Alexander Temerko was an aide to the former president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin, during his tenure from 1991-1999. Today, the Soviet-born energy entrepreneur is a director of the British company Aquind Limited and gives his views on Russia's war in Ukraine to the British newspaper. Here is his text in full.
"A huge superpower with a communist history is launching a brutal war on its much smaller neighbour, sending thousands of troops. The goal is the total humiliation of this country - its demilitarization, as well as regime change and a complete overhaul of its political structure to transform it into a client state."
I am not talking here about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This violent attack across national borders took place more than 40 years ago, when China invaded Vietnam.
Russia-Ukraine, as in China-Vietnam: The Similarities and Differences
But the parallels between the two wars are unusual and, as I will explain, are a vital lesson for President Putin. One that he consistently and very foolishly ignores.
It was February 1979 when China's soldiers began pouring across the border. The Vietnam War had ended just four years earlier and China had played a key role in ensuring North Vietnam's victory against the US-backed South.
But Chinese leader Teng Xiaoping's relationship with the new Communist government in Hanoi had deteriorated dramatically - and he wanted to teach them a lesson.
Vietnam had been weakened by war and poverty. No analyst, political scientist or military expert gave the country more than a week before the Chinese took Hanoi.
Yet the 100,000-strong Vietnamese Army stopped the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which outnumbered it six to one. Suddenly, people saw that the Colossus' legs were made of clay. Within two months, the myth of the "invincible" Chinese war machine had been consigned to the dustbin of history.
In the end, the nuclear superpower was unable to defeat the small but well equipped, well trained, hardened and motivated Vietnamese Army.
Putin is doing what China didn't do -and that's why he will lose
Now, look at the situation in Ukraine. The Russian military has abandoned any attempt to take over the country's capital, Kiev, from a hugely motivated Ukrainian army. It has also just withdrawn from Kharkiv, which is only 30 kilometers from the Russian border, reflecting the Chinese retreat from Lang Son so close to the Chinese border.
It took Teng Xiaoping only a few weeks into that disastrous war to realize that his army was only good for parades next to Mao Tse-tung's mausoleum in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
The "Great Timonier" did not retreat into paranoia and frantically search for external enemies, nor did he desperately spend his diminished military bulk to rearm his shattered army with tanks and rockets.
Instead, he decided to withdraw his troops and realized that global integration and a thriving economy were more important to the Celestial Empire than maintaining the myth of the world's fiercest army.
Putin, however, is not as smart as Teng Xiaoping. He continues the war and in doing so, remains hostage to his own propaganda.
The myths that "trapped" Putin
As someone who spent his childhood in Soviet Ukraine before moving to Moscow and eventually taking a senior position in the Russian Defense Ministry under Boris Yeltsin, I can tell you what this propaganda means.
It was based on the military Victory Day (May 9) parades on Red Square, the myths about Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812 and other historic Russian military victories, all the way back to Moscow's first prince Dmitry Donskoy and his fight against the Mongol hordes in the 14th century.
In short, Putin is trapped in all the myths of military power that underpin his legitimacy and serve as the main ideological foundation of the Russian state.
The fact is that today Russia is the aggressor and the pariah, while its "legendary" army turns out to be a barbaric and shameful gang of war criminals and raiders. The country crossed its own grim Rubicon when it committed war crimes and massacres in Bukhara and Mariupol.
Russia has abandoned any idea of adopting the "Chinese option" - to stop, change course and correct its mistakes - and the result is disaster.
Putin's recklessness is changing global attitudes
This is due to Putin's reckless determination to continue the war, regardless that the US Senate voted to reintroduce the Lend-Lease Act last month - reintroducing the World War II measure that allowed the US to quickly resupply the Allies in the fight against the German Nazis - to ensure that sufficient US military hardware reaches Ukraine.
The UK has now begun sending the Ukrainian military heavy offensive weapons and the united West has imposed devastating sanctions against the ruthless state's energy and financial sectors, as well as sanctions on key individuals - including the murderer and criminal, Putin himself.
And in Europe - even in Germany (and what a change of attitude from its hitherto lazy approach to the Russian bear!) - various defence ministers have decided to take all necessary measures to prevent even the theoretical possibility of a defeat of the Ukrainian army.
Putin has managed the situation so badly that world leaders from Washington to London to Berlin have agreed not only to defend Ukraine from the aggressor, but also to ensure the return of previously seized territory - and more importantly, to dismantle the Russian war machine to its foundations, so that the country can never again threaten anyone.
The invasion of Ukraine consolidated the foundations of the West
What is even more dramatic is that Putin single-handedly managed to expand NATO to the borders of St. Petersburg. With Sweden and Finland now expressing their intention to join the Western Alliance, Russia has made itself strategically and tactically paralyzed, not only in Ukraine but on all its borders with Europe.
In short, the invasion of Ukraine has consolidated the West. The final battle with the ghost of a past that Putin loves is now being fought on Ukrainian soil.
And I am convinced that the result will teach a hard and powerful lesson to all those tyrannical aggressors like him who feel threatened by the multipolar international system we have built.
The message will be: Anyone who hopes to reach heaven by threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction will find themselves first in the dock of the International Criminal Court and, ultimately, then in a dishonorable and inglorious Hell."
Source: iefimerida.gr
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