(NewsNation Now) — As the world waits for a Russian invasion of Ukraine that world leaders say is ‘imminent,’ Russian President Vladimir Putin is enjoying watching the geopolitical fallout, Leland Vittert, host of NewsNation’s “On Balance with Leland Vittert” said.
Russia has denied any plans to invade.
Vittert said the reason why Putin hasn’t invaded yet, despite reports of 190,000 Russian troops being stationed near Ukraine, is that the Russian leader enjoys being on the world stage.
“He enjoys that everyone is now kowtowing and answering to Russia and everyone is reacting to him,” Vittert, who spent time as a correspondent in Ukraine in 2014, said. “He’s gauging the reaction.”
With Vice President Kamala Harris currently in Germany, Vittert said Putin’s waiting to see how much the Germans are willing to stand up to their commitment to Ukraine.
Putin likes “watching the geopolitical fractures that are happening,” Vittert said.
“Imagine a laser pointer, if you will, and that’s Vladimir Putin [pointing] the red dot. And now all of a sudden, he has the rest of the world chasing the red dot like a cat in a YouTube video,” Vittert said. “The longer he gets everybody to chase the red dot, the more he learns and also the more he can extract in terms of a price to not go in.
Lawmakers in Washington, D.C. haven’t been able to agree on sanctions to deter Putin from invading, even though President Joe Biden says an attack could come any day. But retired 4-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Philip Breedlove told Vittert that historically, sanctions haven’t always gotten the job done.
“We’ve heard many say that the sanctions have affected Russia. well, that’s all well and good, but what it has not done is changed Russia’s behavior because here we are again,” Breedlove said. “So we need to make sure this time that both the sanctions, and as you are asking the military actions that we take, are adequate to task.”
Vittert said Breedlove’s biggest message is that weakness is provocative.
“The United States needs to extract a price from Vladimir Putin which is greater than the price Vladimir Putin is willing to pay for whatever he wants,” Vittert said. “He’s willing to be the world’s pariah when it comes to the issue of sanctions.”
These sanctions could mean delisting Putin’s banks from SWIFT, the world banking organization; restricting his inner circle of oligarchs; and going after his own Swiss and Panamanian and Dubai-based bank accounts, Vittert said.
“None of those things have been done,” Vittert said. “It’s almost like a young child, that if you keep yelling at him and telling him ‘I’m going to spank you, I’m going to spank you,’ but then you never actually spank them hard enough to get the message through to the child.”