Europe continues to show how out of step its response is with the growing threat from Moscow, writes famous chess master, champion, and exiled Putin critic Gary Kasparov in an op-ed for the London Daily Telegraph.
The European Union just recently enacted its 21st package of sanctions against Russia as a response to Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Tu-160 Up Close. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Tu-160 bomber Creative Commons Image
But despite the sanctions intended to inflict damage on Russia’s trade, banking, and other economic interests, Europe, he says, “continues to showcase just how out of step its response is to the growing threat from Moscow.”
The sanctions document itself reads like, as he describes it, “a series of miserly financial negotiations: an exemption for sable pelts, after requests from Italy and Greece, the two main buyers of the Russian fur, and an exemption for Greece to be able to continue shipping Russian LNG to countries outside the EU, after protests from that corner.”
“The European bureaucracy is still trying to maximize its profit margins and minimize its threats. This is how a smart company operates to deliver the best quarterly earnings to its shareholders; it is not how countries act when they are at war,” he points out.
No Acknowledgment of Being at War with Russia
This gets to the root of the problem with Europe, says Kasparov, which is that the continent, collectively in the form of the EU and individually – particularly in the case of nations that insist on continuing to buy Russian energy – “has still not openly acknowledged that it is engaged in outright war with Russia.”
“While Putin has been fighting no holds barred for years, Europe has largely stuck to its peacetime algorithm, with some weapons shipments and sanctions thrown in here and there, for good measure.” He also zooms in on the “different Europes” dilemma.
This is the phenomenon where European nations living closer to and having a history with Russia take distinctly different approaches to Putin’s aggression than those like Germany, which has always been more interested in trading with Moscow and avoiding trouble.
“Ukraine is paying in blood every day, and the Baltics, Finns, and Poles are actively preparing for an invasion across their borders. Western and southern Europe, meanwhile, continues to measure out costs and benefits carefully,” he observes.
“In the face of this measly response, Putin only continues to escalate. Just a few months back, it was possible to point to some hesitation in the Russian government when it came to the war. As I write this, however, the entire vertical of power has been mobilized for war. There are no holdouts now” within the upper ranks of the Kremlin elite, he asserts. The mantra inside Putin’s inner circle is “top to bottom is war to the bitter end, no matter the cost.”
The other menacing development soon to come is Putin carrying out a mass mobilization campaign that would pull in 500,000 or more new servicemen and would take place after Russian parliamentary elections in September.
Moscow’s propaganda machine, he says, “is working overtime to lay the groundwork for this extraordinary measure. Unlike Europe,” he emphasizes, “Putin understands that a war effort requires all of society; it takes sacrifice, and pain.”
How Europe Could Act Effectively
Kasparov also brought up the recent episode in which the leader of one of Moscow’s former vassal states showed more backbone in an encounter with Putin than any European leader has to date.
On 25 July, in a publicly broadcast meeting with Putin in the Russian city of Omsk, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev recently urged the former KGB mid-level officer to freeze the conflict in Ukraine.
“Putin’s response was outright dismissal: freezing the conflict is impossible,” recalls Kasparov, “and the suggestion only shows that Tokayev doesn’t understand the nature of war. There is no finessing, no moderation, in this statement.
It reveals an attitude that has only hardened over time; Putin will not take ‘no’ for an answer. He won’t stop unless he is stopped.”
Kasparov, who has spent decades as a vocal opponent to Putin’s rule, is equally critical of how the allies have acted (or failed to act) towards Russia since the Ukraine invasion.
His recommendations going forward are that the allies need to dispense with “business as usual” and take actions that might actually deter Putin.
“I have been writing for the duration of the war, four and a half long years, about how woefully inadequate the European (and for that matter, the American) response has been to Russia’s aggression. I have outlined, on more than one occasion, possible steps that Europe could have taken: recall its ambassadors to Moscow, go after the Russian shadow fleet, suspend Orban’s Hungary from NATO.”
“But as time goes on, and war inches steadily closer to the capitals of western Europe, the gap between threat and countermeasures has only grown,” he continues. Too many “narrowly targeted” sanctions that have shown Putin that the West is weak rather than resolute.
What he now says is the only acceptable response that remains is “to strip Russia of all legal mechanisms and economic resources that can be used to defend its own interests. Russia must become an international outlaw, and all of Putin’s henchmen must become pariahs no matter where they go.”
In closing, he observes that he does not blame Putin for not taking European leaders seriously. “Until Europe’s actions match its various statements and declarations, the threat and the response required to counter it will only continue to mount…I hope Europe’s leaders will not repeat history’s blunders, and wake up before war lands on their soil and leaves them no other choice.”
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
