{"id":2986,"date":"2024-09-18T10:02:30","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T10:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/?p=2986"},"modified":"2024-09-18T10:02:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T10:02:30","slug":"putin-is-becoming-entangled-in-his-own-discredited-red-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/2024\/09\/18\/putin-is-becoming-entangled-in-his-own-discredited-red-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin is becoming entangled in his own discredited red lines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/a>
18\/09\/2024
By\u00a0Peter Dickinson<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Vladimir Putin attempted to draw yet another of his famous red lines on September 12, warning<\/u><\/a> Western leaders that any decision to let Ukraine use long-range missiles on Russian territory would put NATO \u201cat war\u201d with Russia. \u201cThis will mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries, are at war with Russia,\u201d he stated, before vowing to take \u201cappropriate decisions\u201d in response. There is one obvious problem with this latest threat: Ukraine is already using the weapons in question to hit occupied regions that Putin considers Russian without provoking any escalation, never mind war between Russia and NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s comments came amid mounting speculation that Ukraine\u2019s partners are preparing to lift controversial restrictions on the use of long-range Western weapons that currently prevent strikes against military targets in the Russian Federation. The United States, Britain, and France have all provided Ukraine with long-range missiles, but have so far blocked Kyiv from using them inside Russia. However, there are growing indications that Western leaders are now ready to rethink their stance and give Ukraine the green light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By raising the prospect of World War III, Putin clearly hopes to intimidate the West and convince Ukraine\u2019s allies that it would be prudent to maintain the present ban on strikes inside Russia. At the same time, his attempts to portray the issue as a potential game-changer are undermined by his own underwhelming response to Ukraine\u2019s routine use of Western-supplied long-range missiles in areas such as Crimea that Putin has long insisted are now part of Russia. If the idea of Ukrainian air strikes on Russian territory really does represent a red line for Moscow, why did he not react to any of these earlier attacks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evident inconsistency of Putin\u2019s position provides a hint of the realities behind his imperialistic posturing during the invasion of Ukraine. When he first embarked on the invasion ten years ago, Putin began by pronouncing the annexation of Ukraine\u2019s Crimean peninsula. In September 2022 he went even further, declaring that four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces were now part of the Russian Federation and would remain Russian \u201cforever<\/a>.\u201d The Russian Constitution was duly updated to include Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin has since doubled down on these territorial claims. He has boasted publicly of his Ukrainian \u201cconquests<\/a>,\u201d and has compared<\/a> his invasion to the imperial expansion of Russia under eighteenth century czar Peter the Great. In June 2024, Putin stated<\/a> that in order to secure a ceasefire and begin peace talks, the Ukrainian military must completely withdraw from all four partially occupied provinces and hand them over to Russia. Meanwhile, Kremlin officials frequently claim that if Ukraine wishes to end the war, it must reconcile itself to the new \u201cterritorial realities<\/a>\u201d created by the invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judging by Putin\u2019s latest red line, it would appear that he has also not yet fully adjusted to the new territorial realities championed by his own propaganda. While Putin publicly insists that the five unilaterally \u201cannexed\u201d regions of Ukraine have all been officially incorporated into the Russian Federation, he is evidently in no hurry to offer them the same level of protection afforded to other Russian regions. This reluctance detracts from his efforts to portray the occupation of Ukrainian lands as irreversible, and serves as tacit acknowledgment that in Putin\u2019s new empire, some regions are more Russian than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not the first time Russia has warned of impending war with NATO, of course. On the contrary, Kremlin officials and Russian propagandists regularly depict the invasion of Ukraine as a war against the West and often claim to be fighting NATO. Nor is it unusual for Putin\u2019s red lines to be revealed as suspiciously flexible. Since the very first day of the invasion, the Russian dictator has frequently tried to impose arbitrary limits on the Ukrainian military and the country\u2019s Western allies, only to take no action when these red lines are subsequently crossed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since February 2022, Ukraine\u2019s partners have debunked red line after red line as they have expanded their military aid to Kyiv from helmets and hand-held anti-tank weapons to Patriot air defense systems, long-range missiles, and F-16 fighter jets. Ukraine has repeatedly called Putin\u2019s bluff by liberating occupied regions claimed by the Kremlin and disabling or sinking around one-third of the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet. In August 2024, the Ukrainian army crossed the reddest of all red lines by invading Russia itself. Rather than making good on his many threats, Putin responded by downplaying Ukraine\u2019s invasion and portraying the first occupation of Russian land since World War II as a mere \u201cprovocation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should now be obvious that Putin\u2019s red lines are just a bluff intended to scare the West and isolate Ukraine. Over the past two and a half years, his efforts to impose restrictions on his international adversaries have been repeatedly exposed and have grown increasingly detached from the realities of the war. We have now reached the point where Putin\u2019s latest red lines directly contradict his own propaganda. The Russian ruler\u2019s reliance on empty threats underscores the relative weakness of his position. If Western leaders can finally overcome their fear of escalation, they will find that Putin is far less formidable than he would like us to believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source18\/09\/2024By\u00a0Peter Dickinson Vladimir Putin attempted to draw yet another of his famous red lines on September 12, warning Western leaders that any…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transatlantic"],"views":344,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2988,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions\/2988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopolitic.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}