My Take | A war over Taiwan? You can forget about it
- Thanks to Putin, all sides with real stakes in cross-strait relations get an in-your-face reality check on the costs of war that are too high and unaffordable for anyone
A friendly reader sent me a translation of this intriguing Russian news editorial which was quickly deleted in early March following the initial bungled invasion of Ukraine.
“Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations … Russia is restoring its historical fullness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together – in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians. If we had abandoned this, if we had allowed the temporary division to take hold for centuries, then we would not only betray the memory of our ancestors, but would also be cursed by our descendants for allowing the disintegration of the Russian land.”
It concludes with great patriotic pride:
“Now this problem is gone – Ukraine has returned to Russia. This does not mean that its statehood will be liquidated, but it will be reorganised, re-established and returned to its natural state of part of the Russian world. Within what borders, in what form will the alliance with Russia be fixed (through the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organisation] and the Eurasian Union or the Union State of Russia and Belarus)? This will be decided after the end is put in the history of Ukraine as anti-Russia. In any case, the period of the split of the Russian people is coming to an end.”
In a kind of delusion of grandeur, or if you like, Napoleon and Hitler in reverse, the Russians overestimated their own military capabilities and vastly underestimated those of Ukraine, and the extent of support from the West.