by DW Staff at DW.com
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz hadn’t even reached the airport for his flight back to Berlin before the reports came from Kyiv: Cyberattacks were underway on Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and two of the country’s most important banks. Suspicion fell on Russia. The country’s arsenal of cyberweapons is versatile — and not always subtle. The country’s president, Vladimir Putin, is much the same, versatile while certainly not subtle.
DW’s Michaela Küfner
The good news is: A Russian military invasion of Ukraine, for now, seems to be off the table. Putin clearly expressed his willingness to continue to engage in dialogue. It’s a diplomatic victory for Olaf Scholz. If progress comes at a snail’s pace, then peace with Russia is the maze the snail is left to navigate. Scholz was also able to bring a diplomatic offering to his first meeting with Vladimir Putin. While in Kyiv the day before, the German leader got Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to take the first diplomatic step and agree to draft three legislative bills that, under the Minsk agreement, should have long been delivered.
President Putin sees NATO as a threat to Russia
But that didn’t interest Putin. Although he often argues legalistically himself, Putin brushed off this progress, which for the Ukrainian leader represented a significant political risk at home. This technical progress failed to address what he perceives to be a historic injustice.
He had other designs in mind. The West could talk, Putin said, but “for 30 years” NATO said it would not expand and yet the opposite has happened. In fact, there’s a treaty paper trail proving that there was no such assurance, but it is Putin’s impression, his alternative facts, that make this conflict so dangerous. One thing became clear at this meeting once again: The past, which the West too often sees as history, Putin regards as a mission.