Putin’s voracious appetite is not sated

OzOped iloo 25.07.2014. Illustration: Eric Lobbecke.

UP until a week ago, I had never heard of Frans Timmermans, the Dutch Foreign Minister. He then delivered one of the great speeches of our times at the UN Security Council. It took real courage to make this speech in the wake of the weak, vacillating responses from practically all European leaders, including his own Prime Minister. You may well wonder how it is possible that the leader of a nation that lost almost 200 innocent lives in the MH17 disaster could caution us not to be too hasty in making our judgments.

It took days for German Chancellor Angela Merkel to say anything at all, and if you are waiting for strong responses from the Italians or the French, don’t hold your breath. Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved what no one — neither Stalin nor his cretinous successors of the old Soviet Union or new Russia — could achieve. He has conquered ­Europe without firing a shot in anger.

During the Cold War, the Russians literally went broke trying to win the arms race. From Moscow to the far-flung republics of Asia, under their domination they filled their silos with rockets capable of destroying every American and European city of any size or strat­egic value. They built a massive standing army bristling with the scariest modern weaponry. They rode roughshod over all in their domain. They funded wars and revolutions from Africa and Asia to Central and South America.

The Russians never did win the war but have scored a crushing victory in the peace. This owes nothing to those guns and rockets. It was built on the wonderful array of natural resources buried underneath Russian soil. Gas and oil proved to be by far the most successful weapons in Russia’s path to world power and influence.

The Netherlands lost all those innocent souls and still has been more than moderate in responding to the tragedy. When winter comes to Europe and the bitter cold chills the bones of its citizens, Russian gas and oil warms and sustains them. Networks of pipelines and the use of millions of tonnes­ of shipping keep that lifesaving gas coming. There is no quick or easy alternative, as most of Europe will steadfastly refuse to bucket Putin and his brutish separatists in Ukraine to anything like the degree they should.

While it is undoubtedly true that the further east you go in ­Europe the poorer the countries become, it is also true that in the incredibly unequal society Putin has engineered in Russia there are a few million very, very wealthy people. Whether they be indus­trialists or Russian mafia, the likelihood is that, like Putin, they will have antecedents in the KGB. They have unbelievable amounts of cash to splash around and that is exactly what they do.

Whole tracts of the French Riviera now belong to the Russians, in particular those associated with the mafia. France has got important economic reasons to go easy on Putin.

A big percentage of the gas that powers Germany comes from Russia, hence Merkel’s reluctance to join in the chorus of criticism.

The Italians export phenomenal amounts of luxury goods to Russia. In a nation that has had ­serious problems since the global financial crisis, export dollars are real gold for them.

These are just examples, but it doesn’t matter where you look: Putin wields enormous economic clout. The Europeans have been half-hearted at best when it comes to sanctions against Russia and, once the initial outrage has quietened down, they will rely on stern words and back them up with ­absolutely no action.

Meanwhile, at home, Putin is untouchable. Too many investigative journalists who have dared to cross him have ended up dead. If you are an opposition politician or industrialist and you take up the cudgels against him, you will be harassed at best and jailed at worst. Elections are a joke.

Putin is an absolute ruler who rules abso­lutely. It is one thing being a virtual dictator but it is another thing entirely to be popular. There is no doubt that a majority of his people support him. He has never needed to worry about elections because he would undoubtedly win a fair poll. This bloke, though, leaves nothing to chance. When he had served the maximum term, he put a puppet in his place, only to return after a constitutionally enforced sabbatical.

The Russian people will circle the wagons around their ­embattled hero and cry foul at ­foreign attempts to denounce him.

In Ukraine, the farce will continue. Progress could be made if there were a separatist army but none exists. Instead, armed bands of thugs allied to local warlords wage war against the Ukrainian government and anyone who ­opposes them. Jumped-up popinjays declare themselves prime ministers in places as big as Bathurst or Ballarat.

Against this backdrop, I have to wonder about how seriously we should take suggestions that foreign forces or peacekeepers should move in to guard a 50sq km crash zone. It took six days to get some of the bodies out. The site is now terribly degraded and not just by the bandits who have ripped weddings bands off the fingers of those innocent victims.

The warm weather and elements will be working against us when time is a significant enemy. It could take a long time to organise an international force, let alone to negotiate its entry into what can only be described as a hostile landscape. It is hard to imagine Putin backing off. It took him four days to utter a syllable after the crash and his diplomats around the world are still trying to blame Ukrainian government forces for firing this missile.

Having annexed Crimea without a whimper from the rest of the world, he will no doubt eventually annex a chunk of eastern Ukraine.

He has suffered a blow to his international prestige and his minions in eastern Ukraine are now seen by the world for what they are — a drunken armed rabble with no moral compass.

Nonetheless, time will work for Putin. As the memory of this tragedy recedes, his ambitions will return to the fore.

His voracious appetite has not yet been sated.

Lastly, we should think of the victims and their families. In Timmermans’s speech, he referred to loved ones in the seconds before they plummeted to earth, looking into each other’s eyes with “wordless goodbyes”. Rest in peace.