Putin's Russia fears Trump wants to marginalize it

The lack of reaction to the unusual chain of events, from street demonstrations in Moscow, the chemical bombing and American retaliation to the attack in Stockholm show a "weakness" in Putin. The escalation of the Hybrid War.

 

Moscow (AsiaNews) - World events in recent days have seen a sharp acceleration, threatening to turn a low intensity "hybrid war" into a real world war, from America to Europe and Asia. Moreover, for some years now Pope Francis has been speaking of a "piecemeal world war", and you cannot say that the Vatican viewfinder is limited, at least in terms of geographical coverage.

There has been rather strange concatenation of events, especially when viewed from the Russian perspective. Sunday, March 26 there were some unexpected demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands of young people, railed against the corruption of the bureaucracy and Prime Minister Medvedev, blatantly putting into question the leadership of Putin himself. Spontaneous gatherings were repeated the following Sunday, threatening to turn into a generalized protest, despite the arrest and detention of the ringleader Aleksej Naval'nyj.

On Monday, 3 April a young Kyrgyz blows himself up in a central station in St. Petersburg metro, almost under the eyes of the president who was visiting the capital on the Neva, causing 11 dead and dozens wounded. While everyone is wondering about these events, a day after Syria controlled by the Russia, carries out the tragic chemical shelling in Idlib province, leaving the nearly a hundred corpses, including many children on the ground. Less than 48 hours pass, and Trump’s United States launches 59 Tomahawk missiles from two aircraft carriers off the coast of the Mediterranean, targeting Al Shayrat base in Syria claiming that chemical bombs, banned by treaties signed by the Syrian President Assad, were launched from there.

There were Russian soldiers in the base, but the Americans say they "have taken extraordinary precautions to avoid hitting the area where they are." Russia sends an official protest and in turn sends a warship to the Black Sea (the one stationed in Crimea) ready to intervene, on a mission that "in any case will last more than a month." On April 7,  ISIS terrorists carry out another attack in Stockholm with another militant from Central Asia, a forty year old Uzbek who crashes a truck into the crowd. The death toll stops at four dead and a dozen injured, some serious, but it could have been much more tragic.

In less than one week more things have taken place than in decades of the twentieth century "cold war", and the situation threatens even more sensational developments. Conspiracy theories, typical of the "post-truth" computer era, abound; in Russia they blame the hated Americans for fomenting the recent protests, then organizing the attacks in St. Petersburg (and maybe also in Stockholm), simulating the Assad attack to trigger a response; everything to weaken Putin and force him into submission. Even the liaison with Putin alluded to in Trumps election campaign, and the false promises of friendship in recent months would be part of the plot to marginalize Russia internationally. Needless to say, the western perspective gives the totally opposite version: Putin organized a "massacre of State" in St. Petersburg to silence all political opposition and regain consent, for which he organized the Assad provocation to flush out the Americans and heap all responsibility on them for domestic and global tensions.

Putin’s weakness

Beyond the imaginative backstory, of which probably we will never know the whole truth, there remains the distinct feeling of a sudden weakening of the "Putin's regime”, which in a few days has lost a lot of support at home and credibility on the international stage. "The Crimean effect", the nationalist support for the Ukrainian war, has vanished while the dissatisfaction of the Russian population at the crisis conditions prevailing in the country's economy, and the arrogance of the oligarchy in power becomes increasingly clear. The bombing of Sennaja square, the scene of Dostoevsky’s novels and his "demons", shatters the myth of the strong man able to smother terror, on which Putin had built his rise to power from the beginning. The loss of control over the trusted Assad in Syria, and the subsequent US reaction, demonstrate the inconsistency of Russian claims to act as a "third pole" of geopolitics between East and West. In practice, all the pillars of Putin's political uncertainty rushed absolute, negating nearly two decades of reconstruction of national pride lost after the end of the USSR.

The reactions of the Russian president also appear rather timid and confused He told the young protesters he would not tolerate turmoil and unrest, accusing Naval'nyj of pursuing political interests (the jailed blogger then took advantage of this, by saying he will contest the 2018 presidential elections). After the attack in his city, he only issued a few words, without the usual threats to terrorists that he will "kill them" without mercy, as had happened on previous occasions. Even with regards the Syrian chemical weapon attack, his only comment was a pathetic justification, his blaming of the ISIS terrorists and then a somewhat hysterical accusation of Americans who attack without evidence, as if he still lived in the times of the twentieth century wars, without a computer and satellites to monitor every movement of man on earth.

The Americans, for their part, were able to muster the usual crude but effective response. Perhaps the undulating hesitation of Trump’s predecessor had made him forget what the US has always been capable of, especially in the international arena: the desire to impose itself by force of arms and the blessing of the alleged moral superiority, as in the words with which Trump explained the reasons for the 'American attack, "God bless America and the whole world", the almost "papist" version of his slogan "America first". It points to a "normalization" of the same Trump, who at first seemed disinterested in international issues and bent on a protectionist retreat to isolationism. Now he's filling his administration in a whole host of hawks interventionists of every world conflict scenario. Probably the surprises do not end at the scene of Washington, for sure the Russians are reacting with a spirit almost of relief, that the role of eternal rivals can once again be attributed to the Americans. In this regard, the Prime Minister Medvedev’s tweet is significant, which proclaims almost exultantly that "now everything is clear: Trump is not one of us."

Even by ISIS seems to be reaching the most extreme level, at least in geographical terms: north of St. Petersburg and Stockholm there is only the Arctic Circle, an age old battleground between different powers world, where all latitudes meet. It is as if it wanted to give a final message: the global South, in revolt against the exploiter north, has reached the pinnacle of its revenge. We can only hope that the next stage is not really world war, since war is the only true antidote to terrorism, and its most direct consequence.

• Russia
• USA
• Syria
• Putin
• Trump
• demonstrations