[Skybird]

The Tagesspiegel writes:




Whoever is surprised by Putin's invasion has not been paying proper attention



February 22, 2022, and the road to it will go down in the history books. In the early hours of the morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into the territory of Ukraine, thus upsetting the European peace order.

The meeting of the Russian Security Council on Monday in front of running cameras, the separatist leaders' request for recognition of the territories, Putin's signing of the relevant decrees, and finally the president's nearly hour-long angry speech - this grotesque spectacle was carefully choreographed and planned for a long time.

A week ago, when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke with Putin in the Kremlin about war and peace, the Russian head of state had apparently already made up his mind. On the same day, deputies of the State Duma called on the president to recognize the self-proclaimed "people's republics" in the Donbass - that was also part of this staging.

If you really want to understand Putin, the first thing you have to understand is that the Russian leader has only feigned willingness to talk in recent weeks. As is so often the case with Putin, it would have been enough to listen very carefully. Last summer, he wrote a long essay in which he tried to justify historically why Ukraine was not a separate state and why Russians and Ukrainians were in fact "one people. Putin once called the end of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. But those who have warned for years that he wanted to reverse that move, at least in part, were not taken seriously, especially in Germany.

The German government is now facing the shards of a Russia policy that, even after the annexation of Crimea and Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine, prayerfully relied on "dialogue" and "channels of communication."

It was the Germans and the French who brokered the Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015, and who continued to frantically cling to these agreements even when it had long been clear that they could not bring peace. Only a year after the Crimea annexation, the German government gave the green light to the Nord Stream 2 project, ignoring the fact that this pipeline could become a tool of Putin's geopolitical interests.

The troop buildup on Ukraine's borders began when the pipeline was completed and Russia no longer needed to rely on pipelines through the neighboring country. This is by no means a coincidence. Now Putin could move against Ukraine without regard to economic losses.

Russia's war in eastern Ukraine did not just begin on Monday night, when Russian troops, cynically declared by Putin to be "peacekeepers," rolled across the border. Russian soldiers have been fighting in the Donbass since as early as 2014. One of the West's mistakes was not to have said so openly. Anyone who is really surprised by Putin's actions today has not been paying proper attention over the past eight years.

The man in the Kremlin, on the other hand, has had twenty years to analyze the weaknesses of his Western partners. With the deployment of troops on the borders with Ukraine and the statements intercepted by Western intelligence services, he aroused fears of a major invasion by the Russian army.

The West has been preparing for this scenario. But the question of what to do in the event of a smaller Russian military action against Ukraine has unfortunately remained open in recent weeks.

Was it part of the Kremlin's calculation to get away with a secession, invasion and later annexation of the "people's republics"? However, Putin's speech on Monday evening, which only marginally dealt with the Donbass and in reality with the whole of Ukraine, speaks against this. A further military advance by Russian troops in Ukraine has not been averted, especially since the territories claimed by Moscow's puppets in the Donbass are significantly larger than their current sphere of influence.

A small sanctions package like after the annexation of Crimea will not be enough this time. How the West now responds to the challenge from Putin's Russia will also go down in the history books.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)