Putin’s limitless ambition feeds his interest in dragging matters out

Rebels at the crash scene of a downed Ukrainian jet fighter.

RUSSIA’S strongman Vladimir Putin has behaved brutally and cynic­ally but with considerable tactical flexibility in Ukraine.

The outrage of the rebels he sponsors shooting down an innocent passenger jet occurred only a little while after a period of relative calm, in which Putin seemed to back off, at least a little.

What is puzzling some analysts now is the continued violent aggress­ion of the Russian-­sponsored, and often Russian-led, separatists in eastern Ukraine.

After the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, they have continued to shoot down Ukrain­ian government aircraft.

Most analysts had expected Putin to calm things down for a while in eastern Ukraine, to accompany the slightly softer words he has used in recent days, and at least to appear to give life to Russian support for the Australian-authored UN Security Council resolution. In fact, Putin continues his ­double-dealing, saying different things to different Western leaders.

One possible explanation for the continued assaults on aircraft by eastern Ukrainian separatists is that Putin may have lost control of them. Certainly some of them are little more than criminal gangs and do not respond in precise fashion to order, even from Moscow.

But this is not a satisfactory explanation for the pattern of behaviour overall. Putin has shown in the past an ability to rein in this ­aggressiveness when he wants to.

Similarly, it is hard to believe that the separatists could continue to use sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft systems against Putin’s wishes.

Western analytical agencies are instead coming up with two other explanations for the continued violence and the technology-enabled military aggression in eastern Ukraine, and both have ominous implications.

The first is that Putin, despite the massive reputational damage that he and Russia are suffering, has an interest in dragging this process out.

In order to recover properly all the human remains at the site, and certainly in order to conduct any kind of proper investigation, the West continues to need Putin’s compliance.

Putin knows that if the practic­al­ities of this matter are wrapped up quickly, he loses a good deal of leverage. Western leaders such as US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, while they have condemned the atrocity, have worked hard to keep lines to Putin open. They have not yet supported the hardest sanctions nor expressed themselves in the toughest terms.

Once all the information and material from the site are collected, once Moscow’s active cooperation is not needed any longer for any practical purpose, then it is much more likely that Western nations will impose far tougher sanctions on Russia.

Putin would not be the first dictator to keep trouble brewing so that he can effectively sell his influence in bringing the trouble under control.

The second potential explan­ation for Putin’s apparent acquies­cence, if not his downright encouragement, of continued violence by the separatists is that this may ultimately provide him with a pretext for permanently annexing eastern Ukraine.

If the situation gets bad enough, Putin would have a pretext — flimsy and dishonest but a pretext nonetheless — to say that the only way to restore order and stop the bloodshed, the only way to save lives, is for the Russian army to go in to eastern Ukraine and disarm all other groups.

Once Putin did that, he could indeed stop the killing, restore order and even pump some money into the region. He could effectively stay as long as he likes.

And if the West objects to the Russian presence, why then he can surely find some local leader to run a referendum that will produce the result that eastern Ukraine wants to join Russia.

Probably, possibly, Putin would be discouraged from this action if he thought it would bring a disastrous result for him and his regime.

But although the Russian economy has suffered from the mild Western sanctions, from Putin’s point of view this is a long way short of disaster.

It is impossible to know for sure at this stage the limit of Putin’s  ­ambition.