In a matter of weeks, two alleged emperors will decide what will be from Ukraine and the Ukrainians. One of them, the ‘showman’ Donald Trump knows how to prevail flooding the political ecosystem with messages. The other, the ‘agent’ Vladimir Putin saddleand dominate these summits doing the opposite: absorbing all the information of others and dispersing yours with droppers. That is why Trump has made concessions before sitting while trying to elaborate a plan, and Putin is now updating the same usual plan without having given a single track or commitment.
Trump wants get rid of Ukraine, Putin wants take charge her: More than a negotiation, it is an auction of 37 million Ukrainians. Putin’s imperial movements seem from another era. But seen from Moscow there are reasons to do so, because we have always lived in it.
Since Europe, consolidate democracies (and democratic empires as the EU) proved to be a way to avoid more wars. In authoritarian regimes such as Russia or Belarus, state oppression is presented as a war vaccine: the war that the alleged enemies are continually plotting and does not occur.
The scheme of each party was comfortable for the opposite part: in Europe there was no Napoleon or Hitler dreaming of attacking Russia, and in Russia nobody wanted to be attacked. But upon entering the second decade of the century, Russia, the country that felt besieged, ended up besieging her neighbor. Now the ghosts of the past push Europe to a war, it is not yet known what size. The apparent Russian imperial ambition has wicker in history. Putin is simply testing what worked other times.
Sacrifice borders of others to save their own: it goes wrong
In 2014 Putin took Crimea. It seemed serious enough to Europe to impose sanctions, but too dangerous to assemble Ukraine seriously. In 2022 Putin launched a mass invasionto Europe it seemed serious enough to assemble Ukraine, but too dangerous to take sides by giving him what he needs.
After World War II, the West validated the areas of influence in Europe as a formula to avoid another war. Moscow managed to extend that model until 1989. In 2014, Europe tolerated annexations, in exchange for dodging a war.
These areas of influence in central Europe with limited sovereignty (together with a divided defeated Germany) were tacitly accepted after the world contest as the formula of maintaining peace. Unprotected Europe, the Kremlin project is to recover part of these areas of influence, which (together with a defeated and divided Ukraine) will incarnate peace again. For a generation, the dictatorship will be seen again as a medicine.
Confuse the absence of war with peace
When The EU was extended to the east some Europeans became part of the Union other than most members: For western Europe, the end of war was the end of threats to freedom. For Central Europe – which for Spain – the end of the war brought robust dictatorships.
Putin knows that Europe has consented minor wars to avoid major wars. When Putin lashes a major war, the dilemma will be between a capitulation or nuclear war. The EU does not have an answer today.
USA He competed with the USSR and tried to contain it: he fought in remote lands to which they emulated his political project, challenged Moscow to an armed career and then to a disarmament, spoke and spoke against the Kremlin … but did not intervene in the European dictatorships that formed the Russian backyard. Putin wants to return to that place, in which the two powers growl but respect their gray areas and the slaves are not stolen. And Trump has entered that fable.
Russia is an exporter of the past: to blow the type of country that you were
The USSR raised an aggressive future: with the export of the revolution abroad, the rich would lose property, atheist governments would rule on societies that had always been Christian and the difficult neighborhood relations that had prevailed from the medievo would be neutralized by the baton of Moscow.
On the contrary, the Russia of Putin Enarbola now an aggressive past: It is no longer about transforming countries into what were never, but to prevent them from ceasing to be what they embodied in the past. Ukraine has been a corrupt countryin the hands of rulers who cheated everyone but Moscow, divided between this and west, with A clientele system of Russia and oblivious to any European integration. Through the use of weapons, they want to return to that place.
That is why Putin protects the countries that do not change – alxander Lukashenko has been in power since 1994, without giving any option to the opposition and with an economy tied to Russia – and attacks the neighbors who change the most like Ukraine and Georgia. The Minsk government is a guarantee that there will be no changes and that is why it is protected by Moscow. kyiv’s governments are a constant change and that is why Ukraine has been militarily attacked by Russia.
The fear of war empowers that he does not fear it
The problem for Putin’s imperial plans is that demography does its job and in Ukraine there are less and fewer people who remember those years. At some point in the last decade control the Ukrainians was not enough, and now to keep the country in their eternal place it is necessary to kill them.
And the same goes for central Europe. Putin reached almost 40 years working on a mission: conditioning the life of the East Germans, helping Moscow to control central Europe. Now in Central Europe and there are people who have turned 40 without having hardly memories of being conditioned by Moscow. The world that some remember, is the only one that has understood Putin. Trump symbolizes that world return where the big ones have no partners but subjects, and Europe is still in the vignette of the Pacific and open continent where size does not define fights or relationships.
If the war is impossible, if the war is unthinkable, if the war is undesirable, if the war is the last resort, Europe has nothing to respond to the war of others. The EU, built on peace, forgot the war. Russia, stuck in authoritarianism, divinizes victory to a religious level. During these years, Europe, fearful of the military conflict, has been passively empowered to which its regime had been strengthened around the memory of the last battle. But after the last war, the war of others comes.