Putin is actually burying Russian sovereignty – Timothy Snyder
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is actually burying the Russian Federation's sovereignty, and the longer he continues to fight in Ukraine, the worse it is for Russia
This was stated by historian Timothy Snyder in an interview on Espreso.
"I think Putin is actually a terrible geopolitician. I mean people look at him as at an operator with this kind of charisma. I don't understand it because I don't feel it. People think he's made Russia Great or whatever. But this whole move against the West, which they started around 2000, maybe earlier - Georgia, cyber attacks on Estonia, invasion of Ukraine 2014. This whole move against the West from the point of view of the survival of Russia or the sovereignty of Russia makes no sense because if Russia is going to exist and be powerful, if you really believe in a multipolar world which they say they do, then that means you have to be one pole among others. You have to say, okay, we're gonna sometimes be with the West or sometimes be with China," he said.
Snyder emphasized that the Russians had alienated the West by invading Ukraine a second time, even though there were so many people there who wanted to cooperate with Russia.
"They talk about sovereignty but what they're really doing is they're making themselves dependent on China. They're dependent on China, and every day they fight in Ukraine is another day they're more dependent on China. I mean every day they bring their soldiers from East Asia to die in Ukraine, they're making China stronger. Every day that they're forced to sell everything to China at China's prices, they're making China stronger," the historian believes.
He added that the Chinese are just watching all this and enjoying it.
"And so, where Russia is going, is it becoming a kind of dependency of China? That's where they're going. And I think that the secondary question is who actually ends up controlling the resources in the Russian Far East because Russia's wealth depends upon Moscow's wealth. Moscow's wealth depends upon resources that are found in the Russian Far East. Who controls those resources in the long run? Is it Moscow or is it Beijing or is it someone else? Is there some kind of breakup of Russia?" Snyder said.
"If I were thinking about the future of Russia, I would try to end this war today. I would replace Putin with somebody else and I would try to find some way to talk to the West. And that way to talk to the West would be to pull Russian soldiers out of Ukraine. That would be it because all the Russian soldiers came out of Ukraine, then you could say okay Putin made a mistake, we want to start again. And the West would have to say yes because you've pulled all your soldiers out of Ukraine. And then Russia would have a chance to be a sovereign country because they could go back and forth between China and the West. I think Putin is driving Russian sovereignty into the ground now, and the longer he fights in Ukraine, the worse it becomes," the historian concluded.
The full interview with American historian Timothy Snyder will be published on March 26 at 9:11 p.m. on the Espreso.TV website. It will also be streamed live on Espreso and on Espreso YouTube.