OPINION:
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been at war with Ukraine since 2014. He has been at war with democracy his entire life.
Mr. Putin nominally resigned from the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he never left the world of cloak-and-dagger espionage.
Mr. Putin, who is fond of saying there is no such thing as “former KGB,” served as director of the Russian secret police and intelligence agency’s successor spy organization, the Federal Security Service, before he was named President Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in 1999. He then transitioned to the office of president.
Mr. Putin has ruled Russia longer than anyone else except the ruthless Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Mr. Putin wields unlimited power to control and subvert Russia’s population through state-controlled, Orwellian media and his pliant security services, which tolerate no dissent. Russia has no rule of law, only Mr. Putin’s centrally controlled “vertical of power” directing the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign agenda.
Mr. Putin likes to project strength with Potemkin village visits to the front lines and posing shirtless on a horse, even though his unchecked kleptocracy and unprovoked barbaric war on Ukraine have severely weakened Russia economically and militarily.
The Russian army was supposed to have toppled the government in Kyiv in days, but it instead has sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Sweden and Finland are now NATO members. China is encroaching on Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in Central Asia. Europe, awakened from its post-Cold War slumber, is now committed to building out its defense industrial base, keeping Ukraine in the fight and decoupling economically from Russia.
Mr. Putin has been reduced to groveling to North Korea, Iran and China for economic and military support, all at a high cost to Russia’s economic and strategic interests.
In a democracy, Mr. Putin would face legislative oversight and unbiased media coverage of the carnage he has caused his nation, Ukraine and free elections. This would result, at the very least, in the end of his regime, if not judicial convictions and prison time for massive human rights violations, fraud and corruption. That’s why what scares Mr. Putin the most is not NATO — a defensive alliance created to deter his Soviet predecessors from invading and subjugating Western Europe — but rather democracy.
Mr. Putin’s strategic objective, consistent with his infamous statement that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the past century was the collapse of the Soviet Union, is to conquer Ukraine, install a pro-Kremlin puppet regime in Kyiv and expand Russia’s sphere of influence into Europe.
However, Mr. Putin also has the U.S. in his crosshairs. By deliberately timing his most savage attacks on Ukrainian civilians after engaging in phone conversations with President Trump, Mr. Putin is seeking to demonstrate that the U.S. has no capacity to project power into the Kremlin’s self-designated sphere of influence.
Mr. Putin wants the U.S. to appear weak on the world stage, without any of the vaunted soft power that over the years has cemented close relationships between the U.S. and its allies. From the days of Mr. Putin’s KGB, the Kremlin has always referred to the U.S. as Russia’s “main enemy” because the U.S., in President Reagan’s eloquent words, has always been a “shining city on a hill.” That means it has all the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights — freedoms Mr. Putin denies to his fellow citizens.
The way the war in Ukraine ends matters first and foremost to Ukrainians, who are bravely defending their country’s independence. It also matters to the U.S., most importantly in our capacity to deter Mr. Putin from threatening the security of the Atlantic, the Arctic and Europe, especially the freedom of navigation and international trade on which the U.S. economy relies.
Based on the Kremlin’s immediate public rejection of the Trump administration’s 50-day deadline, past appears to be prologue.
Congress and Mr. Trump will need to be prepared with those punitive sanctions warmed up in the bullpen, as Mr. Putin shows no interest in a ceasefire.
Mr. Putin will lie, obfuscate and offer to “negotiate” while continuing to rain down hell on Ukrainian civilians, all with an eye toward demonstrating that the U.S., which has been the arsenal of democracy since World War II, is powerless to project power beyond our shores.
The stakes could not be higher. We should have learned our lesson from the Biden administration’s chaotic and costly withdrawal from Afghanistan: Weakness in foreign policy creates opportunities for our enemies. These are not limited to the Kremlin, of course, but extend also to Mr. Putin’s allies Iran, North Korea and China, which are poised to exploit them.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.
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