I talk with Jaroslav Romanchuk, a Belarusian dissident now in Kyiv, about the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
You can also watch it on video here:
I found Jaroslav’s perspective interesting because he blames US officials for overstating the risk of a Russian invasion in order to panic Ukraine into signing a bad diplomatic deal giving away its Eastern provinces. This seems to be the view held by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as well. Romanchuk also spells out the long-term Ukrainian strategy, which is to pursue an economic growth and dynamism that will eventually make it clearly a better alternative to the Putin regime.
Their assumption is that Putin doesn’t really have enough troops to take and hold Ukraine, not without disastrous casualties, so he is staging a giant military bluff intended either to panic Ukraine into a deal or to keep it mired in a “frozen conflict” that prevents the stability, investment, and growth that would make Ukraine a threat to Russia.
Thinking about this, I remembered a recent story about a hockey game with Vladimir Putin and Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, in which Putin scored an astounding seven goals and Lukashenko two—against famous Russian professional players. This is, of course, a ridiculous PR stunt meant to create a flattering image of Putin.
You could interpret that story in two ways. On the one hand, you could view it as evidence that Putin is a blustering coward who won’t take on any contest that isn’t already rigged in his favor—making an actual invasion of Ukraine too big of a gamble. Or you could wonder whether Putin has spent so long surrounded with sycophants and yes-men who assure him that he will always be a winner that he will actually believe there is no risk and he can get away with anything.
In the next few weeks, we ought to know which of these is the correct interpretation.
[Update: Yeah, well, we found out.]
Playing Hockey with Vladimir Putin