Antonio Navalón
I have had a weakness and intellectual curiosity for the Russian soul for many years now. To find people so sentimental and violent at the same time is a difficult task. The Tsar was its maximum emblem and the expression par excellence of power in the past. From Ivan the Terrible to the last Empress of Russia, Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, – passing through the last of the Tsars, Nicholas II, and of course Comrade Yosef Stalin – Mother Russia had always been synonymous with strength and predominance. It is curious that despite his great affection for the territory he ruled, Stalin only once labeled his people as “brothers and sisters.” On that occasion – which was ten days after Adolf Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union – the Russian leader had to tell the nation that they had gone to war against Germany.
Russia had not had such a determined and confident leader since Stalin. Until the arrival of a man of medium height and unique wit. A man who, on November 9, 1989, was burning papers in the KGB offices in Berlin. As the Wall was falling – and with it, the communist world was dying – on that day, Colonel Vladimir Putin was erasing all traces of what had been his last job as a KGB officer. Putin, the unknown man who came to Leningrad to make St. Petersburg a modern city, was the one who – without anyone quite knowing how or why – amid Boris Yeltsin’s drunkenness and alcoholic reveries managed to become the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of post-communist Russia. But beyond that, he achieved something even more important, which was to become the link that would unite the past and the future through Russian power.
At this moment and from my point of view, Vladimir Putin is the most complex ruler that exists on planet Earth. He belongs to and is the son of an empire that has fallen and failed several times. A nation that, despite having the largest territorial extension in the world, demography is still a pending subject. Year after year, the confidence of Russians is decreasing, every day that passes – and despite the vast patriotic campaigns that its President himself embodies – fewer Russian men and women are willing to have children. It would be enough for Putin to have two or three hundred million more inhabitants to match his territory’s size, ambitions, power of his weapons, and, above all, the brilliance of his moves. To see him meeting with more than a hundred Western journalists answering all kinds of questions is a spectacle that inevitably leads one to wonder what other world leader is capable of such a feat. But, as memory in the times of Twitter and Instagram is so fast and burns everything so instantly, we cannot leave aside a fact that makes the current Russian President even greater. In this instantaneous world, we have forgotten that, in addition, Putin the Great was a decisive part of Donald Trump’s victory.
We have forgotten that the 2016 election made – from his grave – Yosef Stalin full of pride. We had forgotten that never before had any Russian or Soviet ruler managed to penetrate as much as Vladimir Putin penetrated the heart, soul, and – I don’t know how much – the brain of the figure of the American President. It is the same Putin who, at his annual press conference held last December, explained quite naturally that the issue is not whether or not he is going to invade Ukraine – which, in fact, is of very little importance – the most important thing is the security of Russia, first and foremost. And so that there is no room for doubt about the discourse that he is shuffling around, he once again emphasizes the fact that he is not the one who is placing missiles on the border of Mexico with the United States or on the border of Canada with the United States. He repeats that it is NATO that – regardless of the talks – continues to place missiles three hundred kilometers from Moscow, and that is something that Russia will not allow. So the question is not whether or not Russia will invade Ukraine; the question is, what does Russia need to feel secure?
For those who do not want to understand, it is clear. We will continue to discuss some diplomatic talks that can lead nowhere and anyone – starting with old Dr. Kissinger – knows that NATO’s borderline was always in Ukraine. To avoid any confusion about the years of Ukraine’s independence, Putin reminded that, in fact, Ukraine is an invention of Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov – better known as Lenin – who in 1922 conceived the birth of the country and in 1924 had its first Constitution. Then – because history counts for everything and everyone – about Crimea, Putin reminded that this is not a problem that only affects Russia. And he asked whether in North America we still remember when the United States stole California or Texas from Mexico. Clearly – he went on to argue – that had been forgotten, just as the issue of Crimea, a territory that after all had always belonged to Russia, should be overlooked.
It must be understood that when Vladimir Putin repeatedly insists that missiles should not be placed three hundred kilometers from his home, all he is doing is recalling what is now public and what for many years was secret, which was the commitment of NATO and the United States with Russia – at that time the Soviet Union – not to increase Western presence in the East by one millimeter. In return, the Soviet Union had to accept German unification. The USSR accepted and fulfilled the agreement, but now – years after the event – it is as if NATO has a kind of amnesia and wants to forget about its commitment.
What do you do with a ruler like Vladimir Putin? With someone who, believe me, doesn’t care what happens in the next election because his democratic vocation is inferior to his sense of duty to the Russian State. And the fact is that Putin is someone who has never been characterized as someone who respects democratic rules. He works and fights for a higher goal: the greatness of his nation, of his Russia.
We are facing a ruler who, as if he did not have enough with bathing in cold waters bare-chested when the year changes to prove to his people that he is still a man worthy of ruling them – has something in his power that makes him invincible. It is called the cold, the fear and energy dependence of Europe. Spaniards will never forget this year that has just ended in which electric power has cost them more than in their entire lives. Europe will not forget what the cost of energy means. The cold, development, tranquility, and industrial capacity of Europe are in the hands of the same gentleman who insists that NATO and its members remove the missiles from where they are.
If there is one thing the world should be thankful for, it is that Putin does not have the number of people that the great Soviet leaders before him had under him, for if he had, his yoke would be stronger than the one we already have. It may be that with his missiles and nuclear weapons, Putin may not be able to destroy Europe. However, what he can do is to freeze it to death, this being his most potent weapon, since using it would not only cause a massive industrial stoppage but could also turn the very civilized Europeans against their governments. Why go looking for a fight at the gates of an enemy that – beyond being able to use its nuclear weapons – can kill us little by little from cold and hunger?
In the face of this whole situation, for me, there is only one consolation: the more Putin advances in his power, the more severe China’s concern towards Putin becomes. There are challenging things to do; the one that for me is almost impossible is to achieve a true alliance, beyond the current circumstances, between the Kremlin and Tiananmen Square.
In the midst of all this, standing on the edge of the precipice or staring into the long nights that lead to the hell of history, the question to ask is whether Joe Biden – a man forged and made in the age of spies, of the Cold War and in an era when power was based not on technology but nuclear warheads – understands exactly the problem he is facing. If Biden has the historical sense that is necessary, then it is clear that there will be an agreement, not on Ukraine, but on the minimum number of kilometers for missile placement. If there fails to be such an agreement, catastrophe is served. I do not know if there will be a war – I doubt that NATO will follow the United States in this – but what I am sure of is that there may be an invasion of Ukraine.
