Putin Attacked Ukraine because World Refused to Acknowledge His Right to Do So, Skobov Says

 Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 4 – Many in Russia and the West do not believe Putin when he says that with his special military operation in Ukraine, he is seeking to restore the complete sovereignty of Russia, Aleksandr Skobov says. And not believing that, such people keep hoping that the Kremlin leader is simply bluffing and will come to his senses over time.

            But those are fundamental mistakes, the Moscow commentator says. Putin wants a world in which the strong can attack the weak and invaded Ukraine precisely because the current international system refuses to recognize his right to do so. Therefore, he feels compelled to destroy that system (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63B5CE39032AF).

            Once that is recognized, Skobov continues, it becomes far clearer what Putin is really about, why he has no intention of stopping no matter how much suffering his army and people have to undergo, and why the only sensible reaction to what he is about is to help Ukraine secure his complete military defeat.

            Putin has no real goal other than achieving the power to rule over others both at home and abroad, something that sets him apart from Soviet leaders who actually did have ideological goals, however horrific. And what he thinks and is doing is simply an updated version of Nazism, the commentator and frequent Putin critic says.

            What the Kremlin leader is doing and what must be stopped as soon as possible is the formation of “a new society,” one “free from the cultural and moral restrictions of the modern world and not embarrassed by its cynicism, cruelty and aggressiveness.” If his war in Ukraine goes on for a long time, he may succeewd in making this a self-sustaining trend.

            Because that is the case, those who say Putin can be changed by depleting Russian resources are “fundamentally wrong.” That “won’t force Putin to ‘return to common sense and begin looking for peace.” Instead, “only  complete victory” over his forces “can stop the destruction of the international legal order.”

            According to Skobov, “the longer this war drags on, the more forces such a victory will require,” exactly the opposite of what many in the West have now convinced themselves of. And that means that the best strategy for the West is to give Ukraine enough weapons to go on the offensive everywhere and defeat Putin and his invaders.

            The West needs to recognize that it is still necessary to fight in order to have a world in which stronger countries will not assume that they have the right to invade others, he argues. And once Russia is defeated in this war, then the West can take up the task of curing Russia from its infection with the Putin version of Nazism.

            The more complete and the more rapid the Russian defeat and the Ukrainian victory are, the easier this will be.