When Western allies impose sanctions on Russia, they provide a detailed list: who, how, and why.
That day, Putin imposed sanctions on Western allies, but without giving any details. He would wait 10 days and the details would be clear only then.
Why is Putin announcing 10 days of reflection and not announcing all his sanctions at once? Here is buried (in Lenin’s favorite expression) a very large dog, which so far everyone underestimates.
Why Putin gave these 10 days
Putin is giving these 10 days to Western countries in the hope that at least some of them will start to flatter him so that the bitter cup will pass. The topic of Western smearing is extremely important. It is the mainstay of Putin’s entire attitude toward the “collective West,” as he has recently called us.
Even after the end of the Russian military invasion of Georgia in 2008, when the West waited a week or two and then dissipated, the Kremlin gave birth to the ideology of “they will crawl again.” It reads: “Whatever we do, whoever we attack, poison or kill, the West – those with soft wrists, the Europeans – will make noise, call for some rights and rules and stop. Those with soft wrists again they will crawl because they have nowhere to go. ” In the black-and-white universe of the Kremlin’s inhabitants, Western countries are completely and helplessly dependent on Russian gas and oil, they cannot do without them, and therefore they will crawl – over and over again.
During the legendary meeting of Putin’s Security Council, broadcast live at the beginning of the war, Dmitry Medvedev reiterated this support, in an expanded version. He told participants that this time Western sanctions would be more severe than usual, but in the end “they will still crawl, as they always did”. With the addition: “and they will bring us as a gift everything we ever wanted from them”. We will both crawl on our bellies and carry gifts.
Instead, however, the Kremlin watched in amazement as the Western allies rallied, became angry, and resolutely opposed Russia. And, as Churchill points out, there is no more terrifying sight during a war than an angry and rising democracy. Because, he points out, such a democracy – unlike any dictator – has virtually inexhaustible resources: financial, economic, and military.
However, living in their film, the Kremlin cannot accept the message that the Western allies are sending them. They, the Kremlin, continue to believe in the principle “they will crawl again” because if they abandon it, they will have to abandon all their other myths and find themselves in the real world. And they do not have the strength for such a catharsis. Therefore, Putin bet on the hope that if he gives the Western countries 10 days to think, they (or at least some of them) will “creep in” and beg him not to stop their oil and gas. Against which he will be able to demand everything from them.
In this otherwise ridiculous situation, we see Putin shooting himself in the leg again and again, because he honestly doesn’t understand the world he’s in. To believe in “creeping” today is just as foolish as to believe that his army will be greeted in Ukraine by rapturous crowds waving wrists and cakes. But that was exactly what he believed. As of today, he believes that within 10 days “they will crawl again”. But even Victor Orban, the only such “creeper” left in Europe, cannot afford to do so. He can’t anymore.
“Ten days that shook the world”
And perhaps, among other things, Putin remembered John Reed’s book, Ten Days That Shook the World, about the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. And he hopes the ten days of respite he has given will shake, if not the world, then at least the West. But what will happen – and it has already happened in the case of Poland and Bulgaria – is that the West will finally get rid of its dependence on Russian energy. And this will shake not the world, but Russia.
