What will Vladimir Putin do today, May 9, 2022, Victory Day over Nazism ? This has been the recurring question for some time now. If it is a useful question, or if it represents a not too happy manifestation of the usual reasoning trick of the circumstance, it will be the unfolding of the story to tell us about it. Especially where we want to take into consideration the latest statements by Volodymyr Zelensky who, according to the free interpretation, and in some ways surreal, of most people, would have said he was willing to negotiate peace with Moscow by offering his own renunciation to the "plate" claim of Crimea already annexed to Russia since 2014.

Basically, during his speech at the Chatan House in London, the Ukrainian president, placing himself in the perspective of the possible events that could pile up today, would have said he was willing to review the terms of the compromise with his competitor if Muscovite forces agreed to withdraw " to the positions of February 23 ".

Well: if these were really the terms of the comparison, I really don't know whether to laugh or cry. Even if we want to concede everything, and given the limp reaction of NATO on this point, it is clear (nor is it clear how it was possible to feed the hypothesis of an openness to dialectical confrontation by the Ukrainian leader), that far from assuming the value of a compromise hypothesis, those words could and should "sound" only and solely as a further provocation . In short: nothing new under the sun. And, to be honest but never senselessly malicious, the "exchange of words" indirectly managed on the "media" between Volodymyr Zelensky and the NATO leaders in the aforementioned circumstance, would rather seem to return a bitter and unnecessarily irritating aftertaste. Both due to its occurrence of well over seventy days of grueling fighting, or within a war context at an advanced stage, and in consideration of the statements made by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg according to which, in short, the Atlantic Alliance would have in anticipation of "a further worsening" of the war in Ukraine "in the coming weeks", and because, with all due respect to the actor who became President (almost) by bet, the annexation of Crimea to Russia had already materialized in fact since 'year 2014. The only certainty, at the moment, seems to be that the beginning of the " special military operation " has marked the start, or rather the continuation, of a "cold war" that has never subsided , albeit with an unprecedented tone and in the contents to be exclusively justified, at least so it would seem, on an ideological component not yet fully defined but which seems to be articulated day after day or and hand in hand with the progress of the conflict. In the context of which (of the conflict it is meant), the Russians of Vladimir Putin seem very far, for the moment, from wanting to use their actual war potential.

To argue the opposite only to reflect the image of a Great Country weakened by the Ukrainian "resistance", for having been armed, the latter, by the unbeatable West, would only translate into sterile propaganda aimed, so to speak, to "want it tell ”in solitude. In a scenario such as the one just represented, the possibility of reaching "peace" appears as a pure utopia. And I firmly believe that, on our part, we have only deluded ourselves that we can attribute to today's day a relevant meaning for the unfolding, the evolution, and / or possibly the end of the ongoing war process. Vladimir Putin , as far as I am aware, has never been the Man of proclamations, of bombastic announcements : he has always been rather a strategist of doing, and his "word" has always manifested itself through his actions. Not a moment before, not a moment later. Putin's May 9th, therefore, will be purely and simply May 9th ever . Meanwhile, because the "Victory Day" conquered through the surrender of the Nazis in 1945, for twenty years now, has become a fundamental celebration aimed at qualifying the Russian national identity through the constant repetition of the all-Soviet custom of organizing major military parades in cities across the country .

Therefore, because, after all, it was rather the West that brought back to today's date a further meaning due to the ongoing conflict which, however, would not seem to have. Finally, because, far from announcing a further escalation of the conflict, with good verisimilitude, and with a view to a precise strategy, Vladimir Putin will limit himself to the memory of the glorious enterprise that led to the end of the Second World War. All the more so when we want to reflect on a circumstance that is anything but secondary: to date, the Russian President, despite the heavy provocations, verbal and otherwise, by the greatest Western leaders, has never shown signs of abating , maintaining his usual coldness, and carrying out its operation on the ideal line drawn and revisited from time to time in consideration of the progress of the special military operation.

Future evolutions will therefore be the result of careful meditation whose contents will be outlined on reasons of convenience instrumental to the exercise of effective control of the areas to be conquered. In other words: if Vladimir Putin, and can do so, were to determine himself in the sense of groped for the annexation of the entire Ukrainian territory, then his soldiers, and for many more years, will find themselves having to face grueling, small and costly daily guerrillas. with the indigenous population risking, in the long run, to cause growing discontent within their own country; if, on the other hand, he were to be satisfied with exercising his control only over a part of the territory, that is, in the Donbass and the southern corridor that connects it to the Crimea, at the same time trying to impose a pro-Russian government in Kiev, then, probably, he should to face the costs of a resistance directly oriented against the new, illegitimate authorities as inevitably considered as such. Thus, the real problem, far from being posed in terms of the imbalances of the forces in the field, and of the ideal Muscovite military fatigue, would seem to concentrate rather on the appropriateness of the objective to be pursued, not yet defined in the essential terms. Only when Moscow has properly focused the terms of its military intervention, only then, and not before, will Vladimir Putin decide to act with precise determination. Never ever, barring surprises, could it accept the Ukrainian president's pseudo peace offer. It will be important, beyond useless proclamations , and before it is too late for everyone, to try to understand Moscow's intentions in order to establish real peace negotiations.

Giuseppina Di Salvatore

(Lawyer - Nuoro)

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