald Trump appears to be headed toward will put all the countries around the periphery of Putin’s Russia at risk of being attacked and annexed unless they can defend themselves, something that will be difficult given Russia’s relatively superior power.