His intention, in hindsight, was clear enough, many months before the invasion. So it seemed to Mr. Eltchaninoff, the French writer. “The religion of war had installed itself,” he said. “Putin had replaced the real with a myth.”
But why now? The West, Mr Putin had long concluded, was weak, divided, decadent, given over to private consumption and promiscuity. Germany had a new leader and France imminent elections. A partnership with China was cemented. Poor intelligence convinced him that Russian troops would be greeted as liberators at least in large parts of eastern Ukraine. Covid-19, Mr Bagger said, “had given him a sense of urgency, which time was pressing.”
Mr Hollande, the former president, had a simpler explanation: “Putin was drunk with his success. He has won hugely in recent years.” In Crimea, in Syria, in Belarus, in Africa, in Kazakhstan. “Putin says to himself, ‘I progress everywhere. Where am I in retreat? Nowhere!'”
That is no longer the case. In one fell swoop, Mr Putin strengthened NATO, put an end to Swiss neutrality and German post-war pacifism, united an often fragmented European Union, stifled the Russian economy for years to come, provoked and, on the contrary, strengthened a mass exodus of educated Russians. what he denied ever existed, in a way that will prove indelible: the Ukrainian nation. He has been outsmarted by the agile and courageous Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a man he mocked.
“He has undone the achievements of his presidency in an instant,” said Mr Gabuev, the senior fellow of Carnegie Moscow now in Istanbul. For Mr. Hollande: “Mr. Putin has committed the irreparable.”
It is certainly not easy to think of a way back. President Biden has called Mr Putin a “brutal”, a “war criminal” and a “murderer”. Still, the Russian leader retains deep support reserves in Russia and tight control over its security services.
It is well known that power corrupts. An immense distance seems to separate the man who won the Bundestag in 2001 with a conciliatory speech and the furious leader who berates the West-seduced “national traitors” who “cannot live without foie gras, oysters or the so-called sex liberties”, such as he put it this month in his scum-and-traitor speech If nuclear war remains a distant possibility, it is much less distant than it was a month ago – a topic of regular table talks across Europe as Mr Putin pursues “de-nazification” from a country whose leader is Jewish.
