Putin’s friends should help him get out of difficulty he has created: Portuguese Foreign Minister

João Gomes Cravinho says Russia will emerge weakened from war

President Vladimir Putin’s friends should make him realise that the Russian people should not be made to suffer because of his “tremendous miscalculation”, according to Foreign Minister of Portugal João Gomes Cravinho.

Speaking to The Hindu on the sidelines of Raisina Dialogue, the senior Minister said regime change was not an objective of the western response and that the door for diplomacy remained open.

“The real challenge of the moment is to help Putin to get out of the difficulty that he has created. Friends should explain to him that when you find yourself in a trench, it is not a good thing to keep on digging,” he stated.

Russia would emerge weakened from the war as it would have “economic, political and even military indebtedness to China” which may have implications for the Indo-Pacific region, he observed.

“Russia has military superiority which, with some difficulty, is managing to impose on the ground. Winning the war means achieving the objectives at a cost which you find acceptable and, in that sense, Putin is heading for a strategic defeat. His first objective was quite clearly to conquer Kyiv and force the government to capitulate but that he failed to do but now more modest objectives are being established,” he noted.

Mr. Cravinho described the cost of aggression on Russia under two heads – short-term and long-term –which includes loss of Russian lives and loss of Russia’s economic credibility. “It’s very difficult to see how Russia can achieve victory” explained the Minister, who held bilateral talks with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Wednesday.

He agreed that Europe could have “planned better” for dealing with Mr. Putin’s aggression. “There was a lack of strategic thinking in the process of creation of dependence on Russia as an energy supplier,” he remarked. While Mr. Putin felt that the energy ties would prevent Europe from responding forcefully, Europe on the other hand was drawn towards Russian energy as the alternatives involved “high cost”, he said.