This is a Q&A session with Vera Granzeva, a Russian political scientist who has been living in exile in France since 2020 and teaches at the Sciences Po Paris Institute for Political Studies, with the French newspaper L'Express.
Q: Putin continues to claim that he is ready to "negotiate" to end the war in Ukraine. What is his goal? To buy time?
Granzeva: When analyzing Putin's strategy, two parameters must be taken into account. First, communication for him is not a means of explanation or finding a solution, but a weapon designed to deceive. He learned this in the school of the KGB. And second, words have no value in his eyes. Only actions matter - and this is what Westerners fail to understand because they live in a different world. When listening to Putin, remember that his words are worthless. Watch what he does, not what he says.
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Putin understands only force, he does not respect the very idea of compromise or negotiations, he perceives them as signs of weakness. That is why all the attempts of Western leaders on the eve of the war - when Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz went to Moscow - were counterproductive. Putin interpreted them as a green light to start the war. He saw confirmation of his vision of Europe: Europe is weak and unable to resist him. How to use force against Putin? The shortest and most effective way is military. If NATO had participated in this war from the very beginning, it would have lasted three days, because we saw the weaknesses of the Russian army.
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Putin is at a dead end. But there are other people in Russia who are listening. For three years, the Kremlin's strategy has been to tell the Russian elite and people: wait, don't worry, this won't last long, the Europeans are weak and unable to keep their word, wait a little longer. If Europe tightens sanctions, it will sow doubt among these political elites. Maybe not Putin's inner circle, the war criminals, who know that there is no way out for them. On the other hand, the second circle, who will certainly one day be in power - because time is against Putin, he will grow old and gradually a new generation will come to power - is watching the situation develop. They wonder how all this will end: "What kind of Russia will our children live in?"
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Today's Putin is very different from the Putin of 2012. Today he is a man of war. He is transforming Russian society, creating a militant minority, strongly motivated by this war against the West and by the idea of revenge for the collapse of the USSR. He is also waging a hybrid war in Europe. He is capable of carrying out other "special military operations" against other European targets. But for this to happen, he will first have to succeed in freezing the front in Ukraine in a "Minsk 3" type agreement (The first Minsk agreements were agreements to end hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, signed in 2014 and 2015).
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Putin's strategy remains total war against Europe. Although he is clearly not in a position to start a second war today, it is quite possible that he is in a preparation phase, accumulating equipment and troops near the border, while simultaneously sowing fear in Finland in response to the country's alleged betrayal over its NATO membership.
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