Against the backdrop of Russia’s threatened invasion of eastern Ukraine, the German government put the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline on hold yesterday. A new assessment of supply security must now be made, taking into account the recent developments, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “This will certainly drag on, if I may make a prediction,” he added. Meanwhile, Ukraine praises the move. US President Joe Biden also announced sanctions. Eric Bonse and Manuel Berkel have the details.
As a next step, Germany could also impose technology sanctions against Russia. Russia has been trying for years to become more independent in terms of digitization. Falk Steiner analyzed how far they have come and how technology sanctions would work.
Putin has made it clear that he does not accept the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union, Elmar Brok, a long-time CDU foreign policy expert, writes in his guest article for Europe.Table. According to Putin, the principles of international law of sovereignty and territorial identity are not valid for the former Soviet republics, including the three Baltic states. The Russian president wants to translate the old empire’s claim to power into zones of influence outside Russia’s borders, including states within Central and Eastern Europe, as Brok writes. He warns: “Vladimir Putin can obviously no longer be deterred from war.”
The French Council Presidency wants to extend the conformity assessment requirements for high-risk AI systems. Read more about the criteria to be met in the News.
Scholz said he asked the Economics Ministry to withdraw the existing report on the analysis of supply security at the Federal Network Agency. “This sounds technical, but it is the necessary step under administrative law so that no certification of the pipeline can happen now.” Without this certification, Nord Stream 2 could not go into operation. On Twitter, US President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman had suggested that the move happened because of US pressure.
The analysis of supply security had still been prepared by the previous government under ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel in October 2021, when it said: “In its analysis, the Federal Ministry of Economics concludes that the granting of certification would not jeopardize the security of gas supply of the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union.”
According to the German Energy Industry Act, the security of electricity supply is also a test criterion, for example, the sufficient supply of gas-fired power plants. According to its own information, the Ministry of Economics had allowed several European countries to be consulted: Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia.
The responsible department of the Ministry of Economics will carry out a new assessment of supply security, taking into account “what has changed in recent days,” Scholz said. The process is now “taking a new course”. The chancellor added: “This will certainly drag on, if I may predict that.”
Following a meeting with NRW Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) in Düsseldorf, German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) said the move to Nord Stream 2 had been meticulously prepared for weeks and months. “We will have to push ahead with the gas phase-out with great commitment,” Habeck said. Currently, Russia still covers 55 percent of Germany’s gas needs. “The alternative to replace this gas is through LNG, Norwegian supply and Dutch supply. This way, we can secure the supply for Germany.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised the halt to Nord Stream 2. “This is morally, politically and practically the right step in the current circumstances,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “True leadership means tough decisions in difficult times. Germany’s move proves just that.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also welcomed the decision. “The German government is absolutely right. Nord Stream 2 must be looked at anew from the point of view of supply security for all of Europe.” However, acute supply problems are not to be expected, a commission spokesman said. In justification, he pointed out that the gas pipeline has never been used before.
The halt to Nord Stream 2 was part of the sanctions package that von der Leyen had drawn up in recent weeks. On Tuesday, however, she presented a new plan that is adapted to the situation and takes a “gradual” approach. According to it, the EU sanctions will not come “in one fell swoop” but will be adapted to the severity of Russia’s aggression.
The new sanctions plan, which the 27 EU foreign ministers adopted on Tuesday evening, consists of four points. First, the EU wants to punish all those who were involved in the decision to recognize the independence of the rebel regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. This concerns several hundred deputies of the Russian State Duma.
Second, Brussels is targeting banks that financed Russian companies in these regions. It also wants to restrict access to the EU’s capital and financial markets and services and criminalize trade with Luhansk and Donetsk. Those responsible for the “illegal and aggressive” actions must face the economic consequences, the EU Commission said.
Approval came from the European Parliament. The Russian invasion makes severe sanctions necessary, said Joachim Schuster, economic policy spokesman for the SPD group. However, he cautioned, “We should not play all our trump cards at once.“ Rather, the EU should wait and see: “Does Putin stop at this point – or does he go further?”
Green foreign policy expert Reinhard Bütikofer favored a stricter approach. The hesitant EU countries should take Berlin as an example. “Endlessly has been argued in Germany about Nord Stream 2. Now, quite rightly, it’s coming to an end.” What is needed now, is a plan to consistently reduce energy dependence on Russia.
In the evening, Biden also announced a first round of punitive measures against Russia and a redeployment of troops in Europe in a speech at the White House. Russia’s recent actions are equivalent to the beginning of an invasion of Ukraine, the US president said. Sanctions targets include Vnesheconombank, as well as Promsvyazbank, which is focused on arms deals, and Russian government bonds, Biden said. Interfering with Russian sovereign debt means that the Russian government is cut off from Western financing. Biden explained that this had been coordinated with Europe, so access to the euro was also blocked.
Sanctions would also be imposed on Russian elites close to Putin and their family members starting Wednesday. A senior US government official said that Russia’s Sberbank and VTB would also face US sanctions if Moscow continues its invasion of Ukraine. He warned that no Russian financial institutions are safe. The official also said that Russian elites, who were not sanctioned Tuesday, should be on guard and that the US government was prepared with a large number of countries to implement export control measures in the event of a Russian invasion.
“Today’s actions, taken in coordination with our partners and allies, are the beginning of a process to dismantle the Kremlin’s financial network and its ability to fund destabilizing activities in Ukraine and around the world,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement.
The US is also sending 800 infantry soldiers to the Baltic countries and up to eight F-35 fighter jets to NATO’s eastern flank, a US official said. In addition, 32 AH-64 Apache helicopters will be sent from locations within Europe to the Baltics and Poland. The additional personnel is intended to prevent possible aggression against NATO member countries. With Manuel Berkel and Reuters
Sovereignty is a major digital issue for the EU. But while in Europe this usually means reducing supply chain dependencies and preventing excessive access by the People’s Republic of China in terms of cyber security, Russia is officially pursuing the goal of far-reaching digital autonomy in terms of state policy. However, the state with 144 million inhabitants has not made much progress in this direction, which is why technology sanctions would hit it particularly hard.
Vladimir Putin’s Windows XP computer in the Kremlin office is a symbol. Alena Epifanova of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) reports that Russia’s attempts to detach itself from the digital world and at the same time to have up-to-date technology at its disposal have only been successful in small parts: “Russia is very dependent on the West, especially the USA, in both the hardware and software sectors.” This applies to specific products, such as those from Cisco, Nvidia, and Intel.
But even Russia’s own chip productions, which are not very powerful and not suitable for the mass market, are hardly conceivable without Western technology, such as the Baikal processor, which is based on the architecture of the British chip designer ARM. There are also strong dependencies in software development – despite some relatively successful IT companies in Russia. For example, the Russian developer community also relies largely on Github, which Microsoft purchased in 2018.
For its own infrastructure, especially 5G, Russia is primarily dependent on Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, Epifanova says. She has traced Russia’s quest to end digital dependencies for DGAP in a study now published. Epifanova thinks it unlikely that Vladimir Putin’s regime would get quick help here from its strategic partners in Beijing: “China could substitute some of the services and products, but it can’t substitute everything, and it can’t substitute quickly. Russia knows that Chinese companies have already been sanctioned by the United States and could be targeted again, leading to a negative spillover effect on Russia itself.” Conversely, Chinese companies are also likely to have little interest in jeopardizing their access to the lucrative West for the sake of the comparatively small Russian market.
In recent years, the Russian authorities have increasingly exerted influence on providers in the country. Controversial takeovers by investors close to the state have brought digital companies into the sphere of influence of the power apparatus. The former self-administration of technical Internet administration in the country is now considered state-controlled.
The authorities’ relationship with the network is a legacy of the Soviet Union; surveillance infrastructures and cut-offs from the global network – such as separation from the Domain Name System – have been repeatedly addressed. However, technical advances have significantly reduced the spying capabilities of Russian services with technologies such as deep packet inspection (DPI), as traffic is now more frequently and strongly encrypted, even by providers. A staircase wit in history: The main driver for this technical change was not least the NSA spying scandal – whose whistleblower Edward Snowden still lives in Moscow under Putin’s protection.
In recent years, Russia’s government and the Duma, the federal parliament, have increasingly relied on legislative measures to persuade providers between Kaliningrad and Vladivostok to comply with the Russian state line. The telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor, in particular, plays a major role in this, as it regularly imposes penalties on well-known Western companies such as Google, Apple, and Twitter.
Alena Epifanova from DGAP emphasizes that the regulatory authorities acted relatively independently of the companies’ origin. Measures also affected Chinese providers such as TikTok, Telegram, which officially migrated from Russia to Dubai, but also domestic providers such as VKontakte, a Facebook clone popular in Russia. “When it comes to ‘information security’, there are conflicts between the authorities and the providers, no matter where they come from,” Epifanova says. On the other hand, German providers play no role in the everyday communications of the Russian population.
For the German IT and communications industry, far-reaching sanctions against Russia would not pose too great a threat, at least not directly. “Russia is not currently one of Germany’s ten most important trading partners in terms of either imports or exports of ICT products,” says Christoph Tovar, foreign trade officer at the IT association Bitkom.
US sanctions have already been in place for the Russian Federation since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and some have been tightened again under the Biden administration. If the standards or criteria according to the Foreign Direct Product Rule were to be applied more stringently now, this would have indirect effects.
“Insofar as a certain minimum proportion of a product is based on US technology or products, this means that an application for export to Russia must also be submitted to US authorities,” says Tovar. That would mean extra work in any case. “At the same time, American sanctions can also prevent the sale of German products to Russia.”
The dependencies of German suppliers on Russia are relatively low, says Tovar. For example, four percent of German companies in the information and telecommunications technology sector purchase services from Russia at all, primarily in the software sector. In contrast, 80 percent used services or goods from the US, 76 percent from China, and even India was ahead of Russia.
In his TV address on Monday evening, Vladimir Putin made it as clear as he did in his essay last summer: He does not accept the status quo that has prevailed since the Soviet Union dissolved itself as agreed by the Soviet republics. Accordingly, the international law principles of sovereignty and territorial identity have no validity for the resulting states. This probably also applies to the three Baltic states.
Putin accuses all Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev of having enabled regional self-interest and nationalism, and thus the destruction of unity, by organizing the Soviet Union into constituent republics.
However, in his speech, it is also clear that he means the unity of the old colonialist tsarist empire. He sees himself in the historical role of restoring this empire. Since this is an almost sacred mission for him, he considers the ideas of decolonization, the right of self-determination of international law, the right to national identity, and democracy and freedom to be malicious or, nevertheless, dangerous instruments that stand in the way of this mission.
Tsarist Russia, like many other European states, has systematically pursued colonial policies since the 16th and 17th centuries. However, it made sure that these territories were permanently incorporated into a territorial unit with the Russian Empire.
The lies and accusations in his speech served only for propaganda, especially in Russia itself. That Ukraine was a corrupt state ruled by oligarchs – is he thinking of Russia itself? That foreign powers were holding a puppet government, preparing to build a nuclear bomb, and carrying out genocide against Russians in the Donbas or Odesa – Putin wants to give himself an alibi for the current deeds. This also applies to the accusations against NATO, which had not permanently stationed troops and heavy weapons in the new member states before the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014.
I think we should take Putin seriously, we should not just dismiss his statements in the sense that he is not going to do it in the end. This mistake has been made too often in history. I don’t want to write a psychogram of Putin, although it would be very interesting.
In any case, he sees this old empire as having a claim to power beyond it. Hence his demand for zones of influence outside Russia’s borders. In other words, including the states of Central and Eastern Europe that were under Soviet rule until 1990. And all this is justified by Russia’s need for security.
If every country in Europe justified revisionist claims to power with history and a need for security and also used military threats and war to enforce them, Europe would be back in the first half of the last century.
The EU, internally in particular, but also the order of Europe since the collapse of Soviet rule over parts of Europe, assumes that lasting peace is guaranteed by territorial integrity, full sovereignty of states, and close economic relations.
Putin has probably never fully accepted this status quo. Above all, however, he realized that he personally could not survive in the peaceful competition within the framework of this status quo. Economically and socially, he has failed. Helmut Schmidt’s word about the Soviet Union as Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons still applies. Because of this failure, Putin cannot afford a constitutional democracy because he and his kleptocratic elite would be swept away by his own citizens. A successful Ukraine would be a disaster for him.
What consequences must this have for the EU and the West:
1. NATO is experiencing a renaissance and must be credible in its desire and ability to protect all members.
2. The EU must finally – complementary to NATO – increase its own foreign and defense policy capabilities and do so drastically by exploiting all synergy effects and improved decision-making structures.
3. The EU must consistently use the means and funding opportunities of the internal market, trade policy, also politically, to make states in the neighborhood successful. This also applies to Ukraine.
4. The EU energy union must become a reality.
5. Since the policy of change through rapprochement has failed vis-à-vis Putin, he and especially his oligarch clique must immediately face the full consequences of his actions.
6. The offer of the USA and NATO for disarmament negotiations, which must also deal with the Russian missiles in Kaliningrad, has not deterred Putin from aggression.
7. Putin has not taken up the EU’s offers to support Russia’s economic development within the framework of partnership and modernization agreements.
Vladimir Putin can obviously no longer be deterred from war.
Against the backdrop of Russia’s threatened invasion of eastern Ukraine, the German government put the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline on hold yesterday. A new assessment of supply security must now be made, taking into account the recent developments, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “This will certainly drag on, if I may make a prediction,” he added. Meanwhile, Ukraine praises the move. US President Joe Biden also announced sanctions. Eric Bonse and Manuel Berkel have the details.
As a next step, Germany could also impose technology sanctions against Russia. Russia has been trying for years to become more independent in terms of digitization. Falk Steiner analyzed how far they have come and how technology sanctions would work.
Putin has made it clear that he does not accept the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union, Elmar Brok, a long-time CDU foreign policy expert, writes in his guest article for Europe.Table. According to Putin, the principles of international law of sovereignty and territorial identity are not valid for the former Soviet republics, including the three Baltic states. The Russian president wants to translate the old empire’s claim to power into zones of influence outside Russia’s borders, including states within Central and Eastern Europe, as Brok writes. He warns: “Vladimir Putin can obviously no longer be deterred from war.”
The French Council Presidency wants to extend the conformity assessment requirements for high-risk AI systems. Read more about the criteria to be met in the News.
Scholz said he asked the Economics Ministry to withdraw the existing report on the analysis of supply security at the Federal Network Agency. “This sounds technical, but it is the necessary step under administrative law so that no certification of the pipeline can happen now.” Without this certification, Nord Stream 2 could not go into operation. On Twitter, US President Joe Biden’s spokeswoman had suggested that the move happened because of US pressure.
The analysis of supply security had still been prepared by the previous government under ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel in October 2021, when it said: “In its analysis, the Federal Ministry of Economics concludes that the granting of certification would not jeopardize the security of gas supply of the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Union.”
According to the German Energy Industry Act, the security of electricity supply is also a test criterion, for example, the sufficient supply of gas-fired power plants. According to its own information, the Ministry of Economics had allowed several European countries to be consulted: Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia.
The responsible department of the Ministry of Economics will carry out a new assessment of supply security, taking into account “what has changed in recent days,” Scholz said. The process is now “taking a new course”. The chancellor added: “This will certainly drag on, if I may predict that.”
Following a meeting with NRW Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) in Düsseldorf, German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) said the move to Nord Stream 2 had been meticulously prepared for weeks and months. “We will have to push ahead with the gas phase-out with great commitment,” Habeck said. Currently, Russia still covers 55 percent of Germany’s gas needs. “The alternative to replace this gas is through LNG, Norwegian supply and Dutch supply. This way, we can secure the supply for Germany.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised the halt to Nord Stream 2. “This is morally, politically and practically the right step in the current circumstances,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “True leadership means tough decisions in difficult times. Germany’s move proves just that.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also welcomed the decision. “The German government is absolutely right. Nord Stream 2 must be looked at anew from the point of view of supply security for all of Europe.” However, acute supply problems are not to be expected, a commission spokesman said. In justification, he pointed out that the gas pipeline has never been used before.
The halt to Nord Stream 2 was part of the sanctions package that von der Leyen had drawn up in recent weeks. On Tuesday, however, she presented a new plan that is adapted to the situation and takes a “gradual” approach. According to it, the EU sanctions will not come “in one fell swoop” but will be adapted to the severity of Russia’s aggression.
The new sanctions plan, which the 27 EU foreign ministers adopted on Tuesday evening, consists of four points. First, the EU wants to punish all those who were involved in the decision to recognize the independence of the rebel regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. This concerns several hundred deputies of the Russian State Duma.
Second, Brussels is targeting banks that financed Russian companies in these regions. It also wants to restrict access to the EU’s capital and financial markets and services and criminalize trade with Luhansk and Donetsk. Those responsible for the “illegal and aggressive” actions must face the economic consequences, the EU Commission said.
Approval came from the European Parliament. The Russian invasion makes severe sanctions necessary, said Joachim Schuster, economic policy spokesman for the SPD group. However, he cautioned, “We should not play all our trump cards at once.“ Rather, the EU should wait and see: “Does Putin stop at this point – or does he go further?”
Green foreign policy expert Reinhard Bütikofer favored a stricter approach. The hesitant EU countries should take Berlin as an example. “Endlessly has been argued in Germany about Nord Stream 2. Now, quite rightly, it’s coming to an end.” What is needed now, is a plan to consistently reduce energy dependence on Russia.
In the evening, Biden also announced a first round of punitive measures against Russia and a redeployment of troops in Europe in a speech at the White House. Russia’s recent actions are equivalent to the beginning of an invasion of Ukraine, the US president said. Sanctions targets include Vnesheconombank, as well as Promsvyazbank, which is focused on arms deals, and Russian government bonds, Biden said. Interfering with Russian sovereign debt means that the Russian government is cut off from Western financing. Biden explained that this had been coordinated with Europe, so access to the euro was also blocked.
Sanctions would also be imposed on Russian elites close to Putin and their family members starting Wednesday. A senior US government official said that Russia’s Sberbank and VTB would also face US sanctions if Moscow continues its invasion of Ukraine. He warned that no Russian financial institutions are safe. The official also said that Russian elites, who were not sanctioned Tuesday, should be on guard and that the US government was prepared with a large number of countries to implement export control measures in the event of a Russian invasion.
“Today’s actions, taken in coordination with our partners and allies, are the beginning of a process to dismantle the Kremlin’s financial network and its ability to fund destabilizing activities in Ukraine and around the world,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the statement.
The US is also sending 800 infantry soldiers to the Baltic countries and up to eight F-35 fighter jets to NATO’s eastern flank, a US official said. In addition, 32 AH-64 Apache helicopters will be sent from locations within Europe to the Baltics and Poland. The additional personnel is intended to prevent possible aggression against NATO member countries. With Manuel Berkel and Reuters
Sovereignty is a major digital issue for the EU. But while in Europe this usually means reducing supply chain dependencies and preventing excessive access by the People’s Republic of China in terms of cyber security, Russia is officially pursuing the goal of far-reaching digital autonomy in terms of state policy. However, the state with 144 million inhabitants has not made much progress in this direction, which is why technology sanctions would hit it particularly hard.
Vladimir Putin’s Windows XP computer in the Kremlin office is a symbol. Alena Epifanova of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) reports that Russia’s attempts to detach itself from the digital world and at the same time to have up-to-date technology at its disposal have only been successful in small parts: “Russia is very dependent on the West, especially the USA, in both the hardware and software sectors.” This applies to specific products, such as those from Cisco, Nvidia, and Intel.
But even Russia’s own chip productions, which are not very powerful and not suitable for the mass market, are hardly conceivable without Western technology, such as the Baikal processor, which is based on the architecture of the British chip designer ARM. There are also strong dependencies in software development – despite some relatively successful IT companies in Russia. For example, the Russian developer community also relies largely on Github, which Microsoft purchased in 2018.
For its own infrastructure, especially 5G, Russia is primarily dependent on Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia, Epifanova says. She has traced Russia’s quest to end digital dependencies for DGAP in a study now published. Epifanova thinks it unlikely that Vladimir Putin’s regime would get quick help here from its strategic partners in Beijing: “China could substitute some of the services and products, but it can’t substitute everything, and it can’t substitute quickly. Russia knows that Chinese companies have already been sanctioned by the United States and could be targeted again, leading to a negative spillover effect on Russia itself.” Conversely, Chinese companies are also likely to have little interest in jeopardizing their access to the lucrative West for the sake of the comparatively small Russian market.
In recent years, the Russian authorities have increasingly exerted influence on providers in the country. Controversial takeovers by investors close to the state have brought digital companies into the sphere of influence of the power apparatus. The former self-administration of technical Internet administration in the country is now considered state-controlled.
The authorities’ relationship with the network is a legacy of the Soviet Union; surveillance infrastructures and cut-offs from the global network – such as separation from the Domain Name System – have been repeatedly addressed. However, technical advances have significantly reduced the spying capabilities of Russian services with technologies such as deep packet inspection (DPI), as traffic is now more frequently and strongly encrypted, even by providers. A staircase wit in history: The main driver for this technical change was not least the NSA spying scandal – whose whistleblower Edward Snowden still lives in Moscow under Putin’s protection.
In recent years, Russia’s government and the Duma, the federal parliament, have increasingly relied on legislative measures to persuade providers between Kaliningrad and Vladivostok to comply with the Russian state line. The telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor, in particular, plays a major role in this, as it regularly imposes penalties on well-known Western companies such as Google, Apple, and Twitter.
Alena Epifanova from DGAP emphasizes that the regulatory authorities acted relatively independently of the companies’ origin. Measures also affected Chinese providers such as TikTok, Telegram, which officially migrated from Russia to Dubai, but also domestic providers such as VKontakte, a Facebook clone popular in Russia. “When it comes to ‘information security’, there are conflicts between the authorities and the providers, no matter where they come from,” Epifanova says. On the other hand, German providers play no role in the everyday communications of the Russian population.
For the German IT and communications industry, far-reaching sanctions against Russia would not pose too great a threat, at least not directly. “Russia is not currently one of Germany’s ten most important trading partners in terms of either imports or exports of ICT products,” says Christoph Tovar, foreign trade officer at the IT association Bitkom.
US sanctions have already been in place for the Russian Federation since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and some have been tightened again under the Biden administration. If the standards or criteria according to the Foreign Direct Product Rule were to be applied more stringently now, this would have indirect effects.
“Insofar as a certain minimum proportion of a product is based on US technology or products, this means that an application for export to Russia must also be submitted to US authorities,” says Tovar. That would mean extra work in any case. “At the same time, American sanctions can also prevent the sale of German products to Russia.”
The dependencies of German suppliers on Russia are relatively low, says Tovar. For example, four percent of German companies in the information and telecommunications technology sector purchase services from Russia at all, primarily in the software sector. In contrast, 80 percent used services or goods from the US, 76 percent from China, and even India was ahead of Russia.
In his TV address on Monday evening, Vladimir Putin made it as clear as he did in his essay last summer: He does not accept the status quo that has prevailed since the Soviet Union dissolved itself as agreed by the Soviet republics. Accordingly, the international law principles of sovereignty and territorial identity have no validity for the resulting states. This probably also applies to the three Baltic states.
Putin accuses all Soviet leaders from Lenin to Gorbachev of having enabled regional self-interest and nationalism, and thus the destruction of unity, by organizing the Soviet Union into constituent republics.
However, in his speech, it is also clear that he means the unity of the old colonialist tsarist empire. He sees himself in the historical role of restoring this empire. Since this is an almost sacred mission for him, he considers the ideas of decolonization, the right of self-determination of international law, the right to national identity, and democracy and freedom to be malicious or, nevertheless, dangerous instruments that stand in the way of this mission.
Tsarist Russia, like many other European states, has systematically pursued colonial policies since the 16th and 17th centuries. However, it made sure that these territories were permanently incorporated into a territorial unit with the Russian Empire.
The lies and accusations in his speech served only for propaganda, especially in Russia itself. That Ukraine was a corrupt state ruled by oligarchs – is he thinking of Russia itself? That foreign powers were holding a puppet government, preparing to build a nuclear bomb, and carrying out genocide against Russians in the Donbas or Odesa – Putin wants to give himself an alibi for the current deeds. This also applies to the accusations against NATO, which had not permanently stationed troops and heavy weapons in the new member states before the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014.
I think we should take Putin seriously, we should not just dismiss his statements in the sense that he is not going to do it in the end. This mistake has been made too often in history. I don’t want to write a psychogram of Putin, although it would be very interesting.
In any case, he sees this old empire as having a claim to power beyond it. Hence his demand for zones of influence outside Russia’s borders. In other words, including the states of Central and Eastern Europe that were under Soviet rule until 1990. And all this is justified by Russia’s need for security.
If every country in Europe justified revisionist claims to power with history and a need for security and also used military threats and war to enforce them, Europe would be back in the first half of the last century.
The EU, internally in particular, but also the order of Europe since the collapse of Soviet rule over parts of Europe, assumes that lasting peace is guaranteed by territorial integrity, full sovereignty of states, and close economic relations.
Putin has probably never fully accepted this status quo. Above all, however, he realized that he personally could not survive in the peaceful competition within the framework of this status quo. Economically and socially, he has failed. Helmut Schmidt’s word about the Soviet Union as Burkina Faso with nuclear weapons still applies. Because of this failure, Putin cannot afford a constitutional democracy because he and his kleptocratic elite would be swept away by his own citizens. A successful Ukraine would be a disaster for him.
What consequences must this have for the EU and the West:
1. NATO is experiencing a renaissance and must be credible in its desire and ability to protect all members.
2. The EU must finally – complementary to NATO – increase its own foreign and defense policy capabilities and do so drastically by exploiting all synergy effects and improved decision-making structures.
3. The EU must consistently use the means and funding opportunities of the internal market, trade policy, also politically, to make states in the neighborhood successful. This also applies to Ukraine.
4. The EU energy union must become a reality.
5. Since the policy of change through rapprochement has failed vis-à-vis Putin, he and especially his oligarch clique must immediately face the full consequences of his actions.
6. The offer of the USA and NATO for disarmament negotiations, which must also deal with the Russian missiles in Kaliningrad, has not deterred Putin from aggression.
7. Putin has not taken up the EU’s offers to support Russia’s economic development within the framework of partnership and modernization agreements.
Vladimir Putin can obviously no longer be deterred from war.
