President Vladimir Putin will want to use the dangerous power vacuum in the West for his own interests.
(Photo: dpa)
The closure of the Russian NATO mission and Moscow’s ban on a NATO information office on the Moscow River are only the harbingers of what the West can expect from the Kremlin in the coming weeks.
In Germany a new government and its political guidelines are being negotiated. In the US, President Joe Biden is domestically distracted by the struggle over his reform agenda. Russian President Vladimir Putin will use this dangerous power vacuum in the West to ignite.
Moscow is trying to push the limits of Russia’s possibilities in international relations even further in its favor.
In the past, the Kremlin has already created facts: the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea has been annexed. For the first time after the Second World War, borders were shifted in Europe. Russian hackers have repeatedly attacked Western governments with cyber attacks. Russian troll armies are on the Internet, allegedly leaving independent comments on websites for a fee. Stations paid for by the Kremlin such as “RT” and their websites are stirring up the media.
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There is a twofold aim behind all of this: to make Russian policy more acceptable in the West and to secure political land gains. Because the bolder the Russian interference in the West, the more the EU and the US are anxious to push back only this Russian expansion.
The claim to peg Russia to the fulfillment of its promises made in the course of membership in the Council of Europe is being suppressed: the observance of human rights, free elections, freedom of the press and the rule of law at home. As long as the West is preoccupied with itself, Putin will continue to test how far he can go in the political struggle for security in Europe and geopolitical influence, which he himself has hyped up to system competition.
It is therefore particularly important that a separate chapter on dealing with Russia is agreed in the course of the coalition negotiations of the new traffic light federal government. So far, the SPD, on the one hand, and the FDP and the Greens, on the other, have partly completely different opinions on the Russian question. Moscow would take advantage of this mercilessly.
The parties must therefore agree on which red lines they will draw towards Russia. And how far they want to go towards the Kremlin if Russia were to return to the path of cooperation.
More: In response to the expulsion of Russian diplomats: Russia discontinues its NATO representation