Why We Shouldn’t Fear Putin’s Defeat These monkeys need to fish in the winter to survive

It’s all well and good if Ukraine defeats Putin. But what then? is a common question that has puzzled both political pundits and Secret Service agents for months. Many of the answers are dystopian: extreme nationalists, worse than Putin, would rise to power and plunge the whole world into the abyss. Or Russia would break up and become a “failed state”. In the individual regions, warlords like the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov or mafiosi like Yevgeny Prigozhin, the notorious head of the Wagner mercenary group, would rule the roost. etc.

Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Khodorkovsky now explain in an essay in Foreign Affairs that those fears are unfounded. On the contrary, the former world chess champion and former oligarch represent a reassuring statement: “The approaching end of Putin’s reign should not cause fear, but should be welcomed with open eyes.”

A decisive defeat on the battlefield would shatter Putin’s aura of invincibility, expose him as the architect of a failing state and leave his regime vulnerable to attack from within, Kasparov/Khodorkovsky believed. But this will not lead to chaos, because then the Russians will have the choice to either become a junior partner of China or finally make peace with the West.

Kasparow/Khordorkowski are confident that the Russians will opt for a rapprochement with the West and thus also for democracy and the rule of law. The two describe the new democratic Russia that would emerge after Putin’s defeat as follows:

For such a democratic Russia to emerge, the Biden administration must give up its restraint and equip Ukraine with heavy weapons such as longer-range tanks and missiles. “Biden can hasten the fall of Putin’s regime, paving the way for a democratic Russia and showing the world the folly of this war,” Kasparov/Khordorkovsky said. “The United States must not destroy Ukraine’s hopes out of misplaced fear.”

For a possible victory, the troops of the Ukraine mainly need German Leopard tanks. However, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz still struggles with this, so difficult that a new term has now been chosen: the Scholzing. This means: “Communicate good intentions, and then use/find/invent every conceivable excuse to delay/prevent the implementation of those intentions.”

The behavior of the German Chancellor is hardly comprehensible anymore. In Berlin, senior diplomats shake their heads that Scholz has again postponed the Leopard decision. One of them told the Financial Times: “We actually assumed the dam had broken and that Scholz was finally moving in the right direction. Now we’re scratching our heads wondering what’s up with this guy. “

Even the traffic light coalition is rumbling. The FDP politician Agnes-Marie Strack-Zimmermann, head of the defense committee in the Bundestag, told ZDF: “History is watching us, and unfortunately Germany has failed.” Moreover, according to Strack-Zimmermann, the communication is catastrophic. “If the chancellor won’t deliver the tanks, he should at least explain why.”

There are many indications that Scholz will nevertheless succumb to international pressure. In any case, Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, has now stated that Germany will allow other countries to supply Leopard tanks to Ukraine.