The trading of Russian FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov for various Russian political prisoners, including US citizen Evan Gershkovitch and a number of Russian dissidents, illustrates the incompetence of US and German leaderships in foreign policy – and reflects the reason that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine!

The essence is a failure to understand that the desires of a dictator do not necessarily coincide with those of the remainder of the elite or the wider population. The return of Krasikov was an obsession of Vladimir Putin, and perhaps a few of the Russian elite, but the vast majority would not have cared. This was also the case with Putin’s obsession with Russian historical lordship of Ukrainian lands.

No long-term dictator – whether it be Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Benito Mussolini, Kemal Ataturk or even Putin – is able to totally get his own way, and all rely on some very significant agreement from others in the country’s elite. Putin was able to marshal Russian elite fears about NATO expansion and control of Crimea in support of his own obsessions because the US and its allies made it so easy to do so with their inept foreign policies that Putin could present these as a threat.

While some commentators in the West talk darkly about “appeasement”, the West should have appeased on NATO expansion and not done it, and it should have appeased on Crimea because these were issues of concern to a great many Russians beside Putin. Where it should not have appeased is on such cases as the 2006 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the 2018 Skripal poisonings and the shooting down of MH17 because a much tougher reaction would have been seen as a counter to the obsession of Putin and his security agencies rather than as anti-Russian. The timid reactions of the West allowed Putin to seem to many like a super-strategist, and this increased his chances of shoehorning the elite into accepting his decision to invade Ukraine. The deal to return Krasikov to Russia will make Putin seem even greater in Russian eyes and will bolster his support.

I was living in Russia at the time of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and continued to do so for another eight months. I spoke to many people both in Moscow and other places. While there were some who strongly supported the invasion, the great majority were apprehensive and even afraid to use the word “war” or speak against it. But now Russian – and Putin – successes in Ukraine, the Russian economy and dealmaking are leading to a very significant change in attitudes.

The West has tried to blame Chinese support of Russia for the Russian successes, but at a time when many in the West and NATO talk of the possibility of nuclear war, it is NATO member Turkey which has become a major conduit for belated and weak sanctions and QUAD member India which has facilitated oil export revenues. And it was the tardy provision of often dated weapons that allowed Russian forces to consolidate their positions. 

Will the West learn any lessons from this in regard to China? In the end it may not matter, but the West should try to understand – and act upon – the reality that whatever obsession Xi Jinping and some others may have about Taiwan, the majority of Chinese probably do not care unless the West gives Xi Jinping the opportunity to stir up the issue by taking actions that seem more generally anti-Chinese.