Marie Mendras: "Putin is cornered and everyone knows it"

If in Moscow "there has never been a strategy towards Europe or towards Ukraine" but "anger, revenge, all kinds of emotions that lead to disastrous decisions like going to a total war of aggression", the European powers made the mistake of not listening to Northern and Eastern Europeans, and the experts who warned of the impossibility of dealing rationally with a Vladimir Putin "closed in his passions and obsessions", points out in the Cidob Yearbook, recently presented, Marie Mendras, a specialist in Russia and the post-Soviet space at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
24 December 2022 Saturday 23:31
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Marie Mendras: "Putin is cornered and everyone knows it"

If in Moscow "there has never been a strategy towards Europe or towards Ukraine" but "anger, revenge, all kinds of emotions that lead to disastrous decisions like going to a total war of aggression", the European powers made the mistake of not listening to Northern and Eastern Europeans, and the experts who warned of the impossibility of dealing rationally with a Vladimir Putin "closed in his passions and obsessions", points out in the Cidob Yearbook, recently presented, Marie Mendras, a specialist in Russia and the post-Soviet space at the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. “The defeat in the war means the fall of the dictatorship” in Russia, she affirms, and in this sense, Europe's support for Ukraine must be total. “Only collective decisions count.”

Macron's attempts to negotiate with Putin, on the eve of the invasion, seemed sincere...

Macron did not understand Putin and Russia. A few European leaders, the US administration and the Pentagon factored in Putin's mental decline; the Americans gathered a lot of information about the preparation for the war. That is why they warned the Europeans already in November and December. Emmanuel Macron had all that information, but he wanted to believe that he could reasonably talk to Putin, when in the previous two or three years there had not been a single case of Putin having a real dialogue with a Western leader. Macron thought that he had the power of conviction, for him it was impossible to accept that the leader of a great nuclear power was not capable of thinking correctly, listening and reaching a compromise. But for a man with that closed-mindedness, which prevents him from thinking rationally, the more our Western and EU leaders try to tell him how to think, the more his paranoia will increase… Every time Macron tried to convince him, Putin took it as a assault. What I think happens to Macron, Olaf Scholz… is what we call fear of the void, of the moment when that man disappears in one way or another. It is peering into the abyss. And my job is to explain that there is no such vacuum.

Looking back, I think that as Europeans and Westerners we did the best we could. We could have sent weapons to the Ukraine much earlier, the war could have ended sooner, perhaps... At the end of March and the beginning of April the Russians were already talking about mobilization. But we cannot rewrite history. The important thing is that we have trusted Zelensky. In France, Germany, Italy, surely Spain too, they looked down on Zelensky, like an ex-comedian, and they looked down on the Ukrainians, a small nation compared to great Russia. There was a blindness about Ukraine.

Perhaps our conception was marked by the idea of ​​a very corrupt country, a country of oligarchs.

Less than Russia. That was fueled by Russian subversion. That our people here, in France, Spain, believed that there was more corruption in Ukraine than in Russia is completely absurd.

Let's look into that abyss that you mentioned. What happens after Putin?

There is no abyss.

In this war there is even talk that someone like Yevgeny Prigozhin could have a say in politics in Moscow...

Don't listen to that kind of news; They try to distract us. Of course, it is part of the Russian subversion: look, it could be worse, it could be the head of the Wagner group (heading the Kremlin). That's the distraction.

But who do we have in Moscow after Putin?

They are not in Moscow now, they are outside. The best people, politicians, doctors, economists, administrators, intellectuals, are outside the country. Do you know how many have left since 2011? Seven to eight million at least. Since the start of the war, I think there are more than a million. Those who cannot leave the country are the poor and less educated. We must remember that we are talking about Moscow but there is also a huge federation of more than 80 republics and regions

Is there a danger that the Russian Federation will fall apart after Putin?

Why is it a danger? Why do we always find words to explain Russia that are completely different from the ones we use for our own people? People living in Russia are not so different from us. There are about 80% who say they are Russian and 20% who are not, even though they speak Russian, but they have their own identity. They live in very different regions. They have no interest in Putin, they know that their lives are controlled by the FSB guys in their locality, they are very dependent on their micro-society, they see themselves as a micro-community and they have to survive in their city or their town, their company or factory.

Those people are now suffering terribly from the war.

Of course. Putin finally decided to mobilize on September 21, he had postponed it because he knew that the risk was great. As the Russians say, Putin put the war on the kitchen table. In those kitchens there are conversations about the neighbor's son being mobilized, my brother being mobilized... Deserters are detained, which is illegal because there is no official war, so there can be no deserters. Everything is illegal. It is a lawless state, a lawless society, a lawless economy. I would even say that they live, without knowing it, on the edge. All those men who go to the "special operation" no longer work, the economy is stopping. Many families don't even know how they are going to feed themselves… This regime has been hurting its own people, the economy and relations with its neighbors including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and in many ways China with this war. Putin is more alone and isolated than ever. The only ally he has today is Iran.

Queda Lukashenko.

Lukashenko does not exist, he is not a head of state. He is nobody. If Putin goes to Minsk, he is desperate… Where else can he go? The Belarusians will not fight. That is one of the reasons why the open front to conquer Kyiv failed.

The Ukrainians warn of the possibility of another attempt from Belarus.

That will not happen, it cannot happen. The fact that Putin is going to Minsk means that he is cornered. And everyone knows it.

Maybe Putin is still waiting for the Ukrainians to surrender...

His mind is not clear. He would advise you not to try to get into his head because he is not healthy. Do not try to get into the mind of a deranged person who has immense destructive power, it is not a good idea. What he thinks doesn't matter because he doesn't rationally explain why he's going on with this war. In his closed mind, that impunity of his own anti-democratic regime, gave him impunity internationally. But no longer because of the criminal war that he has started. Most of his decisions don't make sense. It is extraordinarily destructive to the Russians themselves, it will take decades for the Russian state and Russian society to rebuild. Ukrainians will be able to rebuild faster, they will join the EU and NATO sooner than expected. My message is to make sure that Ukraine is freed from Russian occupation. They have already started rebuilding, there was a (donor) conference in Paris. This will happen, there is no doubt. This is what we have to do, make sure we support complete victory… Energy, wages, people not afraid of winter. Political and psychological support. Send more weapons and do exactly what Zelensky asks because this man has barely made a mistake in ten months. And everything he has asked for has been reasonable. A second stadium will be a big challenge for us; it will be the rebuilding of Russia, a state where law rules, a place where people are safe. Our responsibility in European countries is to anticipate the situation in which the Russians, the administration, companies will find themselves, after this disaster. And understand that it will be, in some way, a huge task like the one in 1945, and there will be a great need to accompany the Russians to build something new, with multinational organizations, etc., I think that only we Europeans can help the necessary reconciliation of the two peoples, because we know it from the Franco-German reconciliation. We have the experience, the French and our German friends. We have so much ahead of us... It will take time but it has to happen.

The question everyone is asking is whether Putin will resort to a nuclear weapon.

Putin could use chemical weapons. In his mind, atomic weapons are sacred. He has signed a series of treaties, he wants to remain head of state. He wants to create confusion between us, he fights for his survival. In our countries, talking about nuclear weapons is the greatest threat. I don't think we should underestimate her. But my message is rather that we should focus on what we know, rather than distract ourselves with fear strategies. Our military is dealing with this, NATO is doing it, and everyone knows it can happen. But politically the message must be that Ukrainians must go for full liberation and we must not contaminate ourselves by thinking that if we continue to support Ukraine then Putin might use nuclear weapons.