Putin is threatening Europe with war, and this war is already underway. The Russian president does not just want to take over Ukraine and restore the Soviet Union. His strategic goal is to take revenge on the West for the defeat in the Cold War.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, an opponent of Vladimir Putin, issued a sharp warning to Europe about the Kremlin leader's intentions.
LE FIGARO: You predicted the onset of the "Putin winter" long before most observers. What do you see happening today on the Russia-West chessboard?
GARRY KASPAROV: Putin says it all when he threatens Europe with war. He tells us that there will be a war in Europe, and the fact is that this war is already underway! Putin has a strategic goal. We must listen to him. He wants to re-establish the Soviet Empire, but his strategic goal is broader: to take revenge on the West for the defeat in the Cold War. Today the West fears World War III, but Putin is already waging World War IV!
For him, World War III was the Cold War that the USSR and Russia lost. Therefore, his goal in this fourth war is not simply to seize territory. Ukraine is an important step, because without it there is no Russian Empire. But Putin's project is a revenge against the West, aimed at rejecting his world built on law and consensus and returning to a world where the strong define the right.
He intends to recreate an alliance of great powers with Moscow, Washington and Beijing, in which all the others, like Poland and Estonia, have no independent existence. To achieve this, he must dismantle international institutions. This is already de facto happening with the UN. NATO and the EU remain, and his goal is to discredit them in the public consciousness.
And we must admit that the entire institutional framework in which we grew up, this seemingly unshakable world of NATO and the EU, turns out to be a colossus with feet of clay! As soon as the threat appeared, we saw that the entire political structure of the European Union was powerless to respond. Historically, major wars have begun when the structures of international relations no longer correspond to reality: the League of Nations collapsed and we experienced World War II.
Today, the UN, NATO and the EU no longer meet the requirements of globalization. The void is being filled by Putin, Xi Jinping, Iran... The European Union was created for peace and prosperity, for the end of history, for the economy, for money. It was the brainchild of Fukuyama. The war was for the Americans.
NATO, for its part, was created with a single purpose: to stop the Russian invasion of free Europe. Today, free Europe extends to the Dnieper River. But it turns out that when it is attacked in Ukraine, it does not want to fight. And NATO has become a fiction, just four letters.
LE FIGARO: NATO has not disappeared, Putin has not yet attacked NATO countries...
GARRY KASPAROV: What do you mean by "has not yet attacked"? Putin can paralyze the operations of the airports in Brussels or Copenhagen, violate the sea borders. So, yes, he has not yet attacked. Because his entire army is engaged in Ukraine. Ukraine is defending Europe today.
But the goal remains the same: dismantling NATO and the EU. Putin is making progress. The "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) is completely subdued, especially financially. In France, the National Rally (RN) has, at the very least, strong sympathies for Putin, as does Nigel Farage in Britain. This means that in the three largest European countries, three major parties, if they came to power, would stop the war immediately and hand over Ukraine to Putin's Russia.
LE FIGARO: From this point of view, Trump is setting an example by working for Putin's complete, unpunished reintegration in the name of the bright future of economic agreements.
GARRY KASPAROV: Today, in the White House, there is a person who is implementing Putin's plans, who is essentially working for him! This is not surprising after all, since Trump has always sold what he controlled after his bankruptcies. Today, he has inherited American hegemony. It is profitable for him to sell it, perhaps to Putin or to China! And besides, unlike Nixon during Watergate, he acts openly, without the system knowing how to stop him.
LE FIGARO: Is this a gift from heaven for Putin?
GARRY KASPAROV: Of course! Just look at his face during the visit of Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. He thinks America is bankrupt. Understand: Trump's son-in-law comes to him with one of Trump's main business partners to "talk business" about Ukraine! He openly bribes the Trump family, in front of the whole world. He thinks they came to surrender. This is not a negotiation, it's a deal.
LE FIGARO: If Putin gets Donbass, can he temporarily agree to a peace agreement?
GARRY KASPAROV: Putin wants to crush Europe. But today his priority is to take Donbass. And if Ukraine surrenders, he will accept the deal and send his million-strong army further. Because it would be too dangerous to send them back to Russia.
LE FIGARO: Why?
GARRY KASPAROV: Because in a month a new Prigozhin will appear, ready to lead these legions of starving people, trained to kill and undoubtedly unprepared to be content with a pension of 10,000 rubles (105 Swiss francs).
Let me remind you of what happened in the 1990s, when two large mafias emerged: the Chechen and the Afghan, made up of veterans of the war in Afghanistan. This created some unpleasant personalities, but they were 50,000. Whereas now there will be a million mentally unstable people organized into gangs. Putin would prefer to send them to fight in other countries in Europe. They won't even have to attack.
Because if an army of 500,000 approached Vilnius and gave an ultimatum, what would the Lithuanians do? Would they call NATO? Article 5 should be enshrined in law. But the fact that we are even discussing its validity shows that it no longer exists. Coming back to your question about his intentions, Putin needs a breath of air because the economic situation in Russia is deteriorating.
He needs to acquire territory to narrow Ukraine and open a direct path to Kiev. But above all, if Ukraine is forced to surrender, it will mean that America no longer exists as a guarantor of international law and that NATO is finished.
LE FIGARO: You mean that Putin will no longer be beholden to anyone?
GARRY KASPAROV: Who could he actually be beholden to? Over the years, Putin has convinced himself that he can buy his interlocutors. And now he understands that he can bribe the president of the United States, just as he bribed former German Chancellor Schröder. Europe can react, but it is not ready to fight alongside the Ukrainians.
Nevertheless, one day a war will have to be fought, and the question is whether it will be in alliance with Ukraine or later, when, having defeated Ukraine, Putin mobilizes his people to advance westward. Because, I repeat, Putin declared this war a long time ago. In 2005, before the joint session of the two chambers in Moscow, when he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. And in Munich, in 2007, when he said that NATO should return to its 1997 borders, it was an attempt to throw Eastern European sovereignty into the garbage dump.
Today, his stakes have increased. He sees the whole of NATO as a paper tiger, a mere shadow of its former self. He believes that through his audacity he can achieve any result.
LE FIGARO: Doesn't he overestimate his strength, especially the economic one?
GARRY KASPAROV: Economically he is weak. Militarily, if Northern Europe - that is, the Poles, the Baltics, the Swedes, the Finns and the Norwegians - took action, they could do it alone, joining forces with the Ukrainians. Even without America, without Germany.
Putin has only one real trump card: nuclear weapons. But I don't believe he will go any further than bluffing. Beijing warned him about this. Because if Moscow decides to use tactical nuclear weapons, the whole world will start acquiring nuclear arsenals, something that Beijing categorically does not want. Putin has received clear instructions. Bluff - yes; use of the atom - no. He plays poker and bluffs.
LE FIGARO: So all is not lost. How can we stop Putin?
GARRY KASPAROV: The game of deterrence requires decisive action. Do you remember the ultimatum to Putin on May 12, in which the Europeans said that if he continued the bombing, they would hand over the "Taurus" planes. Where are the "Taurus" planes? Why don't they give them to the Ukrainians?
Another idea: deploying nuclear missiles in Poland, capable of reaching Moscow in ten minutes, would have an immediate effect. Or sharply tightening sanctions. We must stop trading with Putin, who is waging war against us, directing attacks on our airports and bribing political parties. Putin doesn't take Europeans seriously, just like Trump.
To change that, we need to send ten Taurus planes to blow up the Crimean bridge and 50 French planes to close Ukrainian airspace. Politically, economically, and militarily, the West is stronger. Putin can't really escalate the situation.
Besides, Ukraine has been holding the front alone for four years now. Help them by showing some teeth. Russian history shows that every war won strengthens the regime. Conversely, every war lost leads to revolution or reform. Finally, of course, we need to take control of Russian oil.
I discussed this with the Danish Foreign Minister in August 2023, proposing that we close the Danish Straits. Not completely, of course, but by making it impossible for the Russian ghost fleet to exist, cutting Russia off from its main resource: oil money. We need to take tough measures, act as if Europe were at least in a state of trade war.
And finally, we need to act quickly on the frozen Russian assets. Let's turn the European tortoise into a cheetah.