Yesterday, at the debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, the two candidates seemed to roughly agree on Russia. Yes, the attack on Ukraine is reprehensible, but after the war, we will have to work with Russia.
Certainly, but with which Russia? The one after Putin or the one with Putin?
Curiously, both candidates refused to convict Vladimir Putin.
As if it were possible, after this atrocious war of annexation, to resume relations with Putin’s dictatorial Russia, as if nothing had happened.
The two French candidates and Jean-Luc Mélenchon are seriously mistaken in refusing to condemn Poutine.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Putin will not be able to conquer all of Ukraine. He probably won’t be able to stay there either. For three reasons.
First, the Ukrainians are fighting like lions. Then, the Ukrainians receive more and more armament from outside, an armament of better quality than that of the Russians. Finally, the Russian army displayed its disorganization and its lack of preparation.
Shortages
If that wasn’t enough, the head of Russia’s Central Bank told the Duma on Monday that Russia had nearly exhausted its silver reserves. Factories are running out of spare parts. A shortage of manufacturing parts sets in. Inflation, which was 20% in the first quarter, should soon reach new heights.
In short, it looks increasingly likely that Putin is headed for defeat, despite his mighty army.
Under these conditions, how could he remain in power?
The situation is so difficult for Russia that Joe Biden was able today to go so far as to say that Putin would never win the war in Ukraine. So far, Biden’s predictions about the war in Ukraine have all come true.
Pussyfoot
But the French leaders do not dare to take a stand. They try to spare the goat and the cabbage.
Yet the political situation is simple and clear. Putin has imposed an abject dictatorship on his country and he is trying to reconstitute the power of Russia through a new policy of expansionism, under the pretext of an imaginary threat from NATO.
To be convinced of Putin’s drift, it suffices to imagine what Russian democratic leaders would have done if they had not been assassinated. The face of Europe would have been changed and that of the world too.
But instead of taking a strong stance as General de Gaulle probably would have done, French leaders are hesitant to condemn Putin.
No wonder the French are ambivalent about their leaders.
Yet Putin is finished. And if, by some miracle, he gets away with it politically, then he will be the one to claim, because Russia will have to pay reparations and it will have to be rebuilt economically.