Putin woke up a sleeping giant in Europe

BERLIN – I have been writing nonstop about the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded on February 24, but I confess it took us to come to Europe and meet politicians, diplomats and businessmen here to fully understand what happened.

See, I thought that Vladimir Putin had invaded Ukraine.

I was wrong.

Putin had invaded Europe.

I shouldn’t have done that.

This may be the biggest act of madness in a European war ever since Adolf Hitler invaded Russia in 1941.

I only fully understood this when I got to this side of the Atlantic.

It was easy to assume from afar – and probably easy for Putin to assume – that Europe would eventually come to terms with Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, just as Europe has come to terms with its own. devour Ukraine Crimean peninsula in Ukraine in 2014, a remote piece of land where it met with little resistance and caused limited shock waves.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

This invasion, with Russian soldiers indiscriminately bombing Ukrainian apartment buildings and hospitals, killing civilians, ransacking homes, raping women and creating the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, is increasingly seen as a repeat of the Russian attack. rest in the 21st century of Europe, which began in September 1939 with the German attack on Poland.

Add to that Putin’s apparent threat to use nuclear weaponswarning that any country that interfered in its unprovoked war would face “consequences it has never seen,” and it explains it all.

It explains why, practically overnight, the government of Germany given up on nearly 80 years of conflict aversion and keeping the defense budget as small as possible, instead announcing a huge increased military spending and plans to send weapons to Ukraine.

Explain why, practically overnight, Sweden and Finland abandoned for more than 70 years neutrality and applied for membership of NATO.

Explain why, practically overnight, Poland he stopped playing with the pro-Putin and anti-immigrant populist Victor OrbanPrime Minister of Hungary, and opened his borders to more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees at the same time as he became a critical land bridge to channel NATO weapons into Ukraine.

Explain why, practically overnight, the European Union undone years of creeping economic sanctions on Russia and fired a missile economic sanctions precision right at the heart of Putin’s economy.

In short, what I thought was just a Russian invasion of Ukraine turned into a European earthquake:

“An awakening, boom! – And then everything changed ”, as she told me Joshka Fischer, former German foreign minister.

“The former status quo will not return. You are seeing a big shift in Europe in response to Russia, not on the basis of American pressure, but because the Russian perception of the threat today is completely different:

we understand that Putin is not just talking about Ukraine, but about all of us and our path. of freedom. ”

Like it or not, Fischer added, modern Europe is now in “confrontation mode with Russia. Russia is no longer part of any European peace order “.

There was “a complete loss of confidence with Putin “.

Is there any question as to why?

Putin’s army is systematically destroying Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure with the apparent intention of not imposing Russian rule over these cities, communities and farms, but delete them they and their residents off the map and forcibly carry out Putin’s crazy claim that Ukraine is not a real country.

In the Davos World Economic Forum Last week I interviewed Anatoliy Fedoruk, the mayor of Bucha, Ukraine, the city where Russia is accused of killing dozens of civilians and leaving their bodies to rot on the street, or piled up in a mass grave in a cemetery, before the Russian troops were expelled.

“We have had 419 peaceful citizens killed in different ways,” Fedoruk told me.

“We did not have military infrastructure in our city. People were helpless. Russian soldiers robbed, raped and drank … I am really surprised that this is happening in the 21st century ”.

If that was the “shock” phase of this war, and it is still ongoing, the “shock” phase is something I have detected among European officials in Davos and Berlin.

To put it bluntly, while the United States of America seems to be falling apart, the United States of Europe – the 27 members of the European Union – surprised everyone, and above all to themselvesjoining in clenching fists, along with a host of other European nations and NATO, to block Putin’s invasion.

You could almost hear EU officials say:

“Wow, did we get that punch? Is it our fist?

Since February, the EU has imposed five penalty packages against Russia, sanctions that not only seriously harm Russia, but are also costly for EU countries
in terms of loss of business or increased costs of raw materials.

A sixth package, agreed on Monday, will be reduced 90% of oil imports of the EU from Russia by the end of this year and will also expel Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, from SWIFT, the key global banking messaging system.

Perhaps most impressive is the number of Ukrainian refugees that EU nations have been willing to host without much complaint.

There is an awareness that Ukrainian men are also fighting to defend them, so that EU nations can at least host their women, children and the elderly.

“They have the same health care, childcare and education as Poles,” Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, told me.

“Why not? They are working and paying taxes. The only thing they don’t have is the right to vote.”

Putin thought the EU would quickly split under his pressure, Morawiecki added, “but Putin was wrong. Europe is now a lot more united compared to before the war in Ukraine.

Putin, looking at all this, must ask himself:

“Is it a punch that I see coming towards me from the EU? It can not be! No, wait … it is! What’s going on here! I thought I had Germany in my pocket, bought and paid for with my cheap petrol. I never imagined that they would join Ukraine in this way and see my invasion of Ukraine as an attack on all of them. “

But that’s exactly what happened.

However, many in the EU are wondering how long they will be able to keep this painful punch.

It is a legitimate question.

“Putin is counting on the fatigue of the West,” Morawiecki said.

“He knows he has a lot more time because democracies are less patient with respect to autocracies.

It’s true.

Some EU leaders are already cheering for the president Joe Biden call Putin and explore the terms of a ceasefire.

Putin’s forces in eastern and southern Ukraine are now outflanking the Ukrainian army at various strategic intersections, firing round after round of rockets and heavy artillery.

They don’t need to be precise; they just need overwhelm to the Ukrainian forces with his big fat.

I hope that the Ukrainians can hold their position long enough to allow more advanced Western weapons to even get to the fight and that the EU sanctions against Russia really harm, so that the Ukrainians have a real influence with Putin everywhere negotiated agreement.

However, having said that, I couldn’t help but notice another theme that has been present in my conversations here.

It is belief that since this is so much Putin’s war, and because the barbarism of his forces in this war has been so criminal, while Putin remains in power in Moscow, it will be very difficult to trust Russia on anything related to Ukraine.

I have not heard anyone support regime change, but I have not heard anyone say that the West could return to normal with Russia without him.

All of which is to say that something very important with Putin has been broken here, and that will be a problem when we get to the negotiating table, as long as Putin leads Russia.

But Putin is a problem that the Russian people must deal with, not us.

c.2022 The New York Times Company