Putin wants to weaken the West. He’s done the opposite

If there’s anything we’ve learned about President Vladimir Putin over the 22 years or so that he’s been in power in Russia it’s that he has systematically and repeatedly tried to weaken and undermine the West.

But in his invasion of Ukraine he seems to have achieved exactly the opposite, managing to unite most of the international community in its condemnation of Russia’s aggression toward its neighbor.

“NATO is united — more so than at any point since the Soviet collapse — with a renewed sense of purpose and mission,” Ian Bremmer, president of political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, commented this week.

“So too is the European Union: Germany supports ending their economic dependence on Russia and is nearly doubling their defense spend; France is on board … even Moscow-tilting Hungary has condemned the invasion, favored a crippling sanctions regime, and is allowing in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees,” Bremmer said in emailed comments Monday.

The West is used to Russia behaving like a “malign actor” on the global stage with its interference in democratic processes like its meddling in the 2016 U.S. election or support for far-right political groups in Europe, or the overseeing of state-sponsored cyberattacks and weaponizing energy supplies with recent gas price rises in Europe. It was also widely seen as responsible for a nerve agent attack on U.K. soil in 2018 and was subsequently sanctioned. Putin was then accused of ordering a nerve agent attack on his political nemesis and biggest critic, Alexei Navalny, in 2020. Russia denied involvement in both attacks despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

With this background of bad behavior and geopolitical meddling, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should come as no surprise, particularly given its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its overt attempts to politically influence other former Soviet neighbors, like Belarus and Georgia.

Despite imposing sanctions on Russia for Crimea’s annexation, the West was widely accused of not being tough enough on Moscow with analysts saying Putin learned from the Crimea experience that he could invade and annex part of a sovereign state and, essentially, get away with it.

But now, with Russia’s invasion of the north, south and east of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the West looks more united than it has been for many years. Recent divisions over, within and between NATO, the EU, the U.K. and other developed nations are seemingly dissipating overnight as nations unite to help Ukraine defeat Russia.

Anton Barbashin, a political analyst and editorial director of the journal Riddle Russia, told CNBC that Putin’s invasion has had a number of unintended consequences:

“Whatever was Putin’s end goal in Ukraine, it is already clear that what he has achieved is uniting the West, destroying Russia’s…