PUTIN’S POTEMKIN COUNTRY

Grigory Potemkin was a minister and lover of the Russian Empress Catherine II. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from the Ottoman Empire and liquidation of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich to create “New Russia,” Potemkin became governor of the region.

Crimea had been devastated by the war, and the Muslim Tatar inhabitants of Crimea were viewed as a potential fifth column of the Ottoman Empire; Potemkin's major tasks were to pacify and rebuild by bringing in Russian settlers. In 1787, as a new war was about to break out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Catherine II, with her court and several ambassadors, made an unprecedented six-month trip to New Russia. One purpose was to impress Russia's allies prior to the war. Another purpose was to familiarize herself, supposedly directly, with her new possessions. To help accomplish this, Potemkin set up "mobile villages" on the banks of the Dnieper River. As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight

As a result, in politics and economics, a Potemkin village is any construction (literal or figurative) whose sole purpose is to provide an external façade to a country that is faring poorly, making people believe that the country is faring better.

Vladimir Putin has now extended the concept from politics and economics to include war - all the activities of a functional government.

Putin’s aggressive invasion of Ukraine is now in its fifth day, and has acheived virtually nothing of what was expected. The Ukrainian army did not disintegrate, and the Ukrainian government did not flee. Putin expected the invasion to be complete within 3-4 days, before the West could come together and impose sanctions on his government and Russia for his actions. This hasn’t happened.

Instead, the West is united as it hasn’t been since the days of the coldest parts of the Cold War - the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Putin announced this morning that he was ordering the Russian strategic nuclear force on advanced alert. This attempt to turn the crisis into a Russia vs the United States confrontation has failed, with the United States announcing that the U.S. nuclear force would remain at its current alert status.

Massive economic and financial sanctions have been imposed on the leading companies and financial institutions in Russia. The move to impose removal of major Russian banks from the SWIFT system was supported by Hungary and Italy, the two countries that had previously said they did not want to see this done. Viktor Orbán, of all people, has denounced Putin’s invasion, as has the previously pro-Putin president of Czechia, Miloš Zeman.

In Finland, it was announced yesterday a petition to force a national plebiscite on joining NATO had obtained the necessary signatures to proceed later this Spring. This was accomplished over two days following Putin’s issuance of a threat to take military action against the country if it moved to join NATO. If Finland does this, Sweden will follow in accordance with an agreement between the two countries.

Aeroflot has been denied use of Western airspace; with the embargo of export of technology, Aeroflot’s fleet of Boeings and Airbuses will soon be grounded due to lack of ability to operate. Private Russian aircraft - such as the bizjets of the Russian oligarchs, have been banned from European airspace.

This morning, Turkey declared that a “state of war” existed in the Black Sea and announced that - under the authority of the 1936 treaty governing the operation of the Dardanelles, that the straits would be closed to Russian and Ukrainian ships; this applies mostly to Russia, and means that their naval ships currently in the Mediterranean cannot return to their base at Sevastopol in the stolen Crimean peninsula.

In the aftermath of the imposition of financial sanctions and the removal of banks from SWIFT, it is expected that tomorrow the Russian stock exchange and the ruble will go into “free fall” within hours of the exchange opening - if it is allowed to open.

Militarily, the Russian Army is failing. The Ukrainian government announced this morning that the advanced Russian units that had entered Kharkiv yesterday had been pushed out of the city. No major Ukrainian city has fallen to the invaders.

Russia has been called “a gas station with nukes.” It may physically be the largest country on earth, but it has an economy smaller than that of California. The war is costing 20 billion rubles a day (at last week’s exchange rate), and Russia has now been cut off from accessing its currency reserves. The government is going to run out of the money to spend on this war within a week.

The Russian supply lines are being attacked by the Ukrainian Army, and there is already a shortage of diesel fuel to run the the Red Army tanks.

Putin has no meaningful international support. China - the one country whose support could save him - abstained from voting with the Russian ambassador in the UN Security Council vote on Friday.

As recently as yesterday, Putin repeated his statement that he would not negotiate with the current Ukrainian government, and that any negotiations would have to meet the precondition of Ukrainian surrender. This morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelens’kyi announced his government’s willingness to meet with Russian representatives at the Ukraine-Belarus border for negotiations “without preconditions.” The Russian government has accepted this offer.

Vladimir Putin has exposed to the world the fact that he is the leader of a “Potemkin country.” His bought-and-paid-for “supporters” are not on board for losing. Any “regime change” that happens is going to happen in Moscow, not Kyiv.

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