Putin unsure of further actions, Bildt says

Russian President Vladimir Putin has weakened his grasp on eastern Ukraine recently and has yet to decide on what to do further, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt told the Berlin Foreign Policy Forum on Nov. 10, as reported by the Ukrinform news agency. “He is currently stuck in the eastern part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and doesn’t know what  to do,” Bildt said. “He is tied down economically and militarily. But he’s not leaving.” Having a “half-frozen, half-resolved, half-open conflict in eastern Ukraine” is not in the interests of any of the sides, including Russia, Bildt said. Instead, the full implementation of the Minsk accords is needed, he said.

Zenon Zawada: Bildt joins a growing consensus among diplomatic and military experts who have concluded that Putin doesn’t have a plan of what to do next in Donbas. In our view, Putin launched the fighting in Ukraine (and in Syria too) with the intention of being able to change course at any given moment, which he views as his advantage over the predictable and strategically oriented governments of the West.

The question is how Putin will choose to eventually resolve the Donbas conflict that the crippling economic sanctions are forcing him to end, in at least a year or two. That remains a big question mark that poses an enormous threat to international security.