VLADIMIR POUTINE. Moscow acknowledges that its military operation has been delayed in Ukraine, but Vladimir Putin is not giving up on his ambition to conquer kyiv. The master of the Kremlin does not hesitate to resort to Syrian reinforcements or nuclear threats to achieve his objectives.
[Mis à jour le 15 mars 2022 à 16h08] “Not everything is going as fast as we would like”. If not held in check, the Russian army is struggling to advance and take possession of the main cities of Ukraine. On March 14, the director of Russia’s National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, acknowledged difficulties and delays in Russian operations contrary to Moscow’s claims dated March 3 that “everything is going according to plan”. The Ukrainian resistance has been largely underestimated but Vladimir Putin does not intend to give up his ambitions of conquest, especially since he has promised himself to achieve his objectives “either by negotiation or by war”. The talks are organized and already have several rounds, the fourth is being held on Tuesday, March 15. Both sides, in particular Russia, say they see “progress” but these advances are invisible on the battlefields because at the time when the diplomats exchange it is a rain of bombardment which falls on Ukraine. The “progress” of the negotiations is difficult to interpret given the very different expectations of the two parties: Russia demands a demilitarization and a neutral status for Ukraine in relation to the European Union and the Atlantic Treaty Organization north (NATO) while Ukraine awaits a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops.
The return of Russian soldiers to Moscow is not on the program of the President of the Russian Federation. On the contrary, Vladimir Putin ordered the facilitation of the sending of “volunteer” fighters to the front alongside Russian forces. One way to give the green light to his Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, to call on the thousands of Syrian guerrillas ready to join the fighting. 400 of these fighters are already in position in the cities of Rostov, Russia, and Gomel, Belarus, to intervene according to the Ukrainian General Staff. This decision would only be a fair response to the formation of Volodymyr Zelensky’s “international legion” and the sending of “mercenaries” to kyiv by the “Western sponsors of the Ukrainian regime”, according to Vladimir Putin’s explanations. Another sign that the master of the Kremlin is not ready to abandon his projects for Ukraine: the spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov indicated on March 14 that “the Ministry of Defence, to ensure the security maximum number of civilian populations, does not exclude the possibility of taking total control of the large cities which are already surrounded”. The threats brandished by Vladimir Putin are once again “simply” military, but the nuclear risk is still on everyone’s mind, especially after the electrical incidents that occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As a reminder, Russia seized the famous power station on February 24, 2022 and the largest power station in Europe, that of Zaporizhia, on March 4, but assured that it was “not in its intention” to attack these sites. Can we really believe the words of the master of the Kremlin who has already mentioned the nuclear threat?
Can Vladimir Putin launch a nuclear attack?
The Russian Federation is the first military power and the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, as such it is fully capable of launching a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, Europe or the United States. Only technical capabilities are not the only factor to consider. In theory, a nuclear attack should only be launched in a defensive context and in October 2020, Moscow signed an official document which lists the four cases that justify the use of a nuclear attack. Each time Russia must perceive not only threatening and nuclear capabilities but also intentions signaled by the adversary. It is therefore difficult to justify an attack against Ukraine with a nuclear bomb, the country not being nuclearized. On the other hand, against Europe the threat remains serious because according to Russia’s account of the war, the West adopts a threatening behavior and proliferates “aggressive declarations” with regard to the Kremlin.
Strategically, the nuclear threat is the last advantage that Moscow has to achieve its objectives and regain control of Ukraine given the difficult advances of the Russian army in Ukraine and the pressures and sanctions that the West is bringing to bear on Russia. . Yet Vladimir Putin knows that if he launches a nuclear attack on Europe or the United States, Russia will be bombed back and, having attacked first, it will get the wrong part and be further isolated from international politics. . According to Nicolai Sokov, an expert on Russian nuclear weapons at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, contacted by France 24“the use of the nuclear threat in the context of this conflict is a terrible mistake that will do great harm to Russia and Vladimir Putin”.
Not content with agitating the nuclear threat, Vladimir Putin seized two nuclear power plants in Ukraine, Chernobyl and Zaporijjia, the second thanks to a bombardment. The control of the sites gives the president a certain ascendancy because the risks represented by the explosion of a power plant are unparalleled. But Vladimir Putin assured Emmanuel Macron that it was “not his intention” to attack the power plants and that, on the contrary, he was ready “to respect the standards of the IAEA for the protection of the power plants”.
Does Vladimir Putin decide alone to launch a nuclear attack?
The “nuclear briefcase” is held by three people and the trio must be unanimous to trigger a nuclear attack. Vladimir Putin, as President of the Russian Federation, has access to this weapon but he must obtain the agreement of the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, and the Chief of the General Staff, Valéri Guérassimov, to drop a nuclear bomb.
Vladimir Putin, Russian President or Dictator?
It is with an iron fist that Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for almost 20 years but it is to an absolute control of the opposition and of the elections that he owes the renewal of his place in the Kremlin. And while Russia has unleashed a war in Ukraine, the president forbids anyone in the country and especially the media from using the terms “war”, “bombing” or “civilian death”. To ensure the control of information, Vladimir Putin demanded the adoption of an emergency law, on March 4, making it possible to punish by 15 years of imprisonment the author or the broadcaster of “false information on the ‘army’ and three years in prison for all ‘calls to impose sanctions on Russia’. Since March, arrests have skyrocketed in Russia and videos of activists opposing the war in Ukraine are flooding social media.
Such control revives the debate on the position of Vladimir Putin, officially president of the Russian Federation but sometimes closer to a dictator. The international community is not unanimous on this point, the United States does not hesitate to qualify the head of state as a dictator while Europe is wiser. The French presidency refuses to appoint Vladimir Putin in this way to avoid breaking off the already difficult exchanges with the master of the Kremlin. Emmanuel Macron again reaffirmed on Tuesday March 15 from a Ukrainian refugee camp in France his aspiration to continue discussions with his Russian counterpart.
Putin rewrites Ukrainian history
It is indeed the rapprochement between the government of kyiv and NATO which is at the origin of this war started by Vladimir Poutine but the Russian president rewrites the history to have the beautiful role. In his speech of February 27, 2022, he explains that the Russian military intervention aims to “protect the victims of genocide by kyiv”, to “liberate” the Ukrainians from “oppression” and to “maintain the peace”. Earlier, on February 24, he declared that “Ukraine is not just a neighboring country, it is an integral part of our culture and the history of our country”. This vision of “unity” between Russia and Ukraine, often mentioned by the Head of State, justifies the Kremlin’s military intervention in the border country. Moscow does not hesitate to rewrite the history of the Soviet Union and of Ukraine created “from scratch by Russia, more precisely by communist, Bolshevik Russia”. History textbooks, however, describe a creation of Ukraine in 1910 by the USSR, when the empire wanted to organize the territories it controlled militarily, as reminded by the professor of geopolitics at the Sorbonne, Gérard-François Dumont , at West France.
Since the breakup of the USSR, sovereign Ukraine has moved away from Russia and instead moved closer to the West, much to Vladimir Putin’s chagrin. By seeking to justify the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine, the one nicknamed “the Russian bear” explains that he wants to “protect” the Ukrainian people from the “Nazis” in power. The reference refers to the stealth association between Ukraine and Nazi Germany during World War II after the German promise to help Ukrainians leave the USSR. Today the neo-Nazi parties still exist but are ultra-minority and absent from the government. According to Juliette Cadiot, director of studies at the EHESS interviewed by French Culture, the use of the term “Nazi” by Vladimir Putin serves to qualify all the nationalist policies that he tries to pass off as “a small, often corrupt neo-Nazi elite” to place himself as the savior of the Ukrainian people. Vladimir Putin’s river speech therefore describes a reality very different from that on the ground.
Short biography of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and a central figure in the executive since 1999. Re-elected President of the Russian Federation for the fourth time in 2018, he has held the position since 2000 with a short hiatus between 2008 and 2012 during which he was president of the government, the equivalent of the Prime Minister.
Vladimir Poutine was born in 1952 in Leningrad (currently Saint-Petersburg), in a modest family of workers. He studied law at the University of Leningrad and graduated in 1975. He then joined the KGB (the intelligence services, which he left in 1991) and became an officer. He was then sent to the GDR in 1985, where he worked undercover. After the reunification of Germany, Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990. When his former law professor, Anatoly Sobchak, was elected mayor of the city in 1991, he asked him to join the team as an adviser. Vladimir Putin became an influential member of the town hall and was appointed first deputy mayor in 1994, before resigning in 1996. Then began a rapid rise: he entered the presidential administration in 1997, was appointed Prime Minister by Boris Yeltsin in 1999, then became acting president after the latter’s resignation that same year.
He was elected President of the Russian Federation in 2000, then re-elected in 2004. He gave more power to the security services while regaining control over the governors in the various regions. It enjoys fairly strong popularity, even if civil society (media, opponents) is increasingly controlled by the state. In 2008, he cannot stand for a third consecutive term. He then chose Dmitri Medvedev to occupy the post of president and was elected prime minister. In March 2012, despite many protesting voices, he was re-elected for a six-year term while Medvedev held the post of Prime Minister.