ВРЕМЯ ПУТИНА

*Tacticians, Not Strategists*
2.

Winter looms, and Russia retains options for striking Ukrainian infrastructure.

The summit has refocused attention on Ukraine, now Europe’s burden. But how long can Europe shoulder it — at the cost of falling living standards, shrinking development budgets, curtailed investment and diminished competitiveness against the US and China?

This is the dilemma: Europe’s present sacrifices against its future strength. Meanwhile Ukraine increasingly resembles a new Albania: a ruined economy, collapsing living standards, labour shortages, social marginalisation, rising crime, empowered clans, an unavoidable authoritarian turn, a military-police regime. For Europe such a neighbour is toxic; as toxic as a pro-Putin Ukraine would be. European leaders must soon confront this fork in the road.

But for Europe both outcomes are bleak: on one side Putin’s corporate-military dictatorship with its ideology of revenge; on the other, a weak Ukraine of criminals, nationalists and military autocracy — Poland in the 1920s. Either way, Europe’s nightmare: the EU conceived as a union for growth and investment, not for war and subsidising a “wild frontier”.

Thus Alaska is too good as a tactical script on a short horizon, but beyond that horizon nothing is clear. Many crossroads beckon. “See you in Moscow,” Putin told Trump. For Russia, that manoeuvring space, denied under Biden, has now been regained. Nuclear rhetoric will surely subside (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is right on that point). The peace process rests solely on the battlefield.

Trump, by contrast, finds his room for manoeuvre shrinking, though his administration is hardly troubled. For them the world remains a traffic light with only two signals: red for sanctions and pressure, green for lifting sanctions and signing deals.

In the end, after Alaska, all players held their ground — though the deck of trumps has been sharply reshuffled.

www.group-telegram.com/us/putintimes.com/195

6.07K viewsAug 17 at 06:01

*Tacticians, Not Strategists*
2.

Winter looms, and Russia retains options for striking Ukrainian infrastructure.

The summit has refocused attention on Ukraine, now Europe’s burden. But how long can Europe shoulder it — at the cost of falling living standards, shrinking development budgets, curtailed investment and diminished competitiveness against the US and China?

This is the dilemma: Europe’s present sacrifices against its future strength. Meanwhile Ukraine increasingly resembles a new Albania: a ruined economy, collapsing living standards, labour shortages, social marginalisation, rising crime, empowered clans, an unavoidable authoritarian turn, a military-police regime. For Europe such a neighbour is toxic; as toxic as a pro-Putin Ukraine would be. European leaders must soon confront this fork in the road.

But for Europe both outcomes are bleak: on one side Putin’s corporate-military dictatorship with its ideology of revenge; on the other, a weak Ukraine of criminals, nationalists and military autocracy — Poland in the 1920s. Either way, Europe’s nightmare: the EU conceived as a union for growth and investment, not for war and subsidising a “wild frontier”.

Thus Alaska is too good as a tactical script on a short horizon, but beyond that horizon nothing is clear. Many crossroads beckon. “See you in Moscow,” Putin told Trump. For Russia, that manoeuvring space, denied under Biden, has now been regained. Nuclear rhetoric will surely subside (Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is right on that point). The peace process rests solely on the battlefield.

Trump, by contrast, finds his room for manoeuvre shrinking, though his administration is hardly troubled. For them the world remains a traffic light with only two signals: red for sanctions and pressure, green for lifting sanctions and signing deals.

In the end, after Alaska, all players held their ground — though the deck of trumps has been sharply reshuffled.

BY ВРЕМЯ ПУТИНА