The Vladimir Putin of the annexation of Crimea looks a bit like the Margaret Thatcher of the Falklands war: the same military rhetoric, the same refusal of any mediation or compromise, the same appeal to the harsh and revanchist nationalism of a vanished empire, with the aggravating circumstance however , unlike Thatcher, Putin is not the attacked, but the aggressor, and this changes the perspective a lot.
Certainly now Moscow claims to have been under Euro-American attack for years, and claims that the events of the Euro-Maidan were piloted from abroad. But the reality is that Moscow doesn't even try to defend the deposed President, rejects the role of multilateral observers and limits itself to locking itself up in a sort of Russian-speaking redoubt, from which to exclude any other minority, especially if it is Muslim. Certainly the European Union, like NATO, have not had a serious and responsible policy towards Russia: there were too many other priorities (especially since the economic crisis began) and then it was difficult to bring the new ex-Eastern European members with old Central and Southern European members. But this grave political blunder does not amount to an attack or a threat.
Now what will happen? Putin took Crimea and I don't think he will ever give it back, not even in words. This is obviously unacceptable to the rest of the world, so Russia will find itself a little more isolated tomorrow than yesterday, which could fuel new paranoid suspicions. At the same time, no one intends to wage war over Crimea, so the crisis may slowly lose strength, provided there are no new disasters. Two would be particularly serious: the continuation of the dismemberment of Ukraine by Russia, and the attempt to intimidate Ukraine and the European Union into giving up having closer ties. In both cases, Westerners would be forced to react and, in practice, would end up integrating Ukraine (or what is left of it) more closely into the West, together with Georgia and Moldova. Basically, instead of bringing the territories of the former USSR back under the direct influence of Moscow, Putin would find himself having to witness a new fragmentation of that space, with the added prospect, at this point no longer unrealistic, of a presence Euro-American military east of Poltava and Kiev, that is well into the heart of Russian history and tradition.
In other words, Putin may have won a set, gaining Crimea, and with it a strong internal popularity, as happened to Thatcher, but he risks losing the game he had hired to rebuild Russia's image as a great European power: what What happens to a great European power whose influence gives way to the West and defends itself only in the East? This was certainly not the policy of the great builders of the Russian Empire.
There are gas and oil left. During the Cold War years, the then Soviet superpower didn't bat an eyelid and was careful not to use those exports as a weapon of political pressure. The result has been the progressive emergence of Russia as Europe's largest supplier. The weaker Putin instead threatens to use exports as weapons of political and economic pressure. He will be able to do some damage (probably not strategic: there are an abundance of exporters today), especially from the point of view of price, but above all he will damage himself, because he does not have alternative buyers of the same importance and so well served by specific infrastructures. Russia will no longer be a credible supplier. And he will suffer greatly.
