Where is Putin’s red line
Where is Putin’s red line? Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, has always followed a clear formula regarding escalating tensions. He endures increasing pressures for a while, but eventually, his patience wears thin, and he reacts.
This history indicates that his decision not to respond harshly to Ukraine’s attack on the Kursk region of Russia should not be seen as evidence that his red lines are a bluff. Since coming to power nearly a quarter of a century ago, Putin has sought an equal standing with the West led by the United States.
Once recognizing NATO as a partner and even wanting Russia to join it, he has always believed that Russia’s size and historical role in global affairs deserve special treatment. From his perspective, Russia is not just another country like the others, and the West must come to terms with this reality. Such a view meant that the West should consider Russia’s interests and its different perceptions of risk in its decision-making.
However, the West had a different perspective. When NATO accepted the three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as members in 2004, Putin saw this move as an existential threat. But it was the prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO that drove Putin to the breaking point and became one of the main motivations for Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008.
This reaction from Russia might initially seem radical, but in reality, it is entirely consistent with Russia’s nature. Like all Soviet leaders, Putin has a deep fear similar to that of Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, who is considered a coward if he does not respond decisively to life’s humiliations, without rights or benefits that anyone would protect.
For Putin, accepting the disregard or hostility of other powers and coming to terms with them has never been an option.
Putin was quite clear on this from the beginning. When he started his tenure as Russia’s president in 2000, he warned the West that if you sideline Russia, we will be forced to find allies and strengthen ourselves, we have no other choice. Therefore, when the United States openly supported the Ukrainian revolution in 2014, which led to the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia reacted by annexing the Crimean Peninsula.
Barack Obama, the President of the United States, sarcastically referred to Russia as a regional power, which only strengthened Vladimir Putin’s resolve to solidify Russia’s global position. In 2022, with the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin demonstrated how serious he is about this goal. He decided that if the West does not accord Russia the respect it deserves, he would defend his country’s interests by force. What other option did he have?
Therefore, when Putin says that if the United States and the United Kingdom allow Ukraine to launch long-range Western missiles towards Russia, a NATO-Russia war will be inevitable, this warning should not be ignored.
Although Putin has not directly threatened to use nuclear weapons and has only hinted that the changed nature of this war would require a specific response, some of his close associates have explicitly threatened to use these weapons.
Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been many concerns about the expansion of the war and conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders.
The main challenge facing the West is to ensure that the tragic confrontation occurring in Ukraine does not turn into a disaster of apocalyptic proportions.
This means preventing the escalation of conflicts that could lead to broader confrontations among global powers and even carry the risk of nuclear weapon use.
