The news is good for the Russian despot. His persistence in the Ukrainian affair is beginning to bear fruit. When he launched his tanks there, a little over two years ago, Vladimir Putin tragically underestimated the resistance potential of a people led by a comedian who we would simply never imagine as a war leader. Putin also counted on the indiscipline of one organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (ON THAT), who was just declared “brain dead” by the French president. His invasion brought the alliance out of a coma, making it more active than ever, bringing in two new members, Sweden and Finland.
Anyone other than him would have recognized that he had gone too far and would be actively looking for a way out. But Putin is stubborn, which is another word for “resolute” or “resilient.” Since several months, eating up the village here on the front linethe village there, exhausts the Ukrainian army itself without ammunition, while on its side, along with Iranian, North Korean and Chinese weapons, it can count on a people accustomed to scarcity and resigned to the fact that its economy primarily serves the war effort. .
Putin has always steered toward a key date on the wartime calendar: November 2024. The US presidential election could change everything. Donald Trump re-elected, American aid to Ukraine will suddenly stop, Europe will not be able to take over on its own. Trump has repeatedly announced that he will solve the problem within 48 hours. He has a formula: offer Putin to keep all the conquered territory.
Those who have already negotiated with the Russians know the rest. They will say yes, but only if we give them more. In this case: probably the entire territory along the Black Sea, up to Odessa. If the president Volodymyr Zelensky refuses, the Russians will occupy it and, having swallowed this, assess whether they should push further. The Ukrainian drama will therefore play out in the American ballot boxes. If the election were today, Trump would easily be elected.
The Russian dictator sees much bigger than Ukraine. At home and in the world. And there is time. Stalin’s record for longevity – 30 years – is within reach. Re-elected (sic) last Marchat the end of his mandate, in 2030, he will turn 31e year in power and, if his health serves him – he will be 77 years old – nothing will prevent him from running again until 2036.
Tons of documents, Kremlin Leaks, published in February, show the extent of the propaganda apparatus deployed internally – and in the occupied territories of Ukraine – to promote its policies. Approximately fifteen organizations employing 4,300 employees have a budget of $880 million to spread the dominant ideology. This ranges from patriotic TV series to youth organizations and design video games. My favorite: the players are part of a special Russian unit that is thinking about repelling an alien offensive. But they find that aliens are the products of an American military experiment gone wrong.
Extolling Russian virtues is one thing, but it is important to devalue the competing currency: Western democracy. By portraying her as decadent and corrupt, of course, but above all by pushing all possible buttons to make her truly dysfunctional. Russia’s online intervention in favor of Trump during the 2016 election amply demonstrated this, and the Russian apparatus has never stopped adding salt to all the wounds shared by democratic societies.
Of course, the KGB worked on this during the Cold War, but without the computer tools used now. What has been new for two years now is the coordination with Beijing in the spread of false anti-Western news in NATO countries and its massive spread in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia that are predisposed to believe everything misunderstood about the former colonizers.
File just posted on this topic Atlantic gives an example of Russian fake news concerning the discovery, at the time of the Ukrainian invasion, of secret American laboratories producing bat viruses for military use. Not only has the pro-Trump American right spread this nonsense to the point where one in four Americans believe it, but China has also repeated it on all of its networks. Information generated by Moscow and Beijing is regularly presented in southern countries as proven, indisputable.
European intelligence services, whose statements are obviously subject to caution, reported this month that the Russian offensive goes beyond the Internet and takes direct action. Russian services, directly or indirectly, are suspected of setting fire to a British ammunition warehouse destined for Ukraine in April, of causing an explosion at a similar warehouse in the Czech Republic, and of setting fire to the factory of a German company that exports military equipment to Kiev. More than 160 firefighters were mobilized.
The activity extends beyond the Ukrainian issue itself. According to European services, the desire to harm the normal course of affairs in the West is part of the strategy. The Swedes suspect the Russians of having organized a series of train derailments. The Czechs hold them responsible for sabotaging their railway signaling system. In Estonia, they are credited with sabotaging the cars of ministers and journalists. Lithuanians hold them responsible for disruptions to the GPS service used by civilian aircraft.
According to analyst Keir Giles of Chatham House in London, “these targeted attacks are intended to disrupt society, but also to gauge our reactions. These are tests.”