We cannot demand that a columnist be perfect, but we have the right to demand that he be honest.
Perfection would be that he was never wrong. Unreasonable.
Honesty is that he admits it when he is wrong. Within reason.
I was mistaken.
Mistake
On January 29, I wrote that Putin would not invade Ukraine because he was too realistic, because he knew the bite would be too big to swallow.
He had learned, I assumed, the lessons of the Russian debacle in Afghanistan.
It threatens, I said, so that Ukraine remains docile and stops getting closer to the West.
Yeah…
The Russian debacle is humiliating, mind-blowing.
Russian soldiers abandon brand new tanks, refuse to fight, dress as civilians and disappear into thin air.
Will you at least allow me to say that I was not alone in error?
Until the last minute, many Western intelligence services did not believe in this invasion.
Honestly, even though I didn’t write it, I also didn’t think the performance of the Russian military would be so pitiful.
We’re still talking here about the army that once repelled Hitler almost single-handedly before the United States and others rushed into battle.
Notice that the most surprised has to be Putin himself.
He discovers today, like me, like the whole world, that the most impressive army of all to make parades is an army of operetta, badly trained, badly equipped, badly directed and totally demotivated.
How could he have made such a reading mistake?
For the same reasons as so many dictators: they are surrounded by frightened courtiers who tell him what he wants to hear.
They are therefore cut off from reality.
In 1945, when Berlin was surrounded and the end was inevitable, Hitler’s generals still dared not tell him the truth and fueled his fantasies.
Besides, honestly, who thought Western solidarity would be so enduring?
And above all, who thought that the Ukrainians had such reserves of bravery?
We have become cynical. Our era has become cynical.
When a leader appeals to sacrifice, to greatness, to History, to all that is noble, many sneer, look for trickery, suspect a scam.
The Ukrainian people teach us a lesson for eternity, a real one.
Desperate
At bay, Putin mobilizes civilians who do not want to fight, organizes crazy referendums, threatens to use nuclear weapons.
He is going all out because, like a mafia boss, he knows he cannot aspire to a peaceful retirement.
His end is likely to be brutal because he has made too many enemies and no one will protect him if he falls.
Is its nuclear threat real? No one knows what’s going on in his head, as the past few months have shown.
Let’s beware, however, of a little embarrassment: nuclear weapons have only been used twice in history… by the United States.