By invading Ukraine, Putin now faces the unintended consequences of megalomania — an international resistance

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/02/2022 (936 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He must be burning with humiliation, this former KGB spy and maniacal dictator, this pale-faced little man.

For three decades, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has seethed from the shame of it, a superpower knocked down to a territorially diminished version of its former self.

Yet a state with some 6,400 warheads, the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet. And Putin has more than tacitly threatened to use them, to bring the world to a place of no return, the end of days.

On Sunday, as a fourth day of Ukrainian defiance dawned, the malignant Russian president ratcheted the tension ever higher, rattling his nuclear sabre, ordering his nuclear deterrence forces on high alert. Meaning, if the United States and NATO allies continue to impose heavy sanctions against the Russian economy, or if they extend increasing “lethal aid” to Ukrainian forces — not boots on the ground but possibly planes in the air to enforce a no-fly zone, definitely shipment of more sophisticated defensive weaponry — then he would open the silos.

The consequences “like you’ve never seen before,” as he foreshadowed in his madman speech when the invasion of Ukraine was launched, should the West attempt to interdict his naked aggression.

Russia is being squeezed, strangled and isolated, even as its tanks are being drained of petrol, stalled in their incursions towards Ukraine cities, most especially the capital, Kyiv — the prize Putin needs to force regime change — with reports of demoralized troops running out of food, mocked by a citizenry of remarkable courage.

Humiliation at being militarily hamstrung by an adversary flinging Molotov cocktails at tanks, a hell-no slapdash militia of housewives and white-collar workers and labourers, young and old, who’ve likely never before cradled a Kalashnikov, as well as a well-trained military of 196,000 active troops and 900,000 reservists.

Humiliation over an onslaught that has been grittily repelled, mired, flattened against the human anvil of a population that won’t be cowed.

Humiliation by the diminution of his own dimensions. He isn’t browbeating anybody.

Putin’s only friends are a handful of fellow hardcore tyrants, the likes of Syrian war criminal president Bashar Assad and North Korean crackpot Kim Jong Un. Even China is displeased, offering no support, moral or otherwise.

What he’s wrought instead is the unintended consequences of megalomania — consolidation of defiance, an international resistance measured in multilateral reprisals, and unprecedented punitive actions: the financial “nuclear option” of expulsion from SWIFT, disconnecting selected Russian banks from the financial transactions system, crippling the economy; freezing the offshore assets of oligarchs, the corrupt billionaires who Putin has enriched; booting Russian teams from international sports events; banning Aeroflot and any Russian-registered aircraft by the 27-nation European Union (Canada announced closing of airspace Sunday, effective immediately); and rushing weaponry directly to the beleaguered but undaunted Ukrainian defensive forces — Germany, in a dramatical historical shift, declaring on the weekend that it was sending 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger surface-to-air missiles “as quickly as possible.”

Putin has managed to pull off the impossible — conjoining the oppositional will of diverse countries from Turkey to Taiwan.

In solidarity, the Ukrainian national anthem is being belted out in every corner of the world, from the hundreds of thousands who’ve marched in demonstrations in Prague, in Berlin, in London, in Rome, in Istanbul, in Tokyo, in Tehran, in New York, in Colombo, in Melbourne, in Irbil, even in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where TV anchors are forbidden from using the word “war.” And in Toronto.

On Sunday afternoon, Dundas Square was jammed with a throng of protesters condemning Russia in one of the biggest rallies I can ever recall, with their placards and their Ukrainian flags, young women with traditional Khustka head scarves tied around their necks, wearing embroidered Vyshyvanka blouses, men banging drums, parents pushing children in prams, as the temperature dropped and the wind stiffened. The “Mega March for Ukraine,” many thousand-strong, moved to Nathan Phillips Square, where Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, was among the speakers.

“The Ukrainians are making such a brave stand but they need weapons to fight this fight,” Freeland — daughter of a Ukrainian-Canadian mother — told the crowd. Canada has sent $7.8 million worth of lethal equipment and ammunition to Ukraine, with an additional $25 million in defensive equipment announced Sunday, after initially sending non-lethal materiel only, including surveillance equipment and field hospital components.

“If Russia continues this barbaric war, the West is united,” Freeland continued. “The West is united. The West is relentless. And we will cut the Russian economy off from the world.”

But signs that read “Shelter Our Sky, We Will Handle the Rest” addressed what Canada, the U.S. and NATO haven’t done so far — intervene militarily directly in a non-NATO country under siege, a country pining for NATO inclusion, a primary pre-emptive reason behind Putin’s invasion. That would apparently be an entanglement too far, raising the spectre of nuclear escalation. That alarm, stirred by Putin, is his ace in the hole. Would he? How deranged is he? And if he were to ever make such an order, would his generals execute a coup? Are there no sane minds in the Kremlin to halt an unprovoked war that could engulf Europe?

As darkness descended, Kyiv under heavy shelling, with the Russian threat reaching radical pitch, Ukrainians girded themselves again for a full-scale assault, while tens of thousands — women and children mostly — streamed towards the borders. They are temporary refugees, with every intention, most of them, of returning home when the kinetic warfare is silenced.

It’s extraordinary, how valiantly Ukrainians have hampered and obstructed the Russian blitz, a ferocious resistance, testament to the determined humanity of a people who will not succumb to a geopolitical takeover and democracy subsumed by totalitarianism, a puppet regime imposed clearly in Putin’s endgame. After Putin said he was ready to send a delegation for a parley with the Ukrainian government, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — embodiment of gutsy leadership — on the Telegram messaging app Sunday said that the two sides would indeed meet at an undisclosed location on the Belarusian border.

Zelenskyy would be wise not to go anywhere near the meeting. Putin would jump at the opportunity to kill Zelenskyy, rid himself of this thorn.

It’s unlikely Ukraine can withstand the military deluge much longer. Russia might win this war but Putin will lose the occupation, as his predecessors lost Afghanistan, retreating in ignominy after some 15,000 troops had been killed and 35,000 wounded. Resistance won’t be quelled.

The message from Ukrainians, uttered by those doomed troops on Snake Island — slain or taken prisoner, it’s no longer clear — and by a Ukrainian politician in a televised interview the other day and by ordinary civilians as captured on multiple videos gone viral, hasn’t changed:

“F—k off.”

Rosie DiManno is a Toronto-based columnist covering sports and current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno