Putin’s Global Game Changer
Contrary to the expectations of many experts who were predicting a “second Munich” from Vladimir Putin in New York, the Russian president made no grandiose proclamations during his address to the UN General Assembly. In fact, he was outwardly far milder than one might have imagined. By comparison, Obama’s emotional speech,
which was replete with strident but unsubstantiated claims, seemed sad,
and occasionally even comical. For example, there was a passage about
the ouster of Assad, but then less than a day later the US position flip-flopped …
After the speeches, Putin and Obama sat down for a nearly two-hour conversation,
after which the US president could not even rouse himself sufficiently
to emerge to speak to journalists. The Russian president conducted an
exhaustive press conference on his own.
What is the takeaway from those last three days in September,
which, according to many observers, lay to rest the idea of a unipolar
world?
First of all, the US is making profound changes in
its attitude to Poroshenko’s regime in Ukraine, assembling a reserve set
of “politicians” and revoking its green light for military action.
Incumbent PM Yatsenyuk is more likely to be replaced by Sergey
Lyovochkin, former head of ex-president Yanukovych’ administration and
memner of “Opposition Bloc”. Given the pacification of Kiev and the
Southeast in accordance with the Kremlin’s terms, the US withdrawal from
Ukraine – and the withdrawal of Ukraine itself into the shadow of the
world’s agenda – the US wager on the “Opposition Bloc” makes perfect
sense.
