The Real Putin

Samantha Power says what Obama won’t about the Russian threat.

Updated July 18, 2014 7:14 p.m. ET

Only a day after a Malaysian passenger jet was blown from the sky, U.S. intelligence has named the almost certain culprits: Ukrainian separatists firing Russian missiles supplied by the Kremlin. This conclusion ought to be, at long last, a moment of moral and strategic clarity about the threat that Vladimir Putin‘s regime poses to world order.

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Editorial Board Member Matt Kaminski on President Obama’s response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17. Photo: Getty Images

President Obama didn’t blame the separatists in his press conference Friday, but he came close. He said the U.S. is confident the plane was downed by a missile fired from territory controlled by the separatists and that the missile was of the kind supplied by Russia. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power went further and fingered the SA-11 surface-to-air system that she said was in eastern Ukraine at the time of the shootdown.

“Because of the technical complexity of the SA-11, it is unlikely that the separatists could effectively operate the system without assistance from knowledgeable personnel,” said Ms. Power at the Security Council. “Thus, we cannot rule out technical assistance from Russian personnel in operating the systems.” While the Ukrainian military has SA-11s, she added, it hasn’t used them in this conflict and they weren’t in the area where the missiles were launched.

So barring some surprise, the only major uncertainties now are whether the separatists pulled the trigger with or without direct Russian help, and who they were shooting at. They may have thought they were targeting a Ukrainian military transport, but that hardly absolves them or their Kremlin supplier-advisers.

These conclusions ought to awaken the U.S. and Europe to the truth about Mr. Putin and his military and political designs. This isn’t a neighborhood autocrat trying to redress local grievances. He’s a would-be czar who has turned the Kremlin into an operation that resembles the KGB he once worked for. His ambition is to disrupt the post-Cold War status quo by restoring Greater Russia and becoming the dominant Eurasian power.

This has been obvious for years for those willing to look. At home his regime has plundered businesses, murdered journalists and crushed political dissent. Aboard he has invaded or stirred unrest in neighboring democracies that won’t bend to his wishes.

The real Putin unmasked himself with the Georgia invasion of 2008, but the Bush Administration was a waning force and President Obama wanted a “reset” in relations. We know how that worked out, with even such a reset devotee as former Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul saying he was gulled.

Then this year came Ukraine, where the public rebelled against Mr. Putin’s autocratic ally in Kiev after he rejected a trade pact with the European Union. Mr. Putin responded by stealing Crimea, the first land grab of a sovereign European state since World War II.

That should have been the real “wake-up call,” to borrow a phrase Mr. Obama used on Friday about the shootdown. But Mr. Putin once again played a timid Europe against an America reluctant to lead, and Western business interests lobbied for de minimis sanctions. Mr. Obama and Europe obliged.

No wonder the Russian felt he could continue fomenting separatist trouble in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Obama refused Ukraine’s offer of lethal aid even as Mr. Putin provided such heavy weapons as SA-11s. Had Kiev been able to restore control over its territories faster, the separatists might never have been able to fire that missile.

Yet Mr. Putin now blames Ukraine for the shootdown and will no doubt dissemble and cover up so he can claim that Russia bears no responsibility. News reports on Friday said the separatists—as Matthew Kaminski shows nearby, they are really Russians—are already destroying evidence linking them to the missile attack.

The murder of 298 innocents is another chance to respond to the real Putin. A majority of the dead were Dutch. The carnage should remind Europeans, of all people, that the damage from wars in their midst is rarely contained. And that tyrants keep taking territory until they are stopped.

Yet the temptation in the West will continue to be to do little and beg Mr. Putin to back down. Even as Mr. Obama laid out the evidence on Friday, he still shrank from assigning responsibility for the Ukraine civil war to Moscow. Russia is arming the separatists and fomenting war, he said, but Ukraine must still join a ceasefire. He should have announced that the U.S. will provide arms to Ukraine until Mr. Putin stops arming the separatists.

The greatest foreign-policy failing of this Presidency is that he refuses to see that the world has bad actors. He can explain the consequences of aggression as he did on Friday, but he refuses to admit or explain that certain countries are responsible for those consequences and must be opposed.

Ronald Reagan didn’t flinch this way, and neither does Mr. Obama’s own U.N. Ambassador. “We have a duty to each and every one of those individuals, their families, and their countries to determine why that jet fell out of the sky and to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Ms. Power said Friday. “This appalling attack occurred in the context of a crisis that has been fueled by Russian support for separatists—through arms, weapons and training— and by the Russian failure to follow through on its commitments and by its failure to adhere to the fundamental principles of the U.N. Charter.”

She added that “this war can be ended. Russia can end this war. Russia must end this war.” Her boss should tell the truth so plainly.

Re-posted from the Wall Street Journal as a Public Service.

Geoff