There are moments in history that appear as critical to the world as they are terrifying. We appear to be living one of them now as the Kremlin annexes a large swath of Ukraine amid nuclear threats. Analysis by AP's TamerFakahany.
After a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield, Putin has made it painfully clear that any attack on the newly annexed regions would be construed as an attack on Russia. He would use any means available in his vast arsenal —“We’re in an escalation phase, and Russia now is faced with a series of more extreme choices than before,” said Nigel Gould-Davies, the former U.K. ambassador to Belarus.
Gould-Davies, who is senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s attempts to win the war by more moderate means have failed, and Putin is now having to increase the “range and severity of the measures” Russia is taking, including annexation and nuclear threats.
Even as Moscow annexed the four Ukrainian regions in a move that will not be recognized by an overwhelming majority of the world, tens of thousands of Russian men called up to fight in the war were fleeing Russia.Former Kremlin speechwriter turned political analyst Abbas Gallyamov on Friday linked Russia’s reversals in the war with the annexation push. “It looks like an attempt to respond somehow, and it looks quite pathetic.
Driving Putin are years of perceived humiliation at the hands of the West after the demise of the Soviet Union. And the fact that previous bloodshed and atrocities committed against Chechnya and Syria escaped severe international intervention seemed to give him the conviction that he had carte blanche to rebuild an Imperial Russia.
On a day like Friday, Sept. 30, as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters a flammable, even more dangerous phase, the question remains; Is a wider war looming with devastating results for the world, perhaps not seen since 1939-1945?Tamer Fakahany is AP’s deputy director for global news coordination and has helped direct international coverage for the AP for 20 years. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tamerfakahany. Associated Press writer Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.