War has broken out again in Europe, and one man is directly responsible for it: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The bells of war rang for months. However, on February 21, Putin performed an incredible puppet show in the Kremlin. Having subjugated his entire security council, he gave a confused speech in which he showed that he was consumed by nationalist myths and imperial nostalgia and determined to destroy an independent Ukraine. Three days later, Putin launched a full-scale invasion at dawn.
In Europe, something like this has not been recorded since Adolf Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939. However, it is a brutal reality. To understand what brought us to this point and what Putin wants, we need to look back at what preceded the war.
Myth and reality
In his speech on February 21, Putin did not question the right of Ukraine to exist independently of Russia for the first time - although then he gave that thesis a new dimension of delusion. (Obviously the extreme isolation that Putin was in during covid took its toll).
Putin often returns to the fact that Christianity arrived in the East Slavic world with the baptism of Prince Valdemar in the spring of 989, in the city of Chersonese, the ruins of which can be seen in the suburbs of Sevastopol in Crimea. That historical drug addict illustrates the complexity of today's situation.
The prince called Vladimir in Russia is Volodymyr in Ukraine; in childhood he probably responded to Valdemar. He was born into a Scandinavian Viking clan that later ruled the cities of Novgorod and Kiev, along with the coastal trade route between the Baltic and Black Seas. Until then, Chersonesos had been a Greek city for a whole millennium.
It was only centuries after Kievan Rus was founded that the state of Muscovy began to emerge, with Moscow at its center. For centuries, the country that would become Russia was under the tutelage of the Mongols, and the area that would become Ukraine was largely dominated by Poland and Lithuania, while the open steppes to the south were a meeting place of Tatars and Cossacks.
Therefore, when Putin repeatedly spoke about the "historic Russian land" in his speech, he did not just deviate from history, but actually gave free rein to his imagination. It is true that in later centuries that territory was conquered by Imperial Russia. But it was not always a harmonious period, because even then the Ukrainian national world began to emerge, reflecting the unique history of the area. Although Ivan Mazepa was eventually defeated by Peter the Great in the early 18th century, he lives on in the memory as a Ukrainian national hero.
Prison of nations
Czarist Russia, mentioned in Putin's fever dreams, was often known as the “prison of nations”. Ruled by the Tsar and dominated by the Russians, the empire included numerous nations that secretly or openly longed to shape their future. When the empire fell and Russia fell into a brutal civil war, most of them, including Ukraine, declared independence.
When history is written, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be considered the unwilling creator of the Ukrainian nation that he so desperately wanted to destroy, because it is precisely because of his efforts that Ukrainian nationalism will grow, whether at home or in exile.
However, the Bolsheviks eventually won and established their Soviet state, basing it on the idea of a union of national republics with varying degrees of autonomy. Some non-Russian nations have managed to preserve their declared independence, and some have not. Ukraine is in this second group.
Today, Putin views the old Soviet structure as the greatest sin. By establishing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Bolsheviks actually recognized the existence of the Ukrainian people. Putin believes that Vladimir Lenin made a huge mistake by creating a Ukrainian administrative entity. In Putin's view, it was better when the Tsar was the source of power (a tradition repeated by Stalin when any illusion of separation of powers was brutally ended)
When the Soviet state collapsed seven decades later, history repeated itself, with all those captured states that had previously failed to preserve their sovereignty reasserting sovereignty. In a referendum on December 1, 1991, 90 percent of Ukrainians - a majority in every region of the country - voted for independence. Even in Crimea, where support was lowest, 57 percent voted for Ukrainian independence. A few weeks later, the Soviet Union collapsed.
Disasters and failures
Putin describes the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the great geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century" and believes that Ukraine and other captured states should not have been allowed to become independent. In his opinion, this was only a reflection of the weakness of the Russian state at that time.
Ukrainian independence has definitely raised difficult topics. Nationalists in Russia wanted control of Crimea; there were numerous issues of industrial integration that needed to be addressed; and there was the fact that one third of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was located on the territory of Ukraine. Most of those problems were resolved by the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia promised to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine giving up its entire nuclear arsenal. One side kept its word, the other did not.
The second act of this drama followed in 2004, when Ukrainians elected a president with an explicitly pro-Western orientation. Moscow's preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych - who later became president - was initially declared the winner and congratulated by Putin. However, after evidence of massive electoral fraud was discovered, massive popular protests broke out. When free and fair elections were held, Viktor Yushchenko was the winner. Putin misjudged Ukraine, and his strategy ended up alienating many Ukrainians, undermining his influence.
Practically the same scenario was repeated on a larger scale ten years later. By then, Yunukovich was elected president in free and fair elections, and Ukraine began knocking on the door of the European Union. In 2014, the EU and Ukraine concluded an Association Agreement, including a deep and comprehensive area of free trade. Putin didn't like that. Determined to make Ukraine part of the semi-imperial Eurasian union he intended to create, he implemented a series of measures to pressure Yanukovych not to sign the agreement. However, when Yanukovych did as he was told, protests broke out again.
The regime reacted to that uprising with extreme violence, and a hundred people died on the streets of Kyiv. With the help of the German, Polish and French foreign ministers - but also with the presence of the Russian representative - an agreement was reached on February 21, 2014 to end the crisis. That agreement provided for the holding of new presidential elections, a new coalition government would be established, and those responsible for the murders would be prosecuted.
It seemed that the crisis was over. However, instead of staying and implementing the agreement, Yanukovych suddenly left Kiev and was later smuggled into Russia. In the absence of the president, the Ukrainian parliament started implementing the agreement. Even a clear majority from Yanukovych's party voted for the implementation of the measures. A new coalition government was established and new presidential elections were called.
Later, the Kremlin would repeatedly describe the event as a coup. It was not a coup by any means. After several days of mass protests and brutal killings by the authorities, peace has returned to the streets of Kyiv.
However, although there was no coup in Kiev, a crisis has apparently erupted in the Kremlin. As Putin later admitted, that's when he made the decision to annex Crimea. A week later, a Russian special forces unit took over the regional parliament in Semfireopol, installing a local thug who had received only limited support in previous elections. When that was completed, Russia proceeded with the annexation of the peninsula.
Unsatisfied with the seizure of this territory, Putin also continued his attempt to destabilize and eventually take over most of southern Ukraine, establishing an entity called Novorossiya. However, he again misjudged Ukraine. The Ukrainian army and police were in disarray, but still managed to repel the Russian "little green men" (soldiers without prominent military insignia). Therefore, Putin had no choice but to send battalions of the Russian regular army to salvage what they could from the failed plan. Meanwhile, Ukraine elected a new president in an election that international observers judged to be fair and free.
During that earlier Russian invasion, the people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were created in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbass. Their administration was extremely non-transparent, and leaders were appointed and removed (or simply killed) as a result of factional conflicts in Moscow. As for the "people", the tragic fact is that most of them are no longer there, and have fled to Ukrainian territory.
Despite the annexation of Crimea and the establishment of a couple of state entities, Putin essentially failed to achieve his plan in 2014. Ukrainian democracy survived. It continued with the EU Association Agreement and began to revive its economy. Ukrainian hostility to Russia only deepened as clashes with gangster republics in the east dragged on, leaving 14 dead.
Around the same time, NATO states acknowledged that they needed to start increasing defense spending, and the alliance deployed non-national forces to eastern members for the first time. There was no presence of NATO forces there before, because the alliance's attention was directed elsewhere, to distant countries like Afghanistan. In fact in 2013, the US withdrew its last tank from Europe.
With his aggressive behavior, Putin almost single-handedly revived NATO. Historians will debate why he initiated this fourth, deeply tragic act in the drama between the Kremlin and Ukraine. It is possible that because of the infamous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he got the impression that the United States is withdrawing and may be forced to make concessions that could be imposed on Ukraine and other reluctant Europeans. (Putin's security adviser Nikolay Patrushev hinted at something like that after the debacle in Kabul).
In any case, Putin threw an iron gauntlet in the West's face with a series of extreme demands, along with the threat of massive military mobilization. Not since Nikita Khrushchev in the early 1960s has a Kremlin leader acted in such a manner. It was clear from the beginning that Putin would either have to back down significantly or pursue his goals with military force.
The ending
Putin's goal in Ukraine was never limited to the Donbas, or even to blocking NATO membership. In fact, the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state was always a problem for him. Putin made his strategic intent clear in a stunning essay published last June - a document that immediately became required reading for the Russian armed forces. After the debacle of his policies in 2004 and 2014, he likely realized that Ukraine would continue to turn to the West, strengthening its democracy and increasingly eluding the Kremlin's reach.
He was right. He was also losing because of his own mistakes, and that was something he could not bear. Therefore, he convinced himself that there was a chance to turn it all around. And since the West refused to capitulate, there was no diplomatic solution. Although it was not wrong to try diplomacy, from the current point of view some rhetoric seems naive. Putin probably made the decision several months ago.
In each variant the illusion is dispelled. Putin is now trying to conquer Ukraine and destroy its government, remove the current leaders by all means and install a puppet regime. In this way, Ukrainian independence will be destroyed, which is what Putin wants all along.
However, Putin cannot destroy the Ukrainian people. Whether in exile or at home, Ukraine will be stronger in the long run. When the history of this period is written, Putin will be seen as the unwilling creator of the Ukrainian nation he so desperately wanted to destroy. He united Ukrainians in their hatred of Russia, which he represents.
History is not over. It has entered a new, dangerous phase, in which the future of the current regime in the Kremlin will also be decided.
Project - syndicate.org
The author was the prime minister and head of diplomacy of Sweden. He was also the EU special envoy for the former Yugoslavia, high representative for BiH, UN special envoy for the Balkans and co-chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference.
Translated and edited by: N. Bogetić
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