Promising to retaliate against U.S. plans to station heavy arms in Poland and the Baltic states, 62-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to aim 40 more intercontinental ballistic missiles at Western targets. Putin’s Cold War heated up in 2008 when he marched the Red Army into Georgia’s Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. When former President George W. Bush yawned with his Vice President Dick Cheney, Putin learned a valuable lesson that the U.S. foreign policy at least with regard to Russia was a paper tiger. Six years later, Bush’s inaction invited Putin to seize Crimea March 1, 2014, blaming it on a Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-sponsored coup in Kiev, toppling the Kremlin-backed government of Viktor Yanukovich. Since Putin’s Crimean invasion, U.S-Russian relations hit a Cold War low, prompting punitive economic sanctions against Moscow.
Russia’s military build up in Ukraine’s Donbass region, backing pro-Russian separatists, demonstrated Moscow’s military superiority, but, more importantly, the U.S. and EU’s reluctance to confront Putin. “Russia is trying to react to possible threats with some sort of means but that’s it,” said Putin’s top foreign policy aid Yury Ushakov. Like most Russian actions, it’s explained as defensive in nature, despite its obvious offensive outcome. Annexing Crimea, seizing Ukraine’s sovereign land, can only be regarded as a direct attack on its territorial integrity. Ushakov explains the Kremlin’s actions as reacting to Western threats, when, in fact, the West feels threatens by Russia’s brazen actions in South Ossentia, Abkhazia and now Crimea and Southeastern Ukraine. Showing no signs of returning Crimea to Ukraine or getting out the Donbass region prompted the G8 to boot Russia out.
After ejected from the G8 March 24, 2014, Putin says he doesn’t need the Western alliance, opening Dec. 23, 2014 a new Eurasian Economic Union with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, all impoverished ex-Soviet states, Putin hoped to reduce the sting of getting tossed from the G8. “We are against any arms race because it naturally weakens our economic capabilities,” said Ushakov, yet defying common sense announcing new intercontinental ballistic weapons. Russia’s land army is the biggest and best equipped in European continent, prompting NATO and all participating countries to stand down. No one in NATO or the EU is remotely interested in confronting the Kremlin in Ukraine or elsewhere. “If some one puts some of our territories under threat, that means we will have to direct our armed forces and modern strike power at those territories, form where the threat emanates,” said Putin, blaming his aggressive response on Western provocation.
Coming out of the gate swinging, 62-year-old GOP presidential candidate former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush promised, if elected, to put his foot down with Putin. Without acknowledging his brother George, he hinted that he’d do things differently with Putin, calling the Russian leader a “bully.” While President Barack Obama’s been reluctant to confront Putin except through multilateral sanctions, Bush hinted at a more aggressive foreign policy when confronting the Kremlin. Putin view all global action against Russia as proof of a global conspiracy to emasculate Mother Russia. Bush correctly points out that Putin has been the aggressor seizing sovereign territory in foreign lands. Putin doesn’t see how his actions in Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia has former Soviet satellites and Warsaw Pact countries nervous about a possible Russian invasion, begging NATO for more military hardware.
Former 51-year-old oil billionaire Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Putin’s Cold War with the West serves the Kremlin’s propaganda needs. Focusing ordinary Russian on a fabricated Western threats, keeps all Russian eyes of widespread government corruption under Putin. “The problem is that Russia has no one to advance its true national interests,” Khodorkovsky said speaking in Switzerland. Arrested, charged, convicted of income tax evasion, Khodorkovsky spent 10 years in a Siberian prison before finally released in 2013 before the Sochi Winter Olympics. While Khodorkovsky lost billions, he socked enough away to continue living the good life in exile. When he threatened to challenge the presidency in 2003, Putin charged him with tax evasion and put him away. Khodorkovsky dreams in the Swiss Alps of a day when Putin no longer controls Russia.
Putin’s Cold War-like military build-up reflects increased isolation on the world stage. No longer part of the G8, Putin continues to supply oil and natural gas to the EU while essentially turning Russia into a pariah state. Showing no signs of returning Crimea or Southeastern Ukraine to Kiev’s pro-Western government of 49-year-old billionaire chocolate baron Petro Poroshenko, Putin has harmed the economy and foreign relations with the West. “A freezing of the conflict is the only reasonable expectation,” said Khodorkovsky, hoping a strong Western alliance can keep Putin from seizing more sovereign land in former Soviet satellites or Eastern Europe. Like Putin learned in Georgia, there’s no one in the U.S. or EU willing to confront his aggression Between now and the 2016 presidential election, Obama, like his counterparts in the EU, shows no interest in confronting Putin.
