The Economist - UK (2022-02-19)

16 The Economist February 19th 2022
BriefingThe Ukraine crisis

“T

he boss never  works  to  someone

else’s  timetable,”  Margarita  Simo­

nyan,  editor­in­chief  of  the  propagandist

television network rt, posted to a channel

on Telegram, an encrypted messaging ser­

vice on February 15th. She was responding

to Western media reports that America ex­

pected Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president,

to launch an invasion of Ukraine at 04:

Moscow  time  the  following  morning.  Ms

Simonyan delighted in predicting that they

would be wrong footed. 

“We showed everyone what we wanted

to  show,”  she  continued,  suggesting  that

the conclusions spooks, think­tankers, ac­

ademics and journalists are drawing from

the unprecedented availability of high­res­

olution  satellite  images  of  Russia’s  build

up were open to careful stage management

(see subsequent story). At the end of all the

bragging, though, came the threat: Russian

tanks could go back to the border as fast as

they might be leaving it. 

In “The 48 Laws of Power”, a bestselling

self­help  book  by  Robert  Greene  reported

to have a following among convicts, Law 

encourages  the  reader  to  “Keep  others  in

suspended  terror:  Cultivate  an  air  of  un­

predictability”.  It  is  a  thuggish  lesson  in

which  Mr  Putin  has  needed  no  tuition

since his formative years in the kgb. 

On  February  15th,  the  day  after  Sergei

Lavrov,  Russia’s  foreign  minister,  publicly

told Mr Putin there was still scope for ne­

gotiations,  in  particular  arms­control  ne­

gotiations, with the West, Russia’s defence

ministry  announced  it  would  pull  back

some  troops  from  the  Ukrainian  border.

Later  that  day  the  State  Duma,  Russia's

Kremlin­controlled  parliament,  called  on

the president to recognise the “people’s re­

publics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian­

backed  self­declared  statelets  in  the  Don­

bas region of Ukraine. 

Some  thought  this  was  Mr  Putin’s  way

of  declaring  victory  and  backing  down.

Though  the  Duma’s  motion  had  been  in­

troduced by the rump Communist Party, it

had  been  overwhelmingly  endorsed  by

representatives  of  Mr  Putin’s  United  Rus­

sia,  parliamentarians  not  noted  for  inde­

pendence of spirit. By recognising the sta­

telets—and thus their claims to the parts of

the  Ukrainian  oblasts  of  Donetsk  and  Lu­

hansk that they do not control (see map)—

Russia would establish a formal territorial

disagreement  on  which  to  pin  its  dispute

with  Ukraine.  It  would  also  in  effect  have

annexed more of its territory; in practice it

already controls the statelets, but now they

would  be  allies  where  Russia  could  garri­

son its forces quite blatantlyas a “defence”

against  purported,  perhaps  invented,  ag­

gressions. On February 17th Russian media

reported  fighting  on  the  contact  line  in

Donbas.  Mr  Putin’s  flack  said  Ukraine’s

“provocative actions” had intensified.

But  at  an  afternoon  press  conference

with  the  visiting  German  chancellor,  Olaf

Scholz,  Mr  Putin  indicated  that  although

he would take the parliamentary vote into

account  he  was  not  minded  to  follow

through on it—at least not yet. Though he

continues  to  hold,  ridiculously,  that  Uk­

raine is prosecuting “genocide” in Donbas,

for now, he says, the best way of resolving

that problem is for Ukraine to abide by the

“Minsk  accords”  of  2014­15,  which  would

require  it  to  grant  the  rebellious  statelets

an as­yet­undefined autonomy within Uk­

MOSCOW

Whatever Vladimir Putin does next, his willingness to threaten war has changed

the nature of his regime irreversibly and to Russia’s disadvantage

A grim look out

→Alsointhissection

19 Watching the border