Is Putin cornered? What, then, will he do?

Dmitry Zaks on Saturday Jan 10, reported that,

Dmitry Zaks

"Ukraine fended off renewed financial pressure from Russia on Saturday by accusing Moscow of orchestrating rebel attacks that killed two soldiers and heightened tensions ahead of mooted international peace talks.

The stakes between Moscow and Kiev have been rising since Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko surprised many at the end of December by announcing plans to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin at a mini-summit in the Kazakh capital Astana on Thursday." (AFP (Agence France Press) : Jan 10 2014)

Furthermore that the,

" ... most immediate danger facing Kiev is the prospect of Moscow demanding the early payment of $3 billion (2.5 billion euros) it had lent former president Viktor Yanukovych in December 2013 to convince him to ditch an EU alliance and side with the Kremlin instead." (ibid Dmitri Zaks) (my emphasis)

Yulia Silena

Even more worrying is the fact that,

"[i]ntense fighting erupted around east Ukraine's main rebel-held city on Sunday that wrecked a power station and briefly trapped more than 300 coal miners in one of Europe's largest pits.
Repeated rounds of rocket and mortar fire echoed across snow-covered Donetsk on Sunday evening despite a formal truce in the nine-month war."( Yulia Silena : Agence France Press (AFP: 12 Jan 2015)

It would seem that the strategy of Putin, ahead of the Berlin meeting today between  the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France, Russia and Germany, is to:

•  use his demand for early payment of money lent to Yanukovich (cf. Dmitry Zaks) and
•  use the eruption of fighting between his proxies in Donetsk and the Ukrainian army

                       Klimkin (Ukraine)              Fabius (France)            Lavrov (Russia)           Steinmeier (Germany)

(a) as 'bargaining' chips
               OR
(b) to ensure that the proposed meeting in Astana on the 15 Jan 2015 between himself, Poroshenko,  Merkel, and Hollande DOES NOT GO AHEAD.



Furthermore, the escalating of fighting in Donetsk yesterday (11/1/2015) seems to be aimed directly at bolstering the call of Hollande that the sanctions against Russia should now be withdrawn.



At the same time it would seem as though Steinmeir and Merkel may be closing ranks.

Both of them are now

" .... pushing for progress on implementing a much-violated peace deal that was drawn up in Minsk in September. Berlin says a substantial narrowing of differences is needed for a summit to take place." (AP (Associated Press) : 12/1/2015) (my emphasis)

This attitude of  Merkel is best illustrated when she welcomed the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, with full military honours, on the 8 Jan 2015, and spelt out that,

" ... All points of the Minsk Agreement must be fulfilled, even though some of them would not immediately be met." (DW : jr/msh (Reuters, AFP, AP) : 08.01.2015) (my emphasis)

It would therefore seem that Merkel is throwing down the gauntlet to Putin. And it is possibly this attitude of Merkel that Putin is trying to break with his demand for the early payment of the loan given to Yanukovich, as well as  ramping up the fighting of his proxies in eastern Ukraine against the Ukrainian army.

Poroshenko seems to have somewhat pre-empted this belligerent move of Putin since,

"Ukraine's Ministry of Defense plans to bolster its military by calling up some 50,000 people during a new wave of mobilization, the ministry's spokesperson Viktoria Kushnir said Tuesday.
"About 50,000 people will be called up, including […]reservists, officers, and soldiers doing their compulsory service," Kushnir announced during a press briefing." (Sputnik : 23.12.2014)

Coupled with this is the fact that,


"According to Poroshenko, Ukraine's military forces are 100 percent equipped, while several months ago the army only had 20 percent of the needed supplies." ( KyivPost : Jan. 5, 2015)




What we therefore have is that:

• Merkel is throwing down the gauntlet to Putin
• the Ukrainian army is readied to face Putin's military machine in eastern Ukraine
• Putin is being forced to try to scupper the upcoming Astana meeting on the 15 Jan so that he does not have to be seen to have buckled under the weight of the collapsing Russian economy
• his dyed-in-the-wool Soviet foreign minister Lavrov has to throw as many spanners as he can muster into the foreign ministers meeting between Ukraine, Germany, France, and Russia on the 12 Jan in Berlin (today), so that Putin can have a 'diplomatic' argument  for not attending the Astana meeting

Perhaps, as Evgenia Pismennaya and Irina Reznik point out,

Shadkhan and Putin

"While Putin doesn’t share Stalin’s totalitarian impulses, he does have a similar understanding and sense of fear, according to the filmmaker [ Igor Shadkhan].
“Stalin exterminated people out of fear because he was afraid of being betrayed if he eased his grip on power,” he said. “Putin is also scared. He’s a human being and has many reasons to be scared.”
Sooner or later, though, Shadkhan said Putin will have to overcome that fear and realize he must step down." (Bloomberg : 2013-08-27)

What is rather disconcerting is that  Putin told Shadkhan that,

" ...  totalitarianism isn’t something that can be imposed from the top in Russia because it’s “embedded in our own people’s mentality.” Shadkhan said he’d now like to ask Putin who’s “to blame for the resurrection of the authoritarian regime? The people?” (ibid Evgenia Pismennaya and Irina Reznik)

It is two years since this article was written and we can now see that just as Putin assumes that totalitarianism is 'embedded in the minds of the Russian people', then it must also be embedded in his own mind.

It would therefore seem that just like Stalin, Putin would have no qualms in dispensing with those around him who may even just hint at betraying him. 

Maybe, therefore, Gorbachev is correct in

" ... accusing [Putin] in a recent book of overconfidence and believing himself to be “second only to God”.  (Justin Huggler : The Telegraph : 11 Jan 2015) (my emphasis)

More importantly, maybe he is also correct in saying that,

""We won't survive the coming years if someone loses their nerve in this overheated situation". ... "This is not something I'm saying thoughtlessly. I am extremely concerned." (Reuters : Fri Jan 9, 2015)


(to be continued)