Putin Is Operating on His Own Timetable, and It May Be a Long One [View all]

[Celerity]

The standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine could turn into a drawn-out and dangerous diplomatic slog toward a difficult settlement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/world/europe/ukraine-putin-russia.html



MOSCOW — The Ukraine crisis is here to stay. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is increasingly staking his legacy on reversing Ukraine’s pro-Western shift. Even if he does not order an invasion this winter, he is making clear that he will keep the pressure on, backed by the threat of force, for as long as it takes to get his way. But Ukraine’s leaders have so far refused to compromise on Mr. Putin’s terms, and the West sees the Kremlin’s demand for a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe as a nonstarter. That leaves the best-case scenario as a long and dangerous diplomatic slog toward a difficult settlement — a process that could consume Western resources and attention for many months.

President Emmanuel Macron of France, shuttling from Moscow to Kyiv to Berlin on Monday and Tuesday, described the coming days as crucial in the West’s bid to avert war. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, in some of his strongest comments yet, insisted that Russia would suffer “far-reaching consequences” if it attacked Ukraine. Mr. Putin has countered with a pledge to keep the “dialogue” going. It is a message that implies he would be deliberate in using his levers of influence and coercion to deal with the longstanding Russian grievances that the Kremlin appears newly determined to address.

Russia’s current military buildup around Ukraine is so extensive that Mr. Putin will have to decide in the coming weeks whether to order an invasion or pull some troops back, analysts say. But even if he draws them down, he will have other means to keep his adversaries on edge, like exercises of his nuclear forces, cyberattacks or future buildups. And if he does attack, the West’s current diplomatic scramble is likely to only intensify. “I expect we’ll have this crisis with us, in various forms, for all of 2022, at least,” said Andrei Sushentsov, dean of the school of international relations at MGIMO, the elite Moscow university run by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

He described the current standoff as only the first step in a drawn-out Russian effort to force the West to agree to a new security architecture for Eastern Europe. It was a characterization of the start of a more high-stakes phase in Russia’s yearslong conflict with the West that is gaining currency in Moscow’s foreign-policy circles. Russia’s aim, according to Mr. Sushentsov: keep the threat of war ever-present, and thus compel negotiations that Western officials have avoided until now. For too long, he said in an interview, people in Western Europe have been lulled into thinking that a new war on the continent was impossible. For Mr. Putin, that point of view needs to be changed, Mr. Sushentsov said, to compel the West to accept Russia’s demands.

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