Russian Ukraine crisis: How West let Putin play game of divide and conquer

Unable to imagine how to deal with someone who lives outside their bubble, policymakers in the world’s capitals are letting the Russian regime play a game of divide and conquer.

Let’s be clear about two things right from the start — One, the immediate cause of the crisis in Ukraine is solely the fault of Vladimir Putin and his desire to win back territories he feels were cruelly stripped off Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.

And two, none of this would be happening if the West were not burdened with the worst, most self-serving, and frankly most ignorant elite in 100 years.

Trapped in a clubby world of thinktanks and forums, given to lofty statements about gender and climate change and with a knowledge of history that stops at Saving Private Ryan, the West’s leadership class has no idea what to do when a leader steps out of the systems they have put in place to govern the world.

President Joe Biden announces sanctions against Russia from the East Room of the White House on February 22. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Having put all their faith in a rules-based order committed to open societies and material progress, they cannot manage when a world leader walks away from all the Davos niceties and goes their own way.

This is doubly true when it is someone like Putin, who not only presents as a heavily armed thug — and thugs, after all, can be reasoned with — but also as a mystic of patriotic nationalism who talks of Russia’s “spiritual space” (something which today’s Buddha-by-the-pool elite cannot begin to grapple with).

It is telling that it took a good day after Putin rolled in the tanks before the Biden White House – one hesitates to say Joe Biden, singularly, given his obvious decline – managed to call Putin’s actions out as an “invasion”.

Is it any wonder that an ex-KGB man like Vladimir Putin thinks he has our number?

A satellite image shows a new deployment, material support and troops, near Belgorod in Russia.

Or that the world is now paying the price for letting Joe Biden be dragged over the line, Weekend at Bernie’s-style, by a coalition of media and Big Tech types who were determined to bury any news that might get in the way of evicting Donald Trump from the White House?

Hunter Biden’s laptop? Dodgy dealings with Ukraine and China? Fake news, we were told.

Now, little more than a year after his inauguration and just months after America’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, Moscow is carving off parts of Ukraine for its own.

And why not?

Just one month ago, the US president signalled to Putin that, well, if he only went to first base with invasion of Ukraine it would – probably – not be that big a deal.

“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Mr Biden said.

And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”

Is it too soon to suggest that none of this would be happening had last November’s presidential election gone the other way?

Civilians, with their belongings, queue in front of the gate of a train compartment to flee to the Rostov region, in the self-proclaimed so-called Donetsk People's Republic. Picture: Getty

Remember that Trump, whom we were told even before he took the oath of office was a dangerous lunatic who would tweet America into World War III, presided over four years of what seem now like envious peace and stability.

And it was the same elite cliquishness which saw Trump scorned as a threat to world peace that also elevated the likes of Germany’s Angela Merkel to a sort of secular saint.

“Mutti”, or “Mother” Merkel as she was dubbed, presided over the winding down of Germany’s energy self-sufficiency and its increasing dependence on Russian natural gas to keep the lights on and homes heated through that country’s freezing winters.

If you want to know why the European reaction to Putin’s bullying has been so ill-organised, then as the saying goes look no further than the horse called self-interest.

None of this is a new phenomenon.

Go back to the end of the Cold War, look at a map, and consider Russian history for all of about two seconds.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during an event marking the 300th anniversary of Russian prosecution service on January 12. Picture: AFP

Anyone sitting in the chair in Moscow — be they an autocrat like Putin or a more liberal alternative — would see the idea of expanding NATO up into Russia’s south-western flank as a real challenge, if not humiliation.

Yet weirdly the West decided that figuratively sticking the boot into the defeated was actually a good idea in the long run.

Now that the tables are turned we are stuck with Putin playing the West like a fiddle, or balalaika if you prefer.

The New York Times in a rare moment of clarity described Putin’s behaviour as “a carefully choreographed day of building drama over the fate of Ukraine”.

Putin knows that the West, ultimately, has a pretty low risk threshold.

He has seen embassies flee Kiev and the US publicly planning to evacuate Ukraine’s leadership if a full-scale overland invasion occurs.

He also knows Germany needs Russia’s energy, France needs to be seen as the statesmanlike broker of peace, and that Joe Biden – please, God – needs to avoid yet another catastrophe.

Whatever the White House Press Office’s lines about the world rallying to the cause of Ukraine, Putin knows the reality is far different.