Biden must hit Putin harder with sanctions now, before Ukraine is invaded further | Trudy Rubin

Any illusions about Vladimir Putin’s objectives should have vanished on Monday, when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time in a decade.

The Russian leader made clear in a Monday speech that he believes Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent country and regards it as the rightful possession of Russia.

Call it Hitlerian, call it Stalinesque — the bottom line is that Putin, who rules a failing nation with nukes and considers America his prime enemy, believes he can take control of other countries by military means. Ensconced in his anti-COVID bunker, the Russian leader’s passion to restore Soviet-era power and territory now poses a threat that goes far beyond Ukraine.

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President Joe Biden’s sanctions package, announced Tuesday, was useful, as was the German decision to halt moving forward with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. But these moves won’t stop Putin, who is obsessed with restoring his warped vision of Russian greatness.

So now is the moment for Biden to throw his entire sanctions package at Putin. That should include cutting off access to the SWIFT network for international financial transfers. Now is also the time for Americans to grasp the magnitude of the big lies Putin is trying to peddle to his own people — and to the world.

The biggest lie of all: Putin’s claim that his second invasion of eastern Ukraine in 10 years is meant to save Russian-speaking Ukrainians from a “genocide.” On Monday, Putin ordered troops into two chunks of eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia-backed separatists and Russian troops, claiming Russia now recognized them as “independent” republics.

This comes straight out of a Putin playbook that was used to destabilize the Caucasus country of Georgia (also a former Soviet republic) when it contemplated NATO membership in 2008. At that time, Moscow recognized the “independence” of two ethnic enclaves inside the territory of Georgia, sending Russian troops to occupy the enclaves and set up bases. These bases guarantee that Georgia can never be truly independent.

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Flash forward to 2014, when Putin played the same game with eastern Ukraine, sending troops and organizing pro-Russian militias to start a “rebellion.” Putin was worried that Ukrainian leaders were leaning too far toward the European Union (not NATO) and wanted to destabilize the country. He also wanted to grab Crimea and attach it back to Russia.

I was on a reporting trip to the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine at the time and interviewed “rebel” leaders, ethnic Ukrainians who admitted they were sent by Moscow. When they seized control of the city, the first thing they did was cut off access to Ukrainian TV. That meant locals could only view Russian TV, which presented a steady stream of fake horror stories claiming Ukrainian “fascists” were coming to kill them and rape their daughters.

The result was that Russian troops (which Moscow still denies are there) and their local proxies occupied a third of the Donbas region for the past eight years, killing nearly 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

The Kremlin is now pulling the same stunt, beaming the exact same kind of fake news to Russians at home and Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas region, even evacuating area residents to Russia. Putin has now used this fake “threat” to Russian speakers as the excuse to recognize the areas of the Donbas region controlled by its proxies as “independent” republics.

Having sent fresh Russian troops to the Donbas (which he also denies), Putin has authorized them to take the unoccupied two-thirds of the region, probably including the port city of Mariupol. I was in Mariupol less than two weeks ago and visited the memorials for civilians killed when Putin’s proxies carelessly lobbed rockets at civilian buildings and markets. Now he wants to do that again on a grander scale.

Putin’s military move also puts him in position to move thousands of soldiers further into Ukraine under the transparent fiction that they are “peacekeepers.” Think how much cynicism it takes to attach such a label to military forces whose mission is to terrorize and kill innocent civilians.

Most hideous, if Ukrainian soldiers fight back, Putin will claim this is proof of their aggression and use their rightful self-defense as an excuse to invade further.

That’s why the West must throw every heavy-duty sanction under consideration at Putin so he fully grasps the costs of his aggression. This would provide a chance — if only a slight one — of deterring him from invading further and trying to oust the Ukrainian government by force.

Hopefully, the Biden team understands there is no prospect for negotiations in the midst of an invasion. Even if Ukraine declared tomorrow that it would never join NATO, Putin would not be dissuaded from his goal. His speech made clear he wants much more: first Ukraine’s demise, and then the withdrawal of NATO forces from all Eastern European countries that joined the alliance after 1997.

This will not happen. As I was told repeatedly by officials when I recently visited Lithuania, a small Baltic state that was once part of the Soviet Union, had they not joined NATO, Putin would have them in his sights today.

Nor should progressives nourish the illusion that the United States should support the concept of a buffer zone of neutral states, including Ukraine, that would separate the West from Russia.

» READ MORE: Ukrainians on the front lines say 'we aren't leaving' | Trudy Rubin

This concept is often referred to as “Finlandization” and has been cited as a way to prevent further Russian military action. Yet even Finland, which maintained a cautious neutrality during the Soviet days, was relieved when the Soviet Union collapsed, and is now debating whether it should apply to join NATO. To Putin, “neutral” means back under Russian sway.

That’s why this week should mark a turning point in Western relations with Russia. Only the strongest allied economic stand, along with an effort to brand Putin as a global pariah, will stand a tiny chance of penetrating Putin’s current madness. But this requires shedding all illusions about what the Russian leader wants.

Join Worldview columnist Trudy Rubin on Friday, Feb. 25 at 11 a.m. In a discussion with deputy opinion editor Erica Palan, Trudy will shed light on why a Russian attack on Ukraine will have a critical global impact on the United States and Europe, and whether Ukraine is in a position to fight back. Register here.