Insulting The Czar

"I do think it's important to keep perspective. Russia doesn't make anything."
"Immigrants aren't rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking."
U.S. President Barack Obama

"Nobody is going to refund that money because it went to Crimea, to anti-crisis measures."
"[Additional pension funds] will, in all probability, go toward supporting socioeconomic development programs in Crimea and Sevastopol."
Anton Siluanov, Russian finance minister

Mr. Siluanov is speaking of the Bloomberg News report that Vladimir Putin had financed his Crimean takeover with funds diverted from state pensions. Mr. Siluonov took umbrage on behalf of his president's decision to rob Ivan to pay Leonid, when a Russian minister dared suggest the money might be repaid; the unmitigated nerve!

The Russian economy is now in dire straits. For the second year running the Kremlin has decided to divert $8.4-billion in payments from the national pension scheme to give some financial heft to the state budget. Vladimir Putin has been rather profligate, with the enormous expenditure of the Sochi Winter Olympics, the buildup of the Russian military war machine, and the cost of appropriating bankrupt Crimea.

With Europe and the United States mounting new sanctions impeding access to European capital markets for Russian banks, the imposition of an arms embargo and the restriction of exporting equipment for the oil industry in Russia, things look fairly grim for the country. Canada's Prime Minister Harper released a list of more Russians and Ukrainians banned from travel to Canada and sanctions on 22 Russian and Ukrainian groups and economic entities.

Germany -- quite unlike France, which has insisted it will deliver those state-of-the-art new deep-sea military vessels to Russia -- has blocked delivery of parts for a high-tech military training centre, going a step beyond the sanctions the country has agreed to, in concert with its European allies. Like all blustering bullies, Vladimir Putin does not take lightly to being upstaged or humiliated.

A supermarket in Novosibirsk, east of Moscow, Thursday. Russia is banning imports of a wide range of foods in response to Western sanctions. Associated Press

It was his decision to stir the rebellion against Ukraine. It is his responsibility that Moscow has seen fit to provide the ethnic-Russian Ukrainians with weapons, advice and military expertise, let alone instructing Russian military personnel to enter Ukraine sometimes in camouflage, to aid the direction of the secessionist movement in eastern Ukraine. And ultimately, the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet with the loss of 285 lives roosts in Mr. Putin's backyard.

This is the image showing wreckage from the crash, in which 298 people died, being used in a rebel roadblock

All of which leads to his brooding over Ukraine succeeding in gaining ground against the pro-Russian rebels, regaining the extensive territory the rebels had occupied. Those same rebels are clustered now in a few strongholds yet remaining, and they are surrounded by Ukrainian military. It is just a matter of time before the government in Kyiv will be able to inform the Ukrainian people that it has succeeded in putting down the insurrection, that Ukrainian territory is sound in Ukrainian hands.

Unless that order is ultimately given by a furious Mr. Putin to cement Russia's aggression into history by orders to invade eastern Ukraine, bolster the rebels and at great additional expense of the country's reputation let alone its groaning treasury, deprive Ukraine of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, validating the claims by the rebels that they have established their own governments devoid of Ukrainian rule, to be absorbed by Russia.

Mr. Putin, while being reviled in the West for his unspeakable Soviet-style actions, has garnered a huge approval rating at home. To back down now when he has persuaded the Russian public that his course of action was the honourable one, making Russians proud of their nationalist strongman who would back away from no proper course of action, would be to absorb the ultimate personal humiliation.



To embark on a military option would divert attention at home from his failure on the world scene to represent Russia as part of the international community, a law-abiding, civil society with its rightful place among the G8, which he has now tainted beyond recovery. His retaliatory move to mount counter-sanctions against those countries which have insulted Russia through their sanctions, interfering in matters he considers none of their concern, may presage a more bold move.

Mr. Putin's wounded pride, the insults that have injured his self-image are beyond acceptable, the world, he must feel, owes him an apology.