Putin, Merkel, and Hollande meeting to-day in Moscow (6 Feb. 2015)

When Wolfgang Schäuble, German Finance Minister, last year compared Putin to Hitler,

Wolfgang Schäuble

" ... on the basis that both men forcibly seized whole chunks of other countries’ territories based solely upon the utterly illegitimate predicate of ethnic comradeship " (James Kirchick : FP : February 5, 2015) (my emphasis)

he was rounded upon

" ...  by all sectors of German media and politics as an uncouth barbarian trampling upon Germany’s sacred debt to honor its wartime history. Their number included no less a figure than the Chancellor [Angela Merkel] herself ..." (ibid James Kirchick) (my emphasis)

This German reaction to the truism that Wolfgang Schäuble expressed stems, primarily, from the susceptibility of the German public to Russia's propaganda machine because of a misplaced sense of guilt towards Moscow.

But, as Yale Professor of History, Timothy Snyder, has pointed out,

"The vast majority of Ukrainians who fought in the war did so in the uniform of the Red Army. More Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht than American, British, and French soldiers -- combined. In Germany these basic facts are invisible because the Red Army is seen falsely as a Russian army, an identification insisted upon by the propaganda of today’s Russia." (Frankfurter Allgemeine : Freitag, 06. Februar 2015) (my emphasis)

This salutory fact of the Ukrainians that died during WWII seems to have been somewhat lost on the German public and, more particularly, on Merkel herself.

Those Germans who rounded upon Wolfgang Schäuble for simply telling the truth should have a sense of guilt about what they did to the Ukrainians during WWII, instead of just lumping them together with Russian soldiers by virtue of the fact that the Ukrainian soldiers also wore Russian uniforms.

And today, Angela Merkel carries with her that misplaced sense of guilt towards Moscow when she and Hollande will meet Putin today to carve out a so-called peace deal that will be in favour of Putin and against the interests of Ukraine. Yet again has Putin's trojan Minsk proposals succeeded in expanding the growing gulf between the US and the EU on how to support Ukraine against the Russian army invading their country.

 This sudden flurry of diplomatic 'urgency' on the part of Merkel and Hollande has, in no doubt, being brought about by the possible imminent supply of arms to Ukraine by President Obama.

BBC News Broadcast 5th February 2015

 Senator McCain, in particular, is under no illusions that without supplying Ukraine with the necessary military equipment with which to confront the expanding Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine, Putin will ultimately be able to have his land-bridge between Russia and 'annexed' Ukrainian Crimea, together with annexing eastern Ukraine itself.

BBC News Broadcast 5th February 2015

 

Mindful of how Putin is militarising eastern Ukraine, and is poised to fully invade Ukraine with his large army camped on the border between Russia and Ukraine, NATO has created a 'spearhead' defence force to protect the vulnerable NATO countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria against Russian forces. It is the biggest defence reinforcement of NATO since the Cold War.

Yet even with respect to NATO, Merkel seems to be singing from the same hymn-sheet as Putin.

"Not only has Merkel opposed NATO supplying weapons to Ukraine, she has also gone so far as to oppose the stationing of NATO forces further east on the territory of the alliance’s newer members so as to reassure them in the face of the new Russian aggression. To justify this stance, she has formulated a dubious interpretation of a clause in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, which stated that NATO would not station “permanent” forces in the new member countries in the “current and foreseeable security environment.”" (ibid James Kirchick)

If Merkel is dancing to the tune of the German public's wide and deep sympathy for Russia (Russland-Versteher, or “Russia understander), then Hollande is simply marching to the tune of the Socialist and Radical Left Party in France. After all, it was they who nominated him as their candidate in the 2012 French presidential elections.

Where the sympathy of the Germans for Russians stem from WWII, the French have always had a starry-eyed view of Russia since the times of Catherine the Great. Added to which, of course, there is all that trade between France and Russia.

Thus, the meeting to-day in Moscow between Putin, Merkel, and Hollande is really a sort of 'fraternal meeting' between 'comrades in arms'.  Putin will play on Merkel's guilt, and on Hollande wanting to get those billions for those warships sold to Russia, and that are still hanging about in a French port, thanks to sanctions.

                Putin                                   Merkel                            Hollande

But what about Putin himself?

Enter Russia's Ultra Nationalist, Alexander Dugin, who functions as Putin's Rasputin.

Alexander Dugin

Putin's mind-set will be encompassed by Dugin's philosophy, which was the driving conceptual force behind his initiative for the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

Dugin's philosophy,

" ... focuses on the restoration of the Russian Empire through the unification of Russian-speaking territories, which roughly corresponds to the former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Ukraine, and unification with Russian-speaking territories, especially eastern Ukraine and Crimea" (Wikipedia)

With this in mind what, exactly, does Merkel and Hollande think that they will achieve at today's meeting with Putin? A ceasefire in eastern Ukraine? A handover of Crimea back to Ukraine?

As the old saying goes, "Pigs will fly".

(to be continued)