Why Putin maybe blinked

It is easy to predict how many babies will be born next year.  It is hard to predict who the individual mothers will be.  That’s one of the important lessons in international affairs, where the decisions of unique individuals often matter.

Forty-eight hours after I posted that we should expect worse in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin decided to lower the tension.  He claims to have withdrawn Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and to have asked the Russian-speaking insurgents in eastern and southern Ukraine not to conduct a May 11 referendum on independence.  The US and NATO are saying they’ve seen no evidence of either claim.   He is also sounding amiable about the May 25 presidential election that Kiev is organizing.

What made Putin blink?  I don’t know.  Maybe the significant declines in Russia’s credit rating, stock market and currency since he started up the Ukraine crisis.  Maybe some of the sanctions are starting to bite.  Maybe the withdrawals from his St. Petersburg economic forum weighed heavily.  Maybe the Swiss President, who met with Putin just before he made his comments about Ukraine, said something about personal or institutional finance that gave the Russian President pause.  Maybe it’s all a ruse to catch the West off balance and tomorrow he’ll invade.

Whatever his tactical maneuvers, Putin will not lose sight of his strategic goal:  to dominate the Russian-speaking areas of eastern and southern Ukraine and deprive Kiev of the authority it needs to counter Moscow’s preferences, including its opposition to Ukrainian membership in NATO and a closer relationship with the EU.  The cheapest and easiest way to achieve his purposes is autonomy for the Russian-speaking provinces, and some sort of “entity” binding them together.  He is all too familiar with recent precedents for this:  Republika Srpska in Bosnia and the Association of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo.

No doubt some degree of decentralization will be part of the solution in Ukraine.  It is not only American communities that want to run their own schools, provide services, maintain their own infrastructure and manage their own revenues.  The Federal government has little to say about my daily life.  I interact far more often with the District of Columbia, which collects much of its own revenue and in many respects governs itself, despite the residue of Congressional oversight that no state has to put up with.

What Kiev has to be careful about is to maintain its authority over foreign affairs, defense, the judiciary and at least some of the forces of law and order.  It also needs a supremacy clause, like the one in the existing constitution, that enables it to override local decisions that threaten the integrity of the state, including the holding of referenda on independence.

Putin is not going to be interested in decentralization, which would block him from the kind of dominant position in Ukraine that he seeks.  Decentralization to provincial administrations will make it more difficult for Russian-speakers to unify and fight Kiev, even if it enables them a wide margin of control over the services provided within the provinces.

My best guess is that Putin blinked to provide some time for negotiations to produce the result he wants.  President Obama is not the only one who prefers not to use military force but instead accomplish his ends by diplomatic means.