Putin laughs at sanctions

 Today's invasion of Ukraine shows the contempt in which the Russian president holds the sanctions which were meant to deter him from military action. He is certainly not impressed by the powder-puff measures announced by prime minister Johnson this week. So far from being "out in front" as he claimed at PMQs yesterday, Johnson trails well behind the USA. Indeed, one suspects that it was only president Biden's pressure which produced any action from the UK government. We should be grateful that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House, The UK measures target a few minor banks and individuals, but not the three biggest Russian banks which do business in London. Nor do they touch five prominent oligarchs identified by the ICIJ: Alisher Usmanov, Gennady Timchenko, Arkady Rotenberg, Yury Kovalchuk and Oleg Deripaska. Usmanov and Timchenko have escaped personal sanctions, though the US has sanctioned a couple of Timchenko's businesses. The rest are, or have been, on US sanctions lists, but not touched by the UK. Deripaska is particularly interesting as he has socialised with both Tory George Osborne and Labour's Peter Mandelson. Another name which has come up again in the last few days is that of Roman Abramovich, whose ownership of English Premier League club Chelsea was called into question.

Even if the most swingeing sanctions had been applied immediately, to the extent of beggaring his fellow-citizens (it is reported that the rouble has virtually halved in value in the last few days and fuel prices in Russia have soared), it is clear that Putin would still have gone ahead with his long-prepared plans. Recent descriptions of Ukraine as a non-state* and a creation of the West, echoed by his loyal followers, show that his ambition has always been more than supporting the Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the nation. Naval and military attacks on Mariupol and Odessa, cities outside the areas claimed by the separatists have confirmed that. 

In his long televised address to the Russian people on the occasion of recognising the breakaway statelets, he invoked the memory of Catherine the Great. (There was a mention of Lenin, but of no other Communist icon. Neither was there an invocation of the brotherhood of man, of workers across the world uniting, with which Stalin used to dress Soviet expansionism. It was a naked appeal to Russian nationalism.) Putin, now in his 70th year, clearly wants to go down in history as the man who restored the empire of 1796. Ominously, that includes the Baltic states and a slice of present-day Poland.

Economics is not going to deter him, even protests from his oligarch cronies. Only massive casualties on the scale of Afghanistan seem likely to turn the Russian people against him.

*China must be reluctant to support publicly Putin's recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk, because that would weaken her case against Taiwan's right to exist. However, if Putin establishes the concept that "the" Ukraine was always really a part of Russia, then China might come on board.