CNN: This is a dangerous moment
Putin is likely to take Crimean bridge blast as a personal affront and respond viciously, West media report.
Monday, 10.10.2022.
08:32
CNN: This is a dangerous moment
"The Kremlin is intent on showing the attack on the Crimea bridge wasn't that serious and that the crucial lifeline from the Russian mainland to the illegally-annexed Crimean Peninsula will be1 back to normal soon", CNN reports.However, the physical damage can be restored, but the damage to the image of Vladimir Putin, won't be that easy to repair, CNN believes.
"This is his bridge, his project, built with the equivalent of almost $4 billion from the Russian treasury. It's a symbolic 'wedding band' uniting Mother Russia and Ukraine, or at least a region that still legally belongs to Ukraine, crucial not only to Putin's war effort but to his obsession with bringing Ukraine back under Russia's control", CNN claims.
Putin's address to the Russian people on February 21, delivered just before he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, laid bare his warped view of history. Ukraine, he insists, is not really an independent country: "Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us," he claimed. "It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space."
That speech, one of the most revealing of his presidency, makes clear that this fratricidal war against Ukraine is very personal to him. For many years he has been fixated on Peter the Great, the Russian czar who founded St. Petersburg, the city in which Putin was born and raised.
Putin now, apparently, believes that returning Ukraine to Russia is his historic destiny. He likely sees the galling attack on the Crimea bridge not only as an attack on the Russian homeland, but as a personal affront. And he is likely to respond viciously.
Just a day after the attack, Russian forces are bombing civilian apartment buildings in Ukraine, while hardline supporters of Putin are urging more strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure.
Putin called the assault a "terrorist attack" whose "authors, executors and masterminds" are the secret services of Ukraine...and "citizens of Russia from foreign countries."
"One thing is clear: as the fighting moves closer to Russia, Vladimir Putin sees his "historic mission" in jeopardy. And that means emotions could outweigh reason. For Ukraine, for Russians who oppose the war, and for the world, this is a dangerous moment", CNN concludes.
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