His comments echoed those of Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko, who told Russia’s TV Rain on Saturday that Moscow was using Ukraine as a “pain point” to blackmail the West. Ukraine is just an “unfortunate victim and the most convenient place for Putin to mount his demands with menaces,” according to Giles. Alex Brandon / AFP - Getty Images Any domestic pressures? and its Western allies into opening negotiations with Russia on the future security of Europe - a topic that “ought to be off the table.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken has led diplomatic efforts to resolve the tensions, but he made little progress in talks with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. The growing number of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border and now in Belarus has been the “hypnotist’s watch” for the West, Giles said, accomplishing a Kremlin goal of “terrifying” the U.S. Russia has grown in both capability and confidence, and the combination seems to have convinced Putin that he is in the best possible position to reassert his demands, Giles said. But the current crisis also comes during heightened tensions between the Kremlin and the West, sparked by Washington’s accusations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election, used chemical weapons to go after its enemies abroad, and intensified a crackdown on any form of dissent at home, including imprisoning the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Since Kyiv’s pro-Russian government was toppled in 2014, Moscow has wanted to bring Ukraine back into its sphere of influence. Seeing Ukraine slowly but surely drifting out of the Kremlin’s control and aligning with the West, Putin could be feeling that “the moment is right” to reassert his long-held claims to a greater extent of Russia’s power, Giles added. “He is personally, deeply and emotionally invested in recovering Russia’s former power over his neighbors,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the London-based think tank Chatham House.
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