“Rzeczpospolita”: Does Putin need to freeze the conflict today?
Mikhail Khodorkovsky: There is no good solution for the Kremlin. If Putin loses the war, his regime will collapse. And if there is a ceasefire, Putin will be left with depopulated occupied territories and destroyed infrastructure that would cost billions of dollars over the next decades. The ongoing war may also lead to a confrontation with NATO, which will end badly for it.
He has a problem. For now, he is sending volunteer mercenaries to the front. But this is not enough, to expand the scale of his operations on the Dnieper, he would have to mobilize and put the entire country on a military track. He would have to spend not 8-9%. GDP for war as now, but 16 percent and even more. And the Russians may not accept this. The risk is too great. I think he would also like to perpetuate the current state of affairs. I think that there are intentions to negotiate both on the part of Russia and the West. Ukraine is asking who will guarantee its security.
There have been reports that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is planning his first telephone conversation with Putin in over two years. What do you think about this?
If this happened and Western leaders started calling the Kremlin again, Putin would consider it a weakness. There is a saying in Russia: “someone put a stone into his outstretched hand” (this is a reference to Mikhail Lermontov’s poem “The Beggar”). If Putin sees Western leaders reaching out to him, he will treat it as hands raised up.
The entire interview will be published in the Monday edition of “Rzeczpospolita” and on the website rp.pl
