EUROPE IN DEEP TROUBLE

In the Ukraine nightmare nobody looks great but one: the Ukranian president.

The West fell victim to its self-imposed limits of what it can do militarily. It is also unable to manage its need for oil, so it continues to finance its nemesis. The harmonious façade seen in NATO or the EU shouldn't fool anybody but it could have been worse. 

Putin is the loser. His Blitzkrieg is failing. His claims regarding who the Ukranians are, or where there hearts lie, are proven false. His army looks like the tribe of forgotten beggars many Russians are under the rule of this despot. The fake news out of Moscow has become hard to swallow even for a tribe of vodka addicts. If this ground war were too last too long there might well be a coup in the air. The Kremlin starts to look more like Hitler's unfriendly bunker than the seat of power grounded in history.

Nobody knows what the future might evolve into. Maybe one should feel reassured that China is, with some reluctance, part of the game. It would be surprising if President Xi would let Putin do the irrepearable. The Russian president's entourage, who famously prefer Western delights over local fare, might also overdose on lies and scorched earth.

This tragedy also has surreal consequences in the West.  Suddenly Ukraine is rediscovered and its historic clashes with the Muscovites revisited. President Zelensky is by now, together with President Macron, the most respected public figures in the West. It becomes harder by the day not to give in to the demands of a man who took command of his own epic. The meetings in Brussels this week will look pale, timid and old in comparaison

Unfortunately the West lost the escalation card in this lethal game. The turf is Putin's only and nobody is willing to test how far he might go if he feels cornered.  For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, the World War III option is not a figure of speech. Putin is re-Stalinizing Russia and imagining the rebirth of the USSR. This illusion of grandeur will probably come to an unglorious end but there will be damage, on all sides. It will be the tale of the Pariah and the hero, but at the end, Europe will be a changed continent, in need of therapy.