What will be the actions of Vladimir Putin amid the worsening economic situation in his own country, the continuing decline of the ruble collapse in oil prices and the continuing sanctions? Will Putin on the offensive or on the contrary will begin to curtail its Novorossiysk project in the hope of reconciliation with the West?

Actually these questions are not simply is no answer - the answer doesn't matter. And it's not that the Russian leadership does not have a strategic plan of action, and that Putin rather react than builds the situation. Putin is no longer able to properly assess what is happening. He makes mistakes, often fatal for others, but never leads to success, says Vitaly Portnikov to issue a New Time.

It was Putin demanded that Yanukovych stiffness in relation to the Maidan. As a result of its requirements has led to the collapse of the criminal regime. Putin was convinced that the saboteurs in Donetsk will help to ignite the uprising throughout Eastern Ukraine. As a result, we have witnessed the unprecedented unity of the centre, West and East in confrontation chauvinistic contagion. Putin has no doubt that the occupied territories - lever to hold the Ukraine. As a result, frees us from the ballast, virtually eliminating clumsy Soviet industry Donbass and residuosity population, which still would have nothing to do in the case of carrying out reforms. Putin during these months has done for us as much as we did for 20 years. The question arises - why?

But because Putin is not a mummy and not a computer, but a living person, working with the same human beings. People, as a rule, limited and poorly educated. And it is clear - this news is not even 2014 and 2004 - that there is no difference between Ukraine and Russia and between the mentality of the people living in these two countries, Putin and his entourage just fail to notice.

For Russians, the issue of territorial integrity is sacred. Russia clings to the small Outback Kuril Islands, leading to the marginalization and neglect the far East. Russia did not want even to look for the mechanism divorce from Chechnya. Although most inexperienced man in politics it is clear that the stay of Chechnya within the Russian Federation is a direct path to the collapse of the Russian state in its current form, the aggravation of interethnic contradictions, the growing authoritarianism and gerontocracy. Chechnya "tied" to itself the whole of Russia, and Putin believes that in the same way Donbass can "bind" to yourself the whole Ukraine. However, this is difficult because the Ukrainians perceive their own state not as the Russians. That is why the separation of the Crimea was primarily a problem of the Crimea, suddenly turned from the Peninsula into an island and still dependent on Ukraine, not Russia. And the Department of Donbass is the problem of the Donbass. And whatever it took Putin, he will create problems only occupied territories, and not our country. The Russians never understand. Even many educated in the Soviet traditions of Ukrainians never understand. And yet it doesn't work. And nothing that would come up with Putin, will not work. Because it creates recipes for the world, which does not exist in reality, the world in which we lived. No longer live.

Putin has one main goal, which he perfectly copes - by the fact of their existence, their ridiculous decisions, its phantasmagoric representation of the world - to prove that to agree with him impossible. This proof is necessary for the collapse of the Russian economy and the beginning of the present crisis in Russia. And this crisis is necessary as the air we and Russia.

Us - because it eliminates unpredictable aggressive neighbor with its medieval ambition and savage manners. Russia - because only the destruction of its economy, is obvious to every citizen of this marginalized countries that did not become a real state for a time after the collapse of the USSR, will help you move to the reformation of the Russian statehood and the appearance of the site of the present ugly mode of the present management structure, decentralized and providing regions and peoples of Russia the maximum rights and opportunities.

Without such reformatting Russia is doomed to decades of decline, wars, conflicts, terrorist attacks and man-made disasters, dangerous for its inhabitants and neighbors of this country. That is why Putin has already performed the role of an accelerator of the process of maturation of the modern Ukrainian political nation, now plays the role of catalyst of the collapse of his own regime and the beginning of change in Russia itself.
Without him we would not have coped.

Source: The New Times