Political scientist Zardusht Alizade: "War in Ukraine will be the end of the Putin project"
According to Azerbaijani political scientist Zardusht Alizade, the war in Ukraine will be the end of the project called Putin. He is also confident that this war will not spread to other territories in the post-Soviet space. “Putin has gone mad”, Alizade claims.
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“Let’s start with the fact that serious politicians did not believe that Russia could start a war against Ukraine. I also did not believe it, I did not predict such a course of events. I said that the war could only start if Putin went crazy.
But it turned out that I was wrong, and the more radical part of society knew Putin better”, says Zardusht Alizade.
Zardusht Alizade is an orientalist. In Soviet times, he worked as an interpreter from Arabic in the Soviet embassies in Yemen and Egypt. Zardusht Alizade is one of the founders of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan. Then he became one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party of Azerbaijan. From 2005 to 2011, he headed the executive board of the Azerbaijani branch of the Soros Foundation. Currently, he is the head of the Baku School of Journalism.
This war will be the end of the project called Putin”
“I will not talk about the course of the war, everyone is following the news. Now a period has come when we can expect a weakening of hostilities, and, perhaps, the parties will even come to an agreement on the introduction of a ceasefire.
But for me, something else is important. There is no doubt that this war will be the end of the project called Putin. For the first time in the years of his reign, he faced an obvious and great setback.
In his 22 years in office, Putin has become accustomed to impunity. In 2008, he occupied part of Georgia, but there was no punishment for this. After 6 years, Crimea was annexed, again with impunity. 8 years after that, he waged war in eastern Ukraine, entered Syria to prevent Qatari gas from reaching Europe, turned the country into hell, and again escaped punishment.
And in Ukraine, he ran into a surprise. For the first time, his calculations failed. Putin miscalculated. His dream of a military parade on Khreshchatyk remained a fantasy.
The Ukrainian people are strongly resisting the occupation, Zelensky turned out to be a brave president – he stays in Kyiv, manages the army and the state.
And now it is the 37th day of the war, and for Russia there is no “light at the end of the tunnel” in sight. The losses have reached catastrophic proportions, the Russian Defense Ministry frankly lies to its people about 1,500 dead military personnel, although Ukrainian sources speak of 17,000.
It should also be noted that Russia is waging a brutal, barbaric war. The Russian army is bombing peaceful cities, civilians are being killed, rocket attacks are being carried out on civilian targets”.
Probability of a second “Arab Spring”
“On the eve of sowing work in Ukraine, the Russian army strikes at fuel bases. This threatens to disrupt agricultural work, and famine not only in Ukraine but in a large number of other countries of the world. 40% of the world’s wheat reserves are in Ukraine and Russia.
It is no coincidence that one of the main causes of the “Arab Spring” was a crop failure in Ukraine in 2011. There was not enough wheat, and the Middle Eastern countries buy it and sunflower oil mainly in Ukraine. As a result of poor harvests in Ukraine, the price of bread has skyrocketed in the Middle East, and people have rebelled against their governments. Such a scenario is quite possible now.
It got to the point that Russia is threatening Western countries with nuclear weapons. I assess this as a moral defeat for Putin.
Within a month, Russia has lost almost all economic ties with the civilized world, which it had struggled to establish in the previous 30 years. All major Western companies have left Russia. But they were not so easily attracted to the country – various benefits were invented for them. And now all this is gone.
Now Putin has decided to sell gas for rubles. Western countries are offered ridiculous purchase mechanisms – they first have to pay in dollars or euros, then a Russian bank will buy rubles with this currency, and pay itself in rubles. All this is so frivolous that one can come to a firm opinion: Putin has gone mad.
I am sure that Putin, as a project, has outlived its usefulness. Now only one thing is unclear: in what way he will be removed from power”.
“Local conflicts can be resolved in a short time”
“Russia cannot bring the war in Ukraine to an end, it is stuck there and will come out of it defeated. In this light, it is not necessary to say that the war will spread to other parts of the post-Soviet space. Personally, I do not believe in such a scenario.
The head of South Ossetia declares his desire to join Russia. This is not serious. Bibilov is a toy of the Kremlin. Whatever they tell him from Moscow, he repeats.
All these local conflicts on the territory of the former Soviet Union – Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, DPR, LPR – they are all projects of the Kremlin. And I assure you that if the Putin regime falls and a democratically minded politician finally comes to power in Russia, these problems will be solved in a short time.
In this regard, I would like to recall the year 1991. When on August 19, 1991, the overthrow of power in Moscow (GKChP) took place in Karabakh, the situation changed dramatically. People who were fighting among themselves a few days ago were sitting at the same table, Armenians on the road from Stepanakert to Shusha offered food and drinks to Azerbaijanis. And as soon as that putsch did not take place, everything returned to normal – the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan continued”, the political scientist noted.
