Could Putin's European Adventures Lead to Russia Becoming More Dependent on China?

AS RUSSIA’S president, Vladimir Putin, sat down for dinner with his French counterpart, François Hollande, this week in Paris (one of two state dinners in the Elysée on the same evening, so that Barack Obama would not cross paths with Mr Putin), he might have been forgiven for thinking that the worst moments of his angry clash with the West were behind him. Even as eastern Ukraine sinks into further conflict, European leaders have little appetite for new sanctions against Russia. With official meetings fixed with Mr Hollande and Britain’s David Cameron, the diplomatic isolation threatened by Western leaders is not extending to Mr Putin personally. And France is going ahead with its sale of Mistral-class assault ships to Russia.

In Ukraine, Mr Putin may also presume he is getting what he wants, even if Moscow is not directing day-to-day fighting in the east. Ukraine’s newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, who will be inaugurated this weekend, is inheriting a messy and intractable conflict that will divert attention and resources from other problems, not least a floundering economy. Financial woes and the need to end the fighting will force Mr Poroshenko to deal with Mr Putin—though the reverse is also true, since the Kremlin will have to accept Mr Poroshenko as a valid interlocutor.

At a minimum, Mr Putin and separatist forces in the east, inspired and in many cases supported by the Kremlin even if not run by it, have created facts on the ground that make the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO impossible. This was Mr Putin’s most paranoid fear from the start of the Maidan protests in Kiev last November. The Kremlin will doubtless push for Ukraine to drop any such aspirations. Beyond that, the insurgency in the east gives Mr Putin a bargaining chip that can be used to threaten Kiev and can ultimately be traded for more decentralisation.

It may be that Mr Putin was not dissuaded from invading eastern Ukraine by the threat of sanctions, but that he would have gone in only if there had been no other way to achieve these goals. The tens of thousands of Russian troops stationed on the border—Western military officials say all but a handful have returned to their bases—were there mainly to intimidate and deter Ukrainian forces and to act as cover for rebel paramilitaries to take over more government buildings.

The danger both Mr Putin and Mr Poroshenko share is that this strategy has worked almost too well. Whatever political aims existed a few weeks ago have been consumed in the logic of violence. The conflict has descended into warlordism, in which rebel commanders control militias that do not necessarily communicate with or much like each other. In Donetsk, a rebel battalion led by Chechen mercenaries has taken control of separatist headquarters and is backing Alexander Borodai, a political operative from Russia. But their influence does not extend to nearby towns such as Sloviansk and Gorlovka, where rival militias hold sway.

The Kremlin may thus have flipped the switch for an anti-Kiev insurgency that it cannot easily turn off.

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