Fernández Díaz and Putin's bait: a trap nobody can define

The Pilingui bait that Fernández Díaz never defined

On March 10, 2022, with Russian columns still stuck north of Kyiv, former minister Jorge Fernández Díaz declared on the program Horizonte that Pilingui had been "baited with a hook, and he took it." The phrase spread like wildfire. The problem is the usual one: nobody said where the hook was, who had baited it, or what the fish is supposed to be biting. Six days after the invasion began, the verdict worked more as a slogan than as analysis.

The debate it sparked has more substance than it seems, however. Because beneath the hook lies a concrete geopolitical thesis: that after the fall of the USSR, Washington chose to harass Russia rather than integrate it, and that this choice was not a mistake but a play to keep Europe a satellite and prevent it from awakening as a power in its own right. If Moscow had joined the Western club, the EU would stop being a sidekick.

What bait was set for Pilingui in Ukraine?

The bait hypothesis has two versions circulating at once. One holds that NATO deliberately pushed Moscow over the edge: if it did not intervene, the Alliance would move in "right into its kitchen"; if it did intervene, economic suffocation would come crashing down on it. In both scenarios, the war was declared in advance. The other version flips the subject: the hook was not for Pilingui, it was for the European Union, which has been left with the energy bill and inflation while others move the pieces.

The uncomfortable detail is that the trap, if it existed, had been baited for years. The 2014 coup in Ukraine, the training of ultra battalions, the installation of weaponry and the destruction of the Russian minority in the Donbas are cited as prior steps. None of that began in February 2022. The invasion was the end of a script written in fragments over eight years.

The soft power Russia never had

There is one fact that dismantles part of the bait narrative: if Moscow had wanted to attract its neighbors, it had the means. It did not use them. Every country in the region prefers to play for the other team, and not by chance. A Ukrainian and a Russian are indistinguishable at first glance; logically they would be united spontaneously. Yet the only tool Russia has deployed effectively is the stick. And with only that, the game is lost in the long run.

The opposite reading also has legs: the argument goes that Pilingui was left with no other option and that the mistake was one of timing, not substance. Had he acted earlier, against the Baltic republics, no one would have dared to make a sound. It is the "too soft" thesis, which coexists in the same bag as the bait thesis without bothering to contradict it.

Who pays for the bait: the euro, gas and bread

While the authorship of the trap is debated, the bill already has a recipient. Russia keeps selling gas and oil to Europe while invading Ukraine, and Europeans pay for bread and pasta at caviar prices. The euro-dollar parity, with the cross rate at 0.92, is cited as proof that the economic punishment does not distinguish sides. The dollar empire, some say, is being demolished by remote control, and Russia is playing the role assigned to it.

The most repeated forecast is that this unfolds in phases: the pandemic ends, Ukraine begins; Ukraine ends, Taiwan begins. The farces, one at a time, because people cannot digest two things at once. And in the middle, a Europe that some no longer even defend: a growing number of people say they want to blow it up from within.

The open ending of the bait

Fernández Díaz's verdict remains, six days after the invasion, without a ruling. There is no definition of the bait, no proof of who set it, no calculation of what the bite cost. Only the certainty that the fish bit, and that the fisherman, if he exists, still has not shown his rod.