“There is a contradiction between what we think and what we Europeans do. We always try to normalize what we do. Now we have this moral outrage, we believe that Putin has lost his sense of reality, but we are convinced that our reality is real and that of Putin is marginal, deformed. And so we always leave the task of defeating our enemies to history, we never assume it ».
Ivan Krastev, one of the most influential political scientists in Europe, speaks to the Corriere. “This crisis shows that Americans and Europeans can work well together, but what will happen in 2024? What would this crisis look like with Donald Trump in the White House? he asks. “When I was young, in school in Bulgaria we had the typical Marxist discussions about the role of characters in history. We in Europe are now always talking about structural reasons, but suddenly we see the personal factor in many places. To understand a regime, one must understand how a person works: his motivations, his fears ».
“It is known,” Krastev explains, “that Putin spent hours watching and reviewing the last minutes of Gaddafi’s life. The video where he was kidnapped and killed. It says something about his apocalyptic mood. It is clear that he identifies with Gaddafi». But «there is one detail that we underestimate. In 2011, Obama managed to persuade Moscow to back the operation in Libya, saying it was just a nofly zone and that he was not seeking regime change. Then it went as it went. And Putin ended up being convinced that whatever he did, the West always wants regime change ».
Of course, he continues, “the West could have acted differently, but it is by no means certain that it would not have achieved the same result with Putin”. Krastev invites you to read Putin’s 2021 essay on Russia and Ukraine being “one people: “He speaks neither of NATO nor of Russia’s legitimate security concerns. This essay is the project of restoring historical Russia. It has nothing to do with the expansion of NATO, it has a lot to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union and Putin’s desire to rewrite the past.”
In practice, he explains: “Putin built such a system on himself that he cannot imagine a Russia after him. He feels that he must do everything while he is still in power, while he is still alive and in his right mind. Hence the choice of the moment and the intensity of the war ». And therefore “appeasement is not possible because Putin is a messianic politician. It wasn’t like that, but now it is like that. He can’t stop because he doesn’t think in terms of commodities or political regimes. Think in terms of historical mission ».