‘Vladimir Putin era will end’ on Ukraine as Russian economy threatens to collapse | World | New

The international community has imposed a series of sanctions on the Russian regime, aimed at reducing its economic capacity to wage war in Ukraine. This week, the United States expanded its sanctions list to include Putin’s daughters, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova.

US President Joe Biden said they were under sanctions “for being the adult children of Putin, a person whose property and interests in property are blocked”.

The West has stepped up plans for economic sanctions against Russia as reports of Russian atrocities in the town of Bucha see civilians killed and left on the streets northwest of the capital, Kyiv.

Professor Andreas Heinemann-Grüder of the University of Bonn called the economic sanctions “extremely painful” for Russia, although whether they could force the Kremlin to halt their advance was another matter.

Professor Heinemann-Grüder, of the International Center for Conflict Studies, said: “The sanctions are taking Russia back to the precarious state of the early 1990s.

“All the material foundations on which Putin’s power in Russia rested are undermined.”

He told FOCUS Online: “The Russian oil state will collapse as a result of the sanctions.

“Putin’s policy will prove suicidal for his country.

“His era will end with the collapse of what he spent over two decades trying to accomplish.”

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He said: “A Russian victory would not only mean immeasurable suffering, but would result in the permanent isolation of Russia.”

And if this Russian victory were to materialize, it would be a “Pyrrhic victory, which would only be stabilized by a reign of terror”.

With such a slow Ukrainian opposition, however, Professor Heinemann-Grüder said the war was unlikely to have an end in sight.

He said: “A ceasefire or a negotiated peace only becomes likely when both sides are exhausted and Ukraine is fighting so hard for survival that it is ready to sign almost anything.”

He then hypothesized: “Ukraine could receive internationally binding security guarantees and possibly status from Finland, and Russia in turn could receive recognition from Crimea and Donetsk ‘people’s republics’. and Lugansk in return.

“In the best-case scenario, Ukraine can hold significant sections of the Black Sea and continue to exist as a rump state.”

This scenario would include a “demarcation line between Ukraine and the territories occupied by Russia”, placed under international surveillance.

He added: “However, no one can dictate to Ukraine from the outside what it should or even should ‘swallow’.”

Additional reporting by Monika Pallenberg.