Warmonger Putin could send troops marching across ‘weak’ Europe if he’s victorious in Ukraine, expert warns
“EMBOLDENED” Putin could march across Europe if he wins in Ukraine - and the West must act now to ensure he doesn't, an expert has warned.
The Russian despot and his cronies won’t stop at Ukraine's borders if the West doesn’t stand up against the Kremlin, Russo-Ukrainian analyst Olga Lautman said.
“Russia’s appetite won’t stop. We’ve seen it and we’ve seen that negotiations with them don’t work," Lautman told The Sun.
In a chilling warning, she said: "Their word is worth nothing, their promises are worth nothing and I think that in this case, they need to be contained because if they are not, the threat they will pose will be far greater than Ukraine."
Lautman, who is a Senior Fellow Center for European Policy Analysis, pointed to Moscow's relentless cyber-attacks, election meddling and assassination attempts - despite the West imposing sanctions or taking other 'weak' political measures.
The UK’s response to the 2006 assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who had become a UK citizen, with radioactive polonium was inadequate and late, she added.
The murder happened on British territory, yet only four Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK – and only a year later.
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In spite of those sanctions, Russia conducted one of the biggest cyber-attacks in history in Estonia and then invaded Georgia. No one paid attention.
Lautman said: "Every time there is a sanctions package for their attempt to murder Sergei Skripal, or try to assassinate opposition figure Alexei Navalny, the sanctions package gets watered down.
“There should have been a stronger response to the use of chemical weapons to assassinate a UK citizen on British territory.
"But then, they invaded Crimea and occupied Donbas. And now Ukraine.
“If you ignore or try to negotiate, the negotiations in Russia’s mind are only how to seek weaknesses from their opponents, so they can use them as pressure points.”
And France, Italy and Germany’s calls for an end to the war could bring dramatic threats.
Lautman said: "If Ukraine seeks to end the war, Russia will never stop and Russia will go march through Europe.
"Because, for them, the less pushback they have, the more emboldened they are.”
For all of Ukraine’s bravery, resistance, and fighting, Russia is still moving in and taking more territory – some 20 per cent of Ukrainian land, compared to the 7 per cent they occupied prior to the invasion.
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“The war will grind on, just like in Syria and Crimea in 2014, and Russia will conduct business as usual,” the co-host of Kremlin File podcast series said.
The expert said she believes Putin will first attack or cause disturbances in Georgia and Moldova, continuing to apply pressure from the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
She said: “I worry for Moldova, for Georgia and I also worry for NATO’s eastern countries and Russia’s neighbours, because Putin and his cronies have always had this obsession of reinstating some kind of territorial loss from the Soviet Union and having access to satellites, etc... They want to put the Soviet Union back together.
“They will go through Europe; they will be emboldened.”
Lautman highlighted Russia’s “obsession” with proving NATO is an ineffective papertyper.
The expert said: “Germany and France are the ones who position themselves to be the major players, but if one of the eastern European countries that are not viewed as significant - Poland, Czech Republic, and Latvia – is attacked, unfortunately, NATO won’t respond.”
The analyst, who is half Russian and half Ukrainian, explained that Putin’s military strategy and regional destabilisation can’t be stopped.
She added: "Putin is 70 years old and has been in power 22 years and had absolutely nothing to show for it.
"By Russian or Soviet standards, he is an embarrassment as a leader."
“In the Russian mentality, it’s extremely important to have some kind of legacy."
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"He is getting old and doesn’t have that much time to conduct operations to go down in history and save some sort of Soviet territorial losses, with Belarus first, Ukraine was next, but it won’t be the last.”
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As Ukraine’s war intensifies and Russia pushes further into the eastern parts of the country, the casualties are mounting.
The UN last month warned that the Ukrainian civilian death toll could be "thousands higher” than the official toll.
