Putin is gambling that the West will lose interest in Ukraine — let’s prove him wrong

Those who feared, not without reason, that Russian President Vladimir Putin would use the annual Victory Day parade on Red Square as a backdrop for further escalation in his war against Ukraine — perhaps declaring general mobilization — might breathe a sigh of relief.

Instead of grand political gestures, the world witnessed many of the usual displays of military might, with the notable exception of a Z-styled flyover over Moscow — supposedly canceled due to bad weather, though it was a sunny day in Russia’s capital. Absent too was Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, reportedly wounded by shrapnel in his leg near Izyum, Ukraine, and almost certainly out of favor with Putin due to the shambolic planning and execution of the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

In his speech, Putin rehashed all the regime’s lies about his war of conquest. Supposedly, Russia was long seeking a “compromise” with an intransigent NATO, which continued to push closer to Russian borders with the aim of destroying the country. Citing campaigns by Russia’s historic military figures as precedents, he claimed that the nation’s defense required a preemptive strike.

If Putin’s speech lacked an explicit doubling down on his plan to destroy Ukraine — given Russia’s massive casualties and troops’ morale problems in Ukraine, calling in all the reservists could be a dangerous political proposition — it also conveyed little information about possible ways out from the corner that Putin has boxed himself into.

Firefighters extinguish a fire following a Russian bombardment at a park in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
Firefighters extinguish a fire following a Russian bombardment at a park in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 3, 2022.
AP/Felipe Dana

For now, at least, the Kremlin’s plan seems to be more of the same: ineffectual efforts to gain ground in Donbas and in southern Ukraine, where Ukrainians’ heroic resistance continues in Mariupol’s Azovstal Metallurgical Combine. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military is making significant advances around Kharkiv, risking to drive Russian forces all the way back to Russia.

If Putin is hoping to capture Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and establish a land bridge all the way to Moldova’s breakaway territory of Transnistria, he is “unlikely to be successful in this endeavor,” according to a recent report by the Critical Threats Projects at American Enterprise Institute and Institute for the Study of War.

But that does not mean he will not try. Already, there are reports not only of displacements of Ukrainian population but also of frantic efforts by Russia to integrate the newly occupied Ukrainian territories into Russia’s public administration, laying the groundwork for a permanent occupation.

Given Moldova’s own fragility — the nation of 4 million is not part of NATO, lacks effective armed forces and has some 1,500 Russian “peacekeepers” stationed illegally on its territory — it is perfectly imaginable that Putin will try to pull off a stunt like the one seen in Crimea in 2014.

Unlike Volodymyr Zelensky, Moldova’s pro-Western government and President Maia Sandu would be largely defenseless, while Putin could rely on a sizable fraction of Moldovan public yearning for the certainties of the Soviet era. A Russian-controlled Moldova, meanwhile, could be used by the Kremlin not only as a stepping-stone toward a further offensive against southern Ukraine at a time more convenient for Moscow. It would also be a threat to neighboring Romania, making NATO’s eastern and particularly southeastern flank much more difficult and expensive to defend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin looks on during the Victory Day military parade marking the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II in Moscow, Russia, Monday, May 9, 2022.
Putin has called his invasion of Ukraine a purely defensive and unavoidable measure.
Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

Add to the mix the other possibilities of escalation — from cyberattacks against the West to the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainians to the specter of tactical nuclear weapons — and it becomes clear that now is not the time for self-congratulation. V-Day in Moscow only underscored how invested Putin personally is in Russia’s war effort and how closely tied the domestic image he is seeking to project is to the outcome of the conflict.

That makes Putin more, not less, dangerous. As a result, it is important that Western support of Ukraine does not lose momentum. The administration’s request for $33 billion is thus fully justified, especially given the likely turbulent politics of the latter part of a midterm election year.

Putin is counting, after all, on the West and on America’s perennial propensity to let itself be distracted (cue: Supreme Court leaks) while Russians rally behind their autocratic leader and hunker down during a period of adversity, as they did many times in the past. We should hope that he will be proven wrong. Yet we ought not take it for granted.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. @DaliborRohac

source: nypost.com