The history of Russian geopolitics is a history of bluff, intimidation and blackmail. Before attacking someone, Russia tried to scare the victim to death. And also sought to intimidate all her real and potential allies, to not provide assistance. This is how it works now. And it works quite successfully. In the winter of 2022, many countries believed that Ukraine would be able to resist the Russian Federation for no more than a few days. At first, after the Russian attack, the West was stunned and did not believe that Ukraine would fight back hard. The Americans recalled how they tried to build a democracy in Afghanistan, gave that country a huge amount of weapons worth billions of dollars and how everything fell apart during the Taliban offensive… Russian propagandists tried in every way to cast doubt on the ability of the Armed Forces to fight, and the Ukrainian people to support them.
Those propagandists acted with their inherent arrogance and shamelessness. The West does not have such arrogance, Russia in this sense is unsurpassed, because only it knows how to lie so confidently, inspiredly and brazenly.
It is not for nothing that in the 19th century, the Russian classicist Ivan Turgenev said: “A Russian is the biggest and most impudent liar in the whole world.”
The West does not always repel and is afraid. Moscow uses this. The Russians constantly threaten to strike Western capitals. They imagine the situation as a confrontation between the drivers of two cars that are speeding toward each other. For some reason, Muscovites are convinced that it will be the West, not them, that will turn away at the last moment before the clash. Although there are reasons to believe that at the last moment, it is the Muscovites who will demonstrate cowardice.
There are historical precedents. In the early 60s of the 20th century, when the leader of the USSR, Nikita Khrushchev, provoked the Caribbean crisis, when the world was on the verge of nuclear war, after the US President John Kennedy announced a naval blockade of the island of Cuba and demanded, under the threat of an attack by the American armed forces, the immediate removal of Soviet weapons, Khrushchev retreated. The West is objectively much stronger than Russia, but Russian arrogance scares it. Moscow is betting on arrogance. Russian fascists are convinced that they will be able to strike, and the Americans and Europeans will not be able to, they will not have enough courage.
Therefore, the objectively weaker side successfully terrorizes the stronger one. The Kremlin aggressors constantly threaten a nuclear attack because they are convinced that they will have the courage to drop a nuclear bomb, and the civilized world will not dare to respond. When the West begins to behave differently, the Kremlin shows fear and confusion. This is exactly what happened when French President Macron recently responded to Putin’s threats by saying that France also has nuclear weapons. Muscovites are not used to such behaviour from the West. They are used to the fact that they push and the West retreats. It turns out that it can be different…
Russia skilfully plays the role of a monkey with a grenade, but gradually, not least thanks to the heroism of Ukraine, Western countries stop being afraid of these nuclear savages and bandits.
Unfortunately, many European and American leaders succumb to Moscow’s blackmail (currently, in particular, Russia intimidates everyone with “expansion”).
The current leaders of the civilized world lack the spiritual strength of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whom the Kremlin did not even try to blackmail, knowing that it was hopeless…
Ihor Losev
