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Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: SPUTNIK/PAVEL BEDNYAKOV/POOL VIA REUTERS
The Ukraine crisis has shown the UN to be as useless as Jacob Zuma’s shower-taking advice to prevent HIV after unprotected intercourse.
As for Russian president Vladimir Putin, 2022 is not 2014. Ukraine is not Crimea, Chechnya or Georgia. Starting a war against Nato will be stupid and dangerous. It will be Putin versus Europe. Russia will pay the heaviest price.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in Times magazine in 2017 that Russia’s domestic problems are “a stagnating economy, declining living standards, mass poverty, corruption, illegal enrichment of the few, degradation of education, healthcare and science. I am convinced that Russia can succeed only through democracy.”
In 2022 Russia is still an autocracy. Putin and Russia’s oil economy need Europe’s money to survive. If he goes ahead with his doomed mission to attack Ukraine, it is goodbye to Gazprom and his beloved Nord Stream 2 gas project. Economists predict that Gazprom will lose $200m-$230m a day if Russia’s gas supply to Europe is cut. This is the money Putin desperately needs to improve the Russia’s economic trajectory.
We can only hope that Putin the pragmatist will overrule Putin the showman. He got the attention he wanted from Washington, Istanbul, Paris, Berlin, London and Brussels. From CNN to BBC Putin has been at the centre of it all. But the circus will end at some point. Everything has an expiry date, even showmanship.
Putin’s circus in Donbas will eventually be history, but Ukraine is a warning to the world. We dare not ignore it. As Garry Kasparov writes in his book Winter Is Coming, “Putin’s Russia is clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today.”
Dr Lucas Ntyintyane Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: Show’s over, Putin
The Ukraine crisis has shown the UN to be as useless as Jacob Zuma’s shower-taking advice to prevent HIV after unprotected intercourse.
As for Russian president Vladimir Putin, 2022 is not 2014. Ukraine is not Crimea, Chechnya or Georgia. Starting a war against Nato will be stupid and dangerous. It will be Putin versus Europe. Russia will pay the heaviest price.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in Times magazine in 2017 that Russia’s domestic problems are “a stagnating economy, declining living standards, mass poverty, corruption, illegal enrichment of the few, degradation of education, healthcare and science. I am convinced that Russia can succeed only through democracy.”
In 2022 Russia is still an autocracy. Putin and Russia’s oil economy need Europe’s money to survive. If he goes ahead with his doomed mission to attack Ukraine, it is goodbye to Gazprom and his beloved Nord Stream 2 gas project. Economists predict that Gazprom will lose $200m-$230m a day if Russia’s gas supply to Europe is cut. This is the money Putin desperately needs to improve the Russia’s economic trajectory.
We can only hope that Putin the pragmatist will overrule Putin the showman. He got the attention he wanted from Washington, Istanbul, Paris, Berlin, London and Brussels. From CNN to BBC Putin has been at the centre of it all. But the circus will end at some point. Everything has an expiry date, even showmanship.
Putin’s circus in Donbas will eventually be history, but Ukraine is a warning to the world. We dare not ignore it. As Garry Kasparov writes in his book Winter Is Coming, “Putin’s Russia is clearly the biggest and most dangerous threat facing the world today.”
Dr Lucas Ntyintyane
Via email
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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Published by Arena Holdings and distributed with the Financial Mail on the last Thursday of every month except December and January.