ARE WE WITNESSING THE FUNERAL OF RUSSIA?

The world faces a moment of maximum danger in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has perhaps 72 hours to decide whether to launch a full invasion of the Donbass, or accept defeat and let the Ukrainian military crush his proxy forces.

Nato officials say Russia has massed 20,000 troops in battle-readiness near the border, backed by Spetsnaz commandos, tanks and aircraft. Vehicles have been marked with phony peace-keeper labels already. Nato sees every sign that the Kremlin intends to disguise an attack as a "humanitarian mission."

This is more serious than the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. That was a "colonial war." The Soviet Union was a careful, status quo power in its final decades. It held captive nations but did not overrun new borders in Europe. Mr.. Putin is expansionist, and far less predictable. He is, in any case, captive to the chauvinist fever that he has so successfully stoked.

He has been clear from the outset that he will deploy any means necessary to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit. Only war can now achieve this, since all else has failed, and since he has turned a friendly Ukraine into an enemy by his actions. The awful implications of this are at last starting to hit the markets.

"People thought that Russia was just playing a game of brinkmanship, and that pragmatism would prevail in the end. There is real fear now that this will spin out of control. Nothing cannot be excluded at this point, even a cut-off in oil and gas," says Chris Weafer, from Macro Advisory in Moscow.

Yields on 10-year ruble bonds have jumped to 9.7%, up 130 basis points since June. The sanctioned bank VTB is up 180 points in a month. A liquidity crunch is rapidly taking hold across the financial system. "The market is shut. Not a single Russian entity has been able to borrow anything in dollars, euro or yen since early July," says Mr. Weafer.

The Kremlin’s gamble has gone horribly wrong. The eastern regions of Ukraine have failed to rise in mass support for Putin’s front organizations, led by political operatives from Moscow, and patently run by the Russian security apparatus (FSB/GRU) as even Russian newspapers admit.

The latest report by the United Nations accuses these units of "egregious abuses," carrying out systematic intimidation through torture and execution.

Mr. Putin has failed equally to drive a wedge between America and Europe, or to paralyze the EU by playing off one country against another. Germany has not cut a special deal, though its 6,000 companies in Russia are on the frontline. It has gone beyond the EU measures, blocking a €100m export to Russia of combat training equipment by Rheinmetall.

Cyprus, Bulgaria, Hungary and Austria quietly towed the EU line on "Tier 3" sanctions. None dared to veto measures that shut Russia’s banks out of global finance, and which block technology needed to open up Russia’s oil and gas fields in the Arctic or the shale reserves of the Bazhenov Basin.

President Barack Obama’s slow, methodical escalation suits the complicated chemistry of Europe, the region that will pay the economic price. There would have been a trans-Atlantic crisis if the hotheads in Washington had prevailed.

Mr. Putin now faces draconian sanctions from the US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia together. He can strike back by asymmetric means — perhaps a cyberattack — but tit-for-tat retaliation can achieve nothing. There is no equivalence.

Russia’s economy is no bigger than California’s. This is an economic showdown between a $40 trillion power structure, and a $2 trillion producer of raw materials that has hollowed out its industrial core.

The new arsenal of sanctions refined by a cell at the US Treasury — already used with crisp effect against nine countries — is nothing like the blunt toolkit of the 1980s or 1990s. Nor can Russia retreat into Soviet autarky. It is locked into global finance. The International

Energy Agency says Russia needs to invest $100billion a year for two decades just to stop its oil and gas output declining.

Russian companies and state bodies owe $610 billion in in foreign currencies. They must repay $84 billion by the end of the year, and $10 billion a month thereafter. There is no immediate crisis. Russian companies have $130 billion of cash holdings. The central bank has promised to deploy its $470 billion of foreign reserves as second line of defense. Russia can muddle through for a while, depending on the pace of capital flight. At best it is slow suffocation.

European officials calculate that Mr. Putin will not dare to cut off energy supplies, since to do so would bring the Russian state to its knees within months. But even if he tried – as a shock tactic – it would not achieve much. Oil can be obtained anywhere.

Europe’s gas inventories have risen to 81% of capacity, up from 46% in March. Britain is at 94%. There is a sudden glut of liquefied natural gas in Asia that has caused prices to fall from more than $20 per million BTU earlier this year to $10.50. The LNG is being diverted to Europe, landing in Britain at just $6.50.

Japan has just given the go-ahead for two nuclear reactors to restart in October, with seven likely by the end of the year. Koreans are also firing up closed nuclear reactors. All this frees up LNG.

Whether this is fruit of a coordinated strategy, the net effect is that inventories and spare LNG could cover a Russian cut-off for a long time, probably through the winter with rationing. Areas of eastern Europe have no pipeline supply from the West, but "regas" ships could plug some gaps in an emergency. The gas weapon is not what it seems or used to be.

The Kremlin is counting on acquiescence from the BRICS quintet as it confronts the West, and counting on capital from China to offset the loss of Western money. This is a pipedream.

China’s Xi Jinping drove a brutal bargain in May on a future Gazprom pipeline, securing a price near $350 per 1,000 cubic metres that is barely above Russia’s production costs.

Pieties aside, the two countries are rivals in central Asia, where China is systematically building pipelines that break Russia’s stranglehold. China has large territorial claims on Far Eastern Russia, land seized from the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century.

Even if Mr. Putin’s strategy of a Euro-Asia alliance with China succeeds, it will reduce Russia to a vassal state of China, a supplier of commodities with a development model that dooms it to backwardness.

Mr. Putin is stuck in a Cold War timewarp, deaf to the shifts in world power. He has been obsessed with an imaginary threat from an ageing, pacifist Europe in slow decline, turning manageable differences into needless conflict.

Yet at the same time he is throwing his country at the feet of a rising power that poses a far greater threat in the end, and that will not hesitate to extract the maximum advantage from Russia’s self-inflicted weakness.

Mr. Putin has misjudged everything. He is under "a dangerous illusion" says Aleksandr Kokh, a former top Kremlin official. "We are witnessing the funeral of Russia." 

Eastern Ukraine is the only place where Mr. Putin has decisive force.  It is his last lethal card.  If he chooses to play it, he will make the funeral of Russia a near-certainty.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is the International Business Editor of the London Telegraph.

Discuss this item on the forums. Click Here!