Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 24 – History teaches that any adventurism like that which Vladimir Putin is displaying in Ukraine will not remain unpunished, Vladimir Pastukhov says, however much he or others assume that this will be an exception. And this punishment will affect not him but everyone both those who back the Kremlin leader and those who oppose him.
This “boomerang will return not quickly but irreversibly,” the London-based Russian analyst says; and the louder and bolder the initial claims, the more serious and long-lasting will be the eventual “agony” that Putin and his country will suffer. In that sense, Putin has already lost, just as Hitler lost in 1941 (echo.msk.ru/blog/pastuhov_v/2984653-echo/).
The Kremlin leader “fatally underrated the West,” Pastukhov continues. He thought that “the freaks” who suggested they would not oppose him in his aggression were setting the weather, and he forgot that below that froth, there was a community with common values that was prepared to defend them against aggressors.
Even if Putin’s operation ends after only a few days and with little blood, something unlikely given the willingness of Ukrainians to defend their country, “this will change nothing if one looks out four to eight years,” the Russian analyst says. The penalties for what Moscow is doing will be imposed and they will be far larger than anyone imagines.
According to Pastukhov, “the occupation of Ukraine be it direct or indirect, will be a oose around Russia’s neck. The West will also have a hard time, but it will survive.” Russia, he implied may not. “This action is worse than a war crime; it is a military adventure, a nervous breakdown of the elites.”
The obvious precedent is Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, “but then this was not done by a fraternal people. That nightmare lasted four years.” Given that, no one should expect to wake up soon; and “this time, the morning will come not tomorrow” for anyone. “The night will be long.”
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