Vladimir Putin, the impasse

Vladimir Putin's decisions are causing growing fears in Europe.

The Russian president’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions is akin to a headlong rush. It places these war zones within new borders drawn by Moscow.

In the eyes of the Kremlin, fighting in these territories would henceforth justify the use of never-before-used weapons, especially nuclear weapons. The risk of this chain of events is frightening.

It led the pope yesterday to "deplore" the annexations and to "implore" Putin to stop "the spiral of violence".

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, says he will not negotiate with this adversary, and calls on the Russians to replace him. This situation makes it unlikely that the war will end soon.

Putin is all the more difficult to stop because he seems to live in a virtual world.

At the very moment he proclaimed the annexation of the four regions last Friday his troops abandoned Lyman, a strategic city in Donetsk province, precisely in one of these annexed territories.

The head of the Kremlin also maintains a paranoid view of history. He describes the West as a "neo-colonial system" aiming to plunder the world, seeking in particular to destroy Russia.

This rhetoric allows him to graft himself onto latent resentment throughout the world. In the Sahel region, as the crisis in Burkina Faso shows, it feeds anger against France among populations destabilized by numerous and violent conflicts.

A prisoner of a logic of confrontation and power, the Russian president is a growing danger to Europe — and to Africa. We must oppose him with a determined resistance. 

Jean-Christophe Ploquin is a senior editor at La Croix.