Federico Bordonaro

Vladimir Putin lancia messaggi contraddittori sull’Iran, adotta la linea dura sul Kosovo, fa capire che potrebbe creare problemi molto seri alla Georgia. Fino a che punto si tratta di tensioni momentanee, ancorché prolungate, e fino a che punto invece si è di fronte a una crisi pericolosa? Se lo chiede Frederick Kempe sul sito di Bloomberg:

In the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has morphed from a noisy irritant to the West who was reaching the end of his two-term limit to a swaggering antagonist who isn’t going away.

At least that’s the view of senior Bush administration officials, who increasingly see Russia as a rising strategic challenge.

They fear a serious and perhaps even dangerous showdown with Russia later this year over the independence of Kosovo as a breakaway Serbian province. It’s just one of several explosive brewing disagreements.

Putin’s threat to retaliate by then declaring the Georgian region of Abkhazia to be independent may sound esoteric. Yet one senior official talks about the ugly events that may well follow: an Abkhaz ethnic cleansing of Georgians in the region, a Georgian military move to protect its minority, followed by armed Russian intervention and then Western retaliation of some kind.

The best U.S. foreign policy minds don’t believe Putin wants that sort of open conflict with the West, but they worry that in his current mood he may get it by overreaching.