Giada Oricchio March 23, 2022
“Putin stands like a mouse on the corner, but his bite can be atomic.” Lucio Caracciolo, director of the Limes magazine and school, is convinced of this. When the presenter Lilli Gruber asked about the current difficulties of the President of the Russian Federation, the astute geopolitical observer, guest of the Otto e Mezzo political talks, answered on Wednesday, March 23: military, economy and public opinion.
The military quagmire is the most risky for the Kremlin chief: “Things are going badly, not as he thought, many generals have expressed their dissatisfaction, and there are problems among the troops said Caracciolo . There are many casualties and the Russian government lied about the presence of conscripts. Soldiers fighting are unable to communicate with home and families are in despair. The climate is not positive and the rumors that Chief of Staff Gerasimov will be fired are significant. Many soldiers felt betrayed by Putin, thinking they were doing maneuvers, not an invasion. About 200,000 troops have remained unchanged in Ukraine for a month, and this, combined with logistics that have never been Russia’s forte, creates serious problems.
To make Vladimir Putin’s personality understandable, Caracciolo resorted to an anecdote: “He loves to tell that he found himself a street thug in an alleyway in St. Petersburg with a mouse in a corner, trying to catch it and the mouse he bit it and so he repeated: “Be careful never to put a mouse in a corner”. Here he approaches the state of the mouse, but biting with nukes is different than doing it with your teeth.
What does that mean? If this war lasts for weeks or months, which is possible, there is a risk that in order not to lose, it will also resort to unconventional weapons. At this terrible event, according to the director, Putin could split NATO: “I am afraid of unconsciousness, we believe that it is a war like any other, but instead an era of serious instability has begun in the heart of Europe. We arrive culturally unprepared and that scares me: I never thought in my life that I would get into such a conflict. The Cold War peace was an exception, not the rule.”