With the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts, Putin wants to feign success, spread fear and create facts. The latter will only succeed if the rest of the world plays along. It doesn’t look like that. Putin lives in a parallel world.
That’s how you used to do it as a king, emperor or tsar if you didn’t care about the fate of your subjects, and in the past it usually didn’t. You fabricated a claim on a country, invaded the country and, after victory, annexed it. That’s how it was back then, again and again, until Europe experienced such a horrible war that it was enough.
It’s not enough for one. Putin has fabricated a claim on Ukraine, he wants to wipe out the country, the Ukrainians and their language, as imperialists did in the days of imperialism. He only deviates from the script in one respect: he has not conquered the country he wants to erase from the map.
Putin may believe that annexing regions in eastern and southern Ukraine will change reality. But it doesn’t. If Ukraine attacks the Russian army standing there, then it is not attacking Russian territory. She liberates her own country.
Internal and external propaganda
Putin is likely to be pursuing three goals with the annexations, which are illegal under international law. Internal propaganda, external propaganda and the anticipation of a peace agreement:
- Putin wants to fool the Russian public into a success that Russia hasn’t had in this “special operation” for some time.
- Putin wants to scare the West and Ukraine. From a Russian point of view, Ukraine will not attack Russian-occupied territory in the future, but rather Russian territory. According to the Russian interpretation, the use of nuclear weapons could be justified. The only problem with this Russian view is that Putin does what he wants anyway. He doesn’t need reasons for his actions, there’s no one he has to justify himself to – a highly flimsy staging is enough for him. Long gone are the days when Putin took pains to lie.
- Finally, Putin wants to signal that he will not give up this territory in peace negotiations. For Ukraine, this signal means: nothing. There is nothing to suggest that Putin would be content with these four oblasts, that he would have given up his goal of conquering or destroying Ukraine.
Putin lives in a parallel world
According to a frequently quoted report According to the “New York Times” in March 2014, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel told then-US President Barack Obama that, after talking to Putin, she wasn’t sure whether he still had any connection to reality. Putin lives “in a different world,” she said. As is so often the case, Merkel’s analysis was to the point, even if her policies didn’t do it justice.
With his talk today, with the absurd sham referendums, with the signing of documents and votes in his parliament, Putin is trying to give the impression that everything is going right and orderly. It may be that the majority of Russians will buy that from him. It’s not your fault: you live in a country where truth and facts have no meaning. They live in a parallel world – Putin’s parallel world.
However, Putin can only change reality in the minds of his subjects. It is often said that internationally it is not Russia but the West that is isolated. But the also illegal annexation of Crimea have only States like North Korea, Afghanistan or Belarus accepted. It will be the same now. Unlike in previous centuries, there is now a far-reaching consensus that the borders of states will not be pushed back with violence and terror. What happened in Moscow today carries no more weight than the slobbering propaganda shows on Russian state television: It’s dangerous, but it has nothing to do with reality.