We should not be afraid to increase the military and economic pressure on Russia

What seems extremely solid to us today may actually be more fragile than we realize - although I don't think Putin's regime has reached that stage yet - Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, said at the Rondeli Security Conference ongoing in Tbilisi.

According to him, the success that the Russian army achieves in Ukraine is not related to its increased competence, but to the incompetence of the West.

"What seems extremely solid to us today may actually be more fragile than we realize. The Soviet Union was a brutal superpower that collapsed extremely quickly when hit in the right place, although I don't think Putin's regime has reached that stage yet.

It should be noted that the success that the Russian forces are achieving in Ukraine has nothing to do with increasing competence, but what allows them to advance for the moment is the incompetence of the West and the failure of the West to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons. Despite what the Ukrainians are going through, they managed to effectively, without a fleet, drive the Russian fleet out of the western part of the Black Sea, they managed to sink another Russian ship a few days ago. This is quite an extraordinary experience, in fact we should learn from the Ukrainians.

I think we should no longer fear that anything we do to destabilize Russia will make things worse. We must not make the same mistake that George H.W. W. Bush made in 1991, who went to Kyiv and essentially told people to stick with Moscow because it might be worse without it. There will be changes - maybe for the better, maybe for the worse, but we should not be afraid to increase the military and economic pressure on Russia for fear that this may make the situation worse," said Ian Bond.