For Vladimir Putin, this is a decade-long mission to right Cold War wrongs

[Haia]

Russian president sees the reclaiming of Crimea as a righting of the wrongs of unjust post-Cold War settlement two decades ago

Vladimir Putin has reclaimed Crimea for Russia, confounded the revolutionary government in Kiev, and ripped up what many in Moscow see as an unjust post-Cold War settlement that has held sway in Europe for 23 years Photo: Getty







By Roland Oliphant

9:13PM GMT 18 Mar 2014


Vladimir Putin is not an extrovert.

There was no smile of satisfaction, no crinkle of his brow, no flourish of the pen when he signed the document formalising the annexation of Crimea on Tuesday, March 18 2014. But as he crossed arms and joined hands with the three Crimean leaders who had added their signatures to the treaty, the tiniest flash of a smirk slipped through the passive visage. Perhaps later, in private, he might have allowed himself to punch the air.

At a stroke Mr Putin has reclaimed Crimea for Russia, confounded the revolutionary government in Kiev, and ripped up what many in Moscow see as an unjust post-Cold War settlement that has held sway in Europe for 23 years.

And he has exacted a much-delayed, but very sweet revenge, for he has denounced what he regards as the West’s own repeated trampling of international law since the fall of the Soviet Union – from NATO’S intervention in Kosovo, to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. “It’s good that they remembered that there is such a thing as international law. Better late than never,” he quipped, to rapturous applause in the gilded Kremlin.