DO NOT HUMBLE PUTIN

 Vladimir Putin has been treated as a war criminal by the US president, Biden, and by other political leaders, analysts and commentators. Serious accusations that were part of the beginning of an unjustified aggression against Ukraine.

Ukraine was not a threat to Russia; he was not carrying out the slightest provocation and, at the time, he had no intention of abandoning his neutrality and choosing to join NATO.

For decades, the regime installed in Kiyv was pro-Soviet in nature and Moscow exercised a kind of paternalism that prevented Ukraine from leaving the Russian hinterland.

But with the access to power of a Western regime led by the theatrical actor. Volodymyr Zelensky, the scenario has undergone a remarkable change. Ukraine still did not constitute the slightest threat to Russia, but the President of the Russian Federation, with his past as a "Soviet actor" gave himself two objectives: To prevent NATO from having a new border with Russia at all costs, and to of the Donbass a probable "casus belli" that justified the so-called "special operation" to defend its people from a non-existent genocide.

In the current situation of the conflict, Putin's position has weakened, at least in the military field. But, in any case, Russia cannot lose this war. There is an abysmal distance between the Russian power and that which Ukraine has-

Zelensky knows this, and although he uses the language of war more and more loudly and boasts of his counteroffensive, he knows that he will not win the war and that there is no other solution than a negotiation in which there are neither winners nor losers. Zelensky does not want to lose, and Putin cannot lose.

Putin has no known rivals who could topple him. He has the massive support of the Duma, and if there is any general who criticizes this war in his heart, he does not let it show in public. So Putin remains Russia's strongman.

But what the West must avoid at all costs is putting Putin under the ropes. A Putin with his back to the wall would almost certainly lead him to use the nuclear weapon in Ukraine, albeit outside a more or less controlled range.

The one who has best understood the current situation is the French president, Emanuel Macron, who, despite being subjected to a volley of criticism, has not wanted to stop talking with Putin, even though this seems like a conversation between the deaf.

Macron, and Biden in his heart, know not to break ties with Putin and, above all, not to humiliate him. Taking it to that extreme would be a dangerous operation for the West. Because Putin has never ceased to be a "homo soviéticus" created and sculpted in the days when the USSR prided itself on dominating, if not the whole world, at least most of Europe.

So that today the West has as a more necessary task to calm Zelensky than to continue provoking the humiliation of the Russian president.

The negotiation will not be easy. Putin will not leave the four regions he has annexed, but he may withdraw from the other occupied areas. As for Crimea, it will have to remain in the hands of Moscow, and Zelensky does not ignore this either.

Crimea was ceded to Ukraine by the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, but then the USSR existed and everyone was Soviet. The Ukrainians and the Russians were Soviets and it did not matter whether Crimea was run by Moscow or the Kiyv. That changed with the disappearance of the USSR and we must go back in history and recognize that Crimea was Russian since the distant times of Catherine the Great. The peninsula ceased to be Ottoman when the tsarist empire took it over in 1783.

Interestingly, a few days ago, the director of the US intelligence agency (CIA), William Burns, in statements to CBS, supports Macron's position and advocates that Putin not be humiliated. So, for now, with Putin we have to keep dancing the tango.

(picture: Putin and Macron)