By John Wight, Consortium News, 6/3/25
Russian President Vladimir Putin now finds himself at a monumental crossroads when it comes to his stewardship of Russia at a time when nuclear Armageddon has never been closer.
Ukraine’s devastatingly successful and audacious strike against Russia’s long-range strategic bomber aircraft stock marks a major inflection point in a conflict that evidences no sign of ending.
But let us not lose sight of the salient fact that Russia is not engaged in a conflict with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine. This is instead a conflict pitting the Russian Federation against NATO, with Ukraine a proxy of the latter. And NATO is taking advantage of Putin’s caution.
No consequential conflict has ever been won by half-measures. General William Sherman’s “March to the Sea” arguably did more to break the Confederacy than President Abraham Lincoln’s famed Emancipation Proclamation. The Allies firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 and the Soviets arrival on the outskirts of Berlin on April 25, 1945, did more to break the back of the Germans than Hitler’s suicide nine days later. The Vietnamese won their national liberation with the fully-committed and symbolically important Tet Offensive of 1968 rather than all of the diplomatic machinations that came thereafter.
Russia’s military campaign at Putin’s direction has placed a priority on avoiding escalation. But it is a posture that has invited escalation, evidenced by this latest major turn of events.
Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, viewing satellite images of Russian military airfields, clockwise — Olenya, Ivanovo Severny, Ukrainka, Belaya, and Dyagilevo — and photos of strategic bombers Tu-95MS, left, and Tu-22M3, right. (Ssu.gov.ua/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 4.0)
Russia has been fighting the West diplomatically but not militarily, while Ukraine under Zelensky has been waging its conflict with Russia in the name of the strategic aims of NATO, rather than the interests of Ukraine and its people.
Russia is at a decisive point. Does it continue its war carefully to avoid confrontation with NATO, while encouraging its continued provocations, or does it take the hardline approach of Yevengi Prigozhin, the late outspoken leader of Russia’s Wagner Group, who made repeated demands for national mobilization in the name of a speedy victory dictated by Russia’s far superior mass and weight of industrial potential.
Ukraine’s June 1 drone attack ona Russian airfield. (Ssu.gov.ua / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)
Putin is a deft leader. Even his adversaries in the corridors of power in the West would grudgingly admit this given his long record in power in the Kremlin. It was he who dragged Russia out of the free market abyss into which the country and its people were plunged in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Putin’s Rebuilding of Russia
In the process, Putin succeeded in restoring the primacy of the state over a new rising Russian economic oligarchy — one that had been happy to allow the masses of the Russian people into the arms of destitution and despair because of its own greed and corruption.
The Russian leader then set about rebuilding state institutions that had been destroyed in the name of the religion of free market capitalism, with the result that slowly but surely a new state emerged from the ashes of the old. Russia regained pride in a new identity embraced the indispensable role of the Soviet Union in defeating the Nazis in World War II with respect for the pre-Bolshevik role of the Russian Orthodox church as a pillar of spiritual stability and social cohesion.
From the Russian standpoint, this is why Putin is credited as their historical version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. president who likewise saved his country from the abyss during the 1930s, when the Great Depression was at its terrible and destructive zenith and then went on to lead the bulk of the U.S. war effort during World War II.
But Putin has, it appears, misread the West’s resolve in this period of the rapidly shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics. Putin’s reasoning has been the avoidance of escalation to direct military conflict with the collective Western powers. However those powers are already heavily involved in the arming, training and direction of Kiev’s war effort.
Zelensky at a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the former NATO secretary general, in Kiev in April 2024. (President of Ukraine/Flickr)
So where now and what now?
Ukraine’s devastating drone strike deep into Russian territory is a gauntlet thrown down. Will Russia under Putin’s leadership ever be able to persevere to the point of claiming a clear victory? Or has Ukraine under the leadership of Zelensky just changed the dynamic to the point of proving to the collective West that he is a leader worthy of continued support to the point of victory at all cost?
President Donald Trump’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office back in March was driven and motivated by the belief that Ukraine’s war effort was faltering. Zelensky in this context appeared isolated, adrift and weak.
Well, not anymore.
As these words are being written, reports of heavy Russian air and missile strikes against targets across Ukraine are emerging. The famous quote of the French revolutionary thinker and agitator, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just springs to mind: “Those who make revolution halfway only dig their own grave.” Substitute the word “war” for revolution and this is the point at which Putin and the Kremlin have arrived. But how far can Russia go before all-out war with NATO and its potential, dreadful consequences?
Beware of small states, as throughout history it is they who have dragged the world into major conflict. Zelensky, when viewed in this light, knows that Ukraine cannot forever stand against Russia’s superior manpower and mass. He knows that to stand any chance of emerging from this conflict with a result at the end, he must drag the West into direct conflict with Moscow sooner rather than later.
World War III is the only road to victory that lies open to him. For the rest of us, it is the road to hell.
John Wight, author of Gaza Weeps, 2021, writes on politics, culture, sport and whatever else. Please consider making a donation in order to help fund his efforts. You can do so here. You can also grab a copy of his book, This Boxing Game: A Journey in Beautiful Brutality, from all major booksellers, and his novel Gaza: This Bleeding Land from same. Please consider taking out a subscription at his Medium site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.