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Putin’s article: ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’

12 July 2021 saw the publication of an article by President Vladimir Putin, entitled ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, which had been announced on 30 June 2021 during the President’s Direct Line public conference with citizens. The text was published on the President’s official website kremlin.ru (in two languages: Russian and Ukrainian).

The content of the article, which focuses on analysing the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations, is dominated by the claim that Ukrainians are an ancient, inseparable part of the ‘triune Russian nation’. This community is based on a common history spanning one thousand years, the language, the ‘Russian’ ethnic identity, the shared cultural sphere and the Orthodox religion. Their bond with the Russian state is special and organic; it guarantees Ukraine’s development, and any attempts to sever or weaken this bond (which could only be inspired by external actors) will inevitably result in the collapse of Ukrainian statehood.

The most important points regarding the history of bilateral relations include the following:

-         There are no historical arguments to justify the claim that a separate Ukrainian nation existed prior to the Soviet period: the proclamation of the Ukrainian nation was merely the result of the Austro-Hungarian Empire pursuing its great-power interests. Following World War I, having severed its bond with Russia, the Ukrainian state was short-lived, which resulted from “ceding full control of Ukraine to external forces” (first Germany, then Poland); all those who have recently surrendered control of the country to “external forces” should remember this . The Malorussian and Ukrainian culture flourished due to the policy pursued by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Empire (in relation to the latter, Putin mentions the policy of korenizatsiya , and mistakenly claims that it was continued into the 1930s); it was only Soviet national policy that created a basis for distinguishing between the three separate nations – Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian.

-         Russia views the existence of the Ukrainian nation “with respect”. However, present-day Ukraine owes its territorial form to the Soviet period. It benefitted from “regaining” ancient Russian lands at the expense of Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, and obtained territories which had been taken away from “historical Russia”. Consequently, if Ukraine is determined to severe   its friendly relations with Russia, i.e. the USSR’s heir, it should return to its 1922 borders . Putin also took the opportunity to criticise the policy pursued by the Bolsheviks; he accused them of “robbing” Russia of the territories that were awarded to Ukraine.

-         Russia did a great deal to help the Ukrainian state thrive post-1991; Putin mentioned the significant economic assistance Russia offered to Kyiv. The rupture of the ties between the two countries has resulted in Ukraine’s economic degradation: at present Ukraine is “ Europe’s poorest country” . The anti-Russian Ukrainian authorities have “wasted and frittered away the achievements of many generations”, even while the two nations still have “great affection” for each other.

-         Putin also offered harsh criticism of the policies pursued by the authorities in Kyiv, both towards Russia and domestically, and of the local oligarchs who plunder the Ukrainian state. Ukraine is affected by a persistent weakness of its state institutions and has become “a willing hostage to someone else’s geopolitical will” . In addition, Putin accused Kyiv of mythologising and rewriting history – a routine allegation against those neighbouring states which   work to debunk Russian historical propaganda .   In Putin’s words, “the common tragedy of collectivisation” back in the 1930s is falsely presented as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. As he pointed out, the Ukrainian elites wrongfully base   the country’s independence on a denial of its past. However, at the same time they   “conveniently” leave   out the aforementioned issue of the contemporary state’s borders.

-         Putin once again criticised the Kyiv government’s language policy and the law on indigenous peoples of Ukraine. According to his interpretation, “forced assimilation” of ethnic Russians is ongoing and an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is being formed. The consequences of this approach are   comparable to “the use of weapons of mass destruction” (sic!) against Russia. In addition, he criticised the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seeing this as a blow to the spiritual unity of the two nations and a result of the secular authorities’ blatant interference in church life.

-         According to Putin, the West intends to transform Ukraine into an “anti-Russia”, an anti-Russian “springboard”, a barrier between Russia and Europe. This echoes   plans devised in the past by “Polish-Austrian ideologists” who intended to create “an anti-Moscow Rus”. This runs counter to the interests of the Ukrainian nation, which was exploited by Poland, Austria-Hungary and Nazi Germany in the past, and “cynically used” again in 2014. The “anti-Russia” project cultivates the image of an internal and external enemy , is leading to the militarisation of Ukraine (including the expansion of NATO’s infrastructure on its territory) and views it as a protectorate of the Western powers. This project thus denies Ukraine’s genuine sovereignty . The “millions of people” who reject this “anti-Russia” plan are viewed as Moscow’s agents, persecuted or even killed. Only those who hate Russia are considered “the right kind of patriots”. This means that Ukrainian statehood is being built on hate, and this is a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, burdened with a tremendous risk.

-         Putin reiterated some of his previously voiced arguments regarding the causes of Ukraine’s destabilisation post-2014 . The “anti-Russia” project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians: Crimea has made its “historic choice”, and the population of the Donbas took up arms to prevent ethnic cleansing. He warned that “the followers of Bandera did not abandon their plans to crack down on Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk” and their crimes would be comparable to those perpetrated by the Nazis. As he said, “ They are biding their time. But their time will not come ”. Putin also claimed that “ Kyiv simply does not need Donbas ” because the local population will never accept the rules of the game imposed by the central government, and the implementation of the Minsk agreements would contradict the “anti-Russia” project. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “lied” when he claimed   ahead of the presidential election that he would strive to achieve a peaceful solution to the Donbas problem;   instead, the situation has deteriorated further since then.

-         Moscow will never allow its “historical territories” and the people living there to be used against Russia . Those who undertake such an attempt will destroy their own country . Meanwhile, good-neighbourly cooperation is possible and desired; ideally it should be modelled on German-Austrian and American-Canadian relations, in which ethnically similar states that speak the same language are closely integrated while remaining sovereign.

-         In the text, Poland is presented as an empire competing with Russia, albeit a weaker one. Its policy towards Ukraine has always been based on the forced Polonisation and Catholicisation of the local population. Meanwhile, the incorporation of a portion of Ukraine into Russia in the 17th century was an act of democratic will on both sides. The further annexations of Polish lands (in the 18th century and later) are (as usual) presented as the process of Old Russian lands being regained and reunited.

• The article is another example of Putin’s revanchism. Although the anti-Ukrainian arguments presented in the text are not new, their more detailed form and appeals to a historical legacy are intended to reinforce and justify   the Kremlin’s message: Russia will not abandon its attempts to keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence. The text contains a de facto threat that the 1991 Belovezha Accords (which recognised the inviolability of borders between the former Soviet republics) may be considered invalid should Ukraine fail to yield to Russia. Due to the present international situation, this threat should be viewed as an empty, ostentatious gesture confirming the increasingly ritual nature of Russian propaganda. However, it is evident that the Russian authorities are toughening up their narrative. On the one hand, this may suggest that the Kremlin feels frustrated with its limited impact on Ukrainian politics, and on the other, that plans have been made to step up the destabilisation of Ukraine in the coming months.
• Putin’s article reflects his attachment to Russia’s imperial history and its ‘history-making’ destiny to determine the fate of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. He reiterates, in an oversimplified manner, the basic assumptions of 19th-century official historiography of the Russian Empire. He also refers to conspiracy theories formulated by Russian far-right groups, claiming that the Ukrainian nation was a Polish (and later an Austro-Hungarian) anti-Russian political project. In order to prove his main argument, Putin passes over events which are inconvenient for Russia and presents many others in a biased or blatantly distorted manner. This falsified ‘common history’ is intended to legitimate Russia’s influence on Ukrainian society, in order to correct the mistakes made by the ‘puppet’ government in Kyiv .
• The clear threats aimed at Kyiv (suggesting that its anti-Russian policy is exposing Ukraine to the risk of losing its statehood) are mainly formulated with the Western audience in mind. This is being done in the context of the upcoming elections in Germany (in this sense, the text is a continuation of the conciliatory article Putin published on the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s aggression on 22 June) and Russia’s present relationship with the United States. One of Putin’s (rather unrealistic) goals is to discourage the new German government and the Biden administration from supporting the ‘hopeless’ case of defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity. This refers to the West’s position on the annexation of Crimea, military cooperation with Ukraine, and backing Ukraine’s aspirations to NATO membership. Putin sends a clear message to Western ‘hawks’ that Russia is determined to defend its interests in Ukraine – even at the expense of destroying Ukrainian statehood (or trimming its territory to a rump state). On the other hand,   pro-Russian groups in the Western establishment were offered a conciliatory argument, which accompanied the blackmail: Ukrainian-Russian relations can be built on similar foundations as   those of Germany & Austria and Canada & the US.
• Putin also targeted his message to   Ukraine’s leadership and society. The article   contains accusations that Zelensky and his team are serving foreign governments. It depicts a bright vision of the prosperity that could result from Ukraine’s integration with Russia, and condemns Ukrainian oligarchs for robbing the country. Accompanying threats to further   destabilise Ukraine, should it continue its course of Euro-Atlantic integration, include   a thinly-veiled warning that Moscow may resort to military measures. In the Kremlin’s logic, emphasising the ‘civilisational’ role of Orthodox Russia is intended to polarise and radicalise social groups in Ukraine by exploiting divisions about Ukrainian-Russian (Soviet) relations in the past. However, we should not expect this article to shift the views held by most Ukrainians, who now consider Russia as an unfriendly or hostile state. Attempts to undermine the feeling of national distinctiveness will likely be considered as manifestations of the Kremlin’s aggressive policy.
• Putin’s text is intended to demonstrate to Russian society that the Kremlin is determined to defend Russia’s national interests. Against the backdrop of social discontent over the increasing economic problems Russian society is facing, references to imperial resentments, the anti-Western mood and the image of the state as a ‘besieged fortress’ are all elements of the same strategic project. It boils down to building the regime’s legitimacy on its great-power legacy and bygone imperial splendour. In addition, the article contains guidelines for Russian officials   regarding the desirable political narrative. One should therefore expect this discourse within Russia’s ruling elite to intensify.

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Contextualizing putin's "on the historical unity of russians and ukrainians".

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent essay, "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians," which was published on the Kremlin's website in Russian , English and Ukrainian , elaborates on his frequently stated assertion that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people." In what Anne Applebaum called “ essentially a call to arms ," Putin posits that Ukraine can only be sovereign in partnership with Russia, doesn't need the Donbas and nullified its claims on Crimea with its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, and has been weakened by the West's efforts to undermine the unity of the Slavs.

Responses to the 5000-word article have ranged from deep concern to near dismissal , with some likening its statements to a justification for war and others pointing to its lack of novelty and suggesting that the primary audience is President Volodymyr Zelensky as he met with leaders in the West. (Zelensky, for his part, offered the tongue-in-cheek response that Putin must have a lot of extra time on his hands.) The discussions inspired by the essay have explored questions such as: Why is Russia so obsessed with Ukraine ? Where do the facts diverge from myth? What is Putin's motivation for writing this document? 

In August 2017, we published an interview with Serhii Plokhii (Plokhy) about his book  Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation , which addresses many of the themes emerging in discussions in the wake of Putin's statements. We are reposting the interview below for those who are interested in learning more about Russian nationalism and the intersection of history and myth, past and present.

In the coming weeks, we will also publish excerpts from Plokhii's forthcoming book The Frontline  in open access on our HURI Books website. 

August 2017 Interview

Covering the late 15th century through the present, this book focuses specifically on the Russian nationalism, exploring how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin instrumentalized identity to achieve their imperial and great-power aims. Along the way, Plokhy reveals the central role Ukraine plays in Russia’s identity, both as an “other” to distinguish Russia, and as part of a pan-Slavic conceptualization used to legitimize territorial expansion and political control. 

HURI:  Did you come across anything in your research that surprised you?

Plokhy:  A monument to St Volodymyr/ St Vladimir was recently constructed in the most coveted, the most prestigious, the most visible place in the Russian capital, right across from the Kremlin. To me, this was striking enough that I made it the opening of my book.

St. Volodymyr, the Prince who ruled in Kyiv, is more prominent in the Russian capital in terms of the size and location of the statue than the alleged founder of Moscow, Yuriy Dologorukii. Some pundits say that St. Volodymyr is a namesake of Vladimir Putin, so this is really a celebration of Putin, but excepting all of that, there has to be a very particular understanding of Kyivan history to allow one to place in the very center of Moscow a statue of a ruler who ruled in a city that is the now the capital of a neighboring country. 

That means the things I've discussed in the book are not just of academic interest for historians; the history of the idea of what historian Alexei Miller called the “big Russian nation,” is important for understanding Russian behavior today, both at home and abroad. 

HURI:  Do you have any sense of the attitude of Russian people toward the monument?

Plokhy:  Muscovites protested against the plan to place the monument at Voroviev Hills, overseeing the city, but I do not think anyone said that it honored the wrong person or anything like that.

HURI:  In a book that covers 500 years of history, some interesting common threads must appear. What are some of these constants?

Plokhy:  One common thread is the centrality of Ukraine in defining what Russia is and is not. The historical mythology of Kyivan Rus' is contested by Russians and Ukrainians. But no matter how strong or weak the argument on the Ukrainian side of the debate, Russians today have a difficult time imagining Kyiv being not part of Russia or Russia-dominated space and Kyivan Rus' not being an integral part of Russian history.

Ukraine and Ukrainians are important for Russian identity at later stages, as well. For example, the first published textbook of “Russian history” was written and published in Kyiv in the 1670s. This Kyivan book became the basic text of Russian history for more than 150 years.

In the 20th century and today, we see the continuing importance of Ukraine in the ways the concept of the Russian world is formulated, the idea of Holy Rus', church history and church narrative, and so on.

That is one of the reasons why post-Soviet Russia is not only engaged in the economic warfare, or ideological warfare with Kyiv, but is fighting a real physical war in Ukraine. On the one hand, it's counter-intuitive, given that Putin says Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same people, but, given the importance of Ukrainian history for Russia, it's a big issue for which they are prepared to fight.

HURI:  Can you talk about a few important actions or moments when Ukraine saw itself as a distinct group from the projected pan-Russian nation, and maybe when it saw itself as part of it?

The development of a separate Ukrainian identity, literature, and language was met in the 19th century with attempts to arrest that development. HURI recently published an important collection of articles,  Battle for Ukrainian , which (among other things) shows how important language is for the national formation and identity. The Russian Empire also treated language as a matter of security. That's why in 1863 it was the Minister of Interior who issued the decree limiting use of the Ukrainian language, not the Minister of Education, not the President of the Academy of Sciences, but the Minister of Interior. It was a matter of security.

The battles start then and focus on history and language, but for a long time the goal of Ukrainian activists was autonomy, not independence per se. The idea of Ukrainian independence in earnest was put on the political agenda in the 20th century and since then it's refused to leave. In the 20th century, we had five attempts to declare an independent Ukrainian state. The fifth succeeded in 1991, and then the question was, “Okay, you have a state, but what kind of nation does or will Ukraine have? Is it ethnic? Is it political? What separates Russia from Ukraine?” These are the questions that found themselves in the center of public debate. There’s probably no other country where the president would publish a book like  Ukraine Is Not Russia  (President Kuchma). You can't imagine President Macron writing France Is Not Germany or anything like that.

HURI:  Anne Applebaum said  during a lecture  at the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, “If Stalin feared that Ukrainian nationalism could bring down the Soviet regime, Putin fears that Ukraine’s example could bring down his own regime, a modern autocratic kleptocracy.” Putin emphasizes the “sameness” of the nations, which would seem to increase the power of Ukraine’s example to undermine his regime. Do you think the the drive to call Ukrainians the same as Russians is informed not only by foreign policy, but also by domestic considerations? 

Plokhy:  I think so. Historically the two groups have a lot in common, especially since eastern and central Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire for a long period of time, starting in the mid-17th century. Therefore, common history is certainly there, and the structure of society, the level of education, the level of urbanization, and other things are similar.

Because of these connections, if Ukraine could do certain things, it would be much more difficult to say it can’t be done in Russia, that Russia has a special destiny, that democracy would never work in Russia, and so on and so forth. That would be not just a geopolitical setback for Russia, but would undermine the legitimizing myth Russia needs in order to have an authoritarian regime. 

HURI:  Are there any important differences between the behavior of Putin and previous leaders?

The policies introduced in the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine or in Crimea offer very little space for Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture. That's a big difference in thinking from what we had in most of the 20th century, when there were all sorts of atrocities but at least on the theoretical level the Ukrainian nation’s right to exist was never questioned. Now it is. The recent attempt to declare “Little Russia” in Donbas and under this banner to take over the rest of Ukraine, promoted by Mr. Surkov, has failed, but it shows that the Russian elites prefer to think about Ukraine in pre-revolutionary terms, pretending as though the revolution that helped to create an independent Ukrainian state and the Soviet period with its nation-building initiatives had never taken place.

HURI:  How about the mentality of Russian citizens toward Ukrainians?

Plokhy:  When the conflict started, Putin was voicing the opinion of the majority of Russians that there is no real difference between Russians and Ukrainians, but the war is changing that. We see a much bigger spike of hostility toward Ukraine on the side of Russian population as compared to the spike of anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine, which also reveals a lot about the two societies and how state propaganda works.

HURI:  Speaking of Russian nation-building and nationalism, what about the non-Slavic peoples, particularly those living to the east of the Urals? Has their inclusion and sense of belonging in the Russian state (or empire) changed over time?

Plokhy:  I leave this subject largely outside the frame of this book, which focuses mainly on relations between Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians, and how the sense of Russian identity evolved over time. But non-Slavs are extremely important part of Russian imperial history as a whole.

Russia today, compared to imperial Russia or the Soviet Union, has lost a lot of its non-Russian territories, including Ukraine and Belarus, but still a good number of non-Slavs live in the Russian Federation. On the one hand, the government understands that and tries not to rock the boat, but exclusive Russian ethnic nationalism is generally on the rise in Russia. The Russians who came to Crimea, the people who came to Donbas, like Igor Girkin (Strelkov), they came to Ukraine with a pan-Russian ideology. It's not just anti-Western, it puts primacy on the ethnically, linguistically, culturally understood Russian people, which certainly threatens relations with non-Russians within the Russian Federation.

What we see is the ethnicization of Russian identity in today's Russia. It has a lot of ugly manifestations, but overall it's a common process for many imperial nations to separate themselves from their subjects and possessions. Russians redefine what Russians are by putting emphasis on ethnicity. We witnessed such processes in Germany, and in France, and in both countries there were a lot of unpleasant things, to put it mildly.

Plokhy:  For a long time, Russian ethnic nationalism, particularly in the Soviet Union, was basically under attack. Russian as lingua franca was of course supported and promoted, the dominance of Russian cadres in general was supported, but the emphasis on ethnicity, on Russian ethnicity in particular, was not welcome because that could mobilize non-Russian nationalism as a reaction, and that was a threat to the multi-ethnic character of the state.

Today, Russia is much less multi-ethnic than it was during Soviet times, and the regime is much more prepared to use ethnic Russian nationalism for self-legitimization or mobilization for war, like the war in Ukraine. All of that contributes to the rise of ethnic nationalism. The government relies more on its support and it provides less of a threat to the state, given that the state is less multi-ethnic.

HURI:  With the belief that Russia's borders should come in line with the ethnic Russian population, doesn't that create a danger with Chechnya and other autonomous republics in the Caucasus having a reason to leave?

Plokhy:  It does. One group of ethnicity-focused and culture-focused Russian nationalists are saying that Russia should actually separate from the Caucasus. If you bring ethnonationalist thinking to its logical conclusion, that's what you get, and that's what some people in Russia argue. They're not an influential group, but they argue that.

HURI:  And what about, say, eastern Russia?

Plokhy:  Yes, in terms of geography, it is easier to imagine Chechnya and Dagestan leaving than Tatarstan. That is why extreme Russian nationalism is an export product for the Russian government, rather than the remedy the doctor himself is using at home. It is used to either annex or destabilize other countries, but within the country itself there is an emphasis on the multi-ethnicity of the Russian political nation. Putin has to keep the peace between the Orthodox and Muslim parts of the population.

The goal is to keep the post-Soviet space within the Russian sphere of influence. In the case of Georgia and Ukraine, the goal is also to preclude a drift over to the West; in the Baltic States, to question the underlying principle of NATO, that countries like the US or Germany would be prepared to risk a war over a small country like Estonia. Large NATO countries don't have the answer to that dilemma yet, and Putin is trying to create a situation where the answer will be “no.” So it's great power politics, it's sphere-of-influence politics.

Putin and the people around him are not ideologically driven doctrinaires. They use ideology to the degree that it can support great power ambitions and their vision of Russia’s role in the world. They jumped on the bandwagon of rising Russian nationalism, seeing in it an important tool to strengthen the regime both at home and abroad.

Ukraine became a polygon where the strength of Russian nationalism as a foreign policy was tested for the first time. The Baltic states have a big Russian-speaking minority where the "New Russia" card can be played if the circumstances are right.

HURI:  Was there a point after the fall of the Soviet Union when Russia turned back to an imperial model of Russian identity? Or was it never going to become a modern nation state?

Plokhy:  The shift started in the second half of the 1990s, but it really began to solidify when Putin came to power in 2000.

The 1990s for Russia were a very difficult period as a whole. Expectations were extremely high, but there was a major economic downturn, the loss of the status of a super power. This discredited the liberal project as a whole, in terms of foreign policy, in the organization of a political system, in the idea of democracy itself. The only thing from the West that Russia adopted to a different degree of success was a market economy. The market per se and private property, despite the high level of state influence, is still there, but the democracy did not survive. The Yeltsin-era attempt to shift from “Russkii” to more inclusive “Rossiyanin” as the political definition of Russianness also found itself under attack. The rise of ethnic Russian nationalism undermines the liberal model of the political Russian nation.

Society’s disappointment in the 1990s led to a search for alternatives, which were found in the idea of strengthening the power of the state and led to the rise of authoritarian tendencies. At the same time came Russia’s attempt to reclaim its great power status, despite an extreme gap between its geopolitical ambitions and economic potential. Today, Russia isn't even part of the ten largest world economies, so its GDP is smaller than Italy’s and Canada’s and is on par with South Korea’s. Think about Italy or Canada conducting that kind of aggressive foreign policy. You see the discrepancy right away.

This aggressive policy is a terrible thing for Ukraine and other countries, but it's also not good at all for Russia’s society, for the Russian economy, for the future of Russia as a state.

HURI:  What do you think of the term "managed democracy"? Do you think that's an accurate term?

Plokhy:  That's certainly the term that you can use to destroy democracy and get away with it.

Post-imperial countries - and that applies to the new nations in the post-Soviet space - face special difficulties in that regard. The majority of countries that were subjects of empires probably go through a period of authoritarian rule, and that's because they have to organize themselves, they have to build institutions. Think about Poland or Romania during the interwar period. You see the same situation in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia fell in that category as well. It was running an empire and had a long tradition of institutions, but none of those institutions were democratic.

Ukraine is an outlier in that sense. It's maintained its democratic institutions. It's paying a price for that, but the society is quite committed to keep going as a democratic country. There were two attempts -- one under President Kuchma, which resulted in one Maidan, and one under President Yanukovych, which resulted in another Maidan -- attempts to strengthen the presidential branch and join the post-Soviet authoritarian sphere. Both attempts were rejected by the Ukrainian society.

Foreign factors paid their role as well. But one should not overestimate those. On a certain level, the US was trying to help strengthen the democratic society and Russia was trying to strengthen the authoritarian tendencies in Yanukovych's regime, but in the end, it wasn’t up to outside players. The Ukrainian society made the decision, and in the last 25 years both attempts at authoritarianism failed.

They're issued by different publishers that view their readership differently. The title is the part of the book where the publisher has as much influence as the author, or maybe even more, and marketing people are also involved. The titles reflect the different ways publishers understand what is most important and can be conveyed in the most direct way to the readership.

HURI:  And I would guess it’s the same with the different cover art? What’s the significance of the images?

The same thing with the images. With the American one, there was a number of possibilities, and the publisher listened to my preference. The European one just produced something, and I accepted it.

So it's directly related to the story told in the book, but I also liked it as an image because it's extremely detailed, with a lot of things happening at the same time. It is easy to get lost in these details of battle. It fits the main title of the book,  Lost Kingdom , pretty well. The idea is that with all these wars and interventions, Russia lost its way to modern nationhood.

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The return of the enemy: Putin’s war on Ukraine and a cognitive blockage in Western security policy

Subscribe to the center on the united states and europe update, constanze stelzenmüller constanze stelzenmüller director - center on the united states and europe , senior fellow - foreign policy , center on the united states and europe , fritz stern chair on germany and trans-atlantic relations @constelz.

August 2023

• 39 min read

This is a translated, expanded, and updated version of an essay that appeared in the German magazine Kursbuch in June 2023. This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Eighteen months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of his country’s sovereign neighbor on February 24, 2022, the question of how this war ends appears as open as ever. Ukraine has put up a heroic resistance to the invaders. The West, under U.S. leadership, and with huge financial and material outlays on both sides of the Atlantic, has helped. Kyiv’s counteroffensive is producing modest successes. But it is equally clear that it is taking a terrible toll — on Ukraine’s armed forces, on its citizens, and on its supporters worldwide. Russia, too, is taking heavy losses, has failed to reach key goals, and is arguably running out of options; the brief mutiny of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has revealed startling vulnerabilities in the top echelons of the Kremlin, including of Putin himself. 1 Still, Moscow continues its barbaric, indiscriminate attacks against Ukraine’s troops, its people, its cultural heritage sites, and the infrastructure of its economy.

Is it time — as critics continue to argue — to seek a compromise solution instead of further arms deliveries in order to prevent further bloodshed or a disintegration of the Western coalition? 2 Might it even be imperative for Ukraine to renounce regaining its entire territory in order to avoid defeat, the expansion of the war to neighboring states, a nuclear escalation by the Kremlin, or starvation in the world’s poorest countries? Certainly, Vladimir Putin appears to be calculating that time is on his side. “Far from seeking an off-ramp,” Alexander Gabuev writes, “Vladimir Putin is preparing for an even bigger war.” 3

Such a compromise peace would demand a near-superhuman degree of pragmatism and self-denial from the Ukrainians, who are victims of a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and who live under almost continuous Russian bombardment. The critics’ fears are nonetheless worthy of careful consideration because they are realistic. They are heightened by the visible fact of Western governments struggling with numerous other disruptive challenges, as well as the prospect of a string of elections in key states, from Poland in October 2023 to the United States in November 2024; all of which appear to be empowering the extreme right, or at least driving up the price of voter consent. Notably, opposition against U.S. support for Ukraine is rising in the ranks of Republican presidential candidates and among their voters as the election campaign takes off. 4 Responsible policymakers must acknowledge these constraints and weigh the costs and risks of all options.

Putin’s Russia: Take it literally and seriously

And yet the calls for negotiation elide a central question: What if Putin’s system and the Russian president himself are unwilling — even unable — to reach such a compromise? The distinguished German historian of Eastern Europe Karl Schlögel has described Putinism succinctly: “a violence-based order following on the demise of a continental empire and a system of state socialism” rooted in a “Soviet-Stalinist DNA … It includes the targeted killing of political opponents, commonplace violence in prisons and camps, impunity for crimes, arbitrariness, conspiracy myths, the notion of ‘enemies of the people.’” 5

In his now notorious historical essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” from the summer of 2021, Putin flatly — and not for the first time — denied Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country; it was, he wrote, a component (together with Belarus) of a “single large nation, a triune nation.” 6 The Kremlin has repeatedly made it clear that only Ukraine’s complete surrender, including the relinquishment of its sovereignty, is acceptable as the basis for a peace agreement.

This maximalist intransigence is by no means limited to Ukraine. On December 17, 2021, the Kremlin sent two similar “draft treaties” to the White House and to NATO headquarters in Brussels which articulated the Kremlin’s goals for Europe with remarkable clarity. 7 The demands in the proposals — which were immediately dismissed by their recipients — included not just a veto on Ukrainian membership in the alliance but a revision of the Euro-Atlantic security acquis of the post-Cold War period on enlargement, basing, deployments, exercises, and cooperation with partners. They would have severely limited U.S. freedom of movement in Europe (with no concomitant limitations on Russia), reversed 25 years of Central and Eastern European integration into NATO and the European Union, ended the right of non-members to choose their own alliances, and re-established a Russian sphere of influence on the continent. 8 The coup de grâce was the final stipulation (Art. 7) of the draft U.S.-Russia treaty, that all nuclear weapons should be returned to their national territories: it would have meant the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe and thus quite possibly of the alliance itself.

As my Brookings colleagues Fiona Hill and Angela Stent have warned: “This war is about more than Ukraine. … Ukrainians and their supporters understand that in the event of a Russian victory, Putin’s expansionism would not end at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other states that were once part of the Russian empire would be at risk of attack or overthrow from within.” 9

Konrad Schuller, the Eastern Europe correspondent of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adds that the proponents of negotiations misjudge the categorical nature of this hostility: “In the case of total enmity, compromise never serves anything but a tactical pause.” This approach, he writes, has “deep roots in the Soviet Union,” and has been demonstrated time and again by Putin, as in the systematic violation of the Minsk agreements from the outset. 10

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously .

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously . That, in turn, requires confronting something else: the return of the category of the enemy to security policy.

1989: The end of enmity

The key theorist of this concept in the 20th century was Carl Schmitt, a fierce critic of liberal modernity, parliamentary democracy, and political pluralism; also an ardent antisemite. Despite his refusal to distance himself from his role as “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” his thought has unleashed what Jan-Werner Müller described as a “great and lasting intellectual fallout” for debates about political geostrategy to this day — not only in the West, but also in Russia and China. 11 For Schmitt, the concept of the enemy is the essence of the political: “The political enemy is … the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” 12 Enmity is not meant here in a metaphorical sense: “The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.” 13 Schmitt distinguishes here between “real” and “absolute” enemies: the former are capable of a territorial reconciliation of interests; the latter are incapable of this because of the ideological nature of their antagonism. 14

During the Cold War, much of the world was divided into camps of friend and foe, some of which were separated by genuine fortified borders such as the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The West’s adversary was the Soviet Union, a rival superpower with a totalitarian ideology and a “settled and implacable hostility,” together with the Warsaw Pact. 15 In the words of John Lewis Gaddis, Western leaders envisaged a postwar European security order “that assumed the possibility of compatible interests, even among incompatible systems” — whereas Josef Stalin’s goal was “the eventual Soviet domination of Europe,” and it “assumed no such thing.” 16 The states of the West, on the other hand, as former French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted in 2016, no longer defined their national identity after 1945 in opposition to a “demonized Other.” 17

It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States was left as the only superpower, with no rival far and wide. Its hegemonic status was also reflected in political theory: the so-called theory of convergence, according to which the rest of the world would gradually align itself with the Western model of free-market democracy. (Ironically, the notion of convergence originated in a famous essay by the Russian physicist and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov, whose 1968 essay “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” posited that the political systems of the West and the Soviet bloc would converge as their relations thawed. 18 ) Thomas Wright has pointed out that “the notion of convergence pervaded the three post-Cold War U.S. administrations. It was an explicit goal of their strategy and defined the parameters of it.” 19

The convergence thesis found its classic expression in a 1990 address to Congress by then-President George H.W. Bush:

“Out of these troubled times … a new world order … can emerge: a new era — freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.” 20

History, as we know, has taken a somewhat different course since then. Nonetheless, there was remarkable progress in the decade that followed, which initially seemed to confirm the hope for convergence. The bipolar order of the Cold War reconstituted itself as an “aspiring global commonwealth that enlarged NATO and transformed the United Nations, the [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the EU.” 21 Not only that, the democratic transformation of almost the entire Warsaw Pact found imitators around the world; civil society movements overthrew authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

The key proponents of this thesis were the liberal political theorists. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History” — arguably the most influential articulation of the theory of liberal entropy — postulated outright that the category of the enemy state, or more precisely, the enemy state with an anti-Western ideology, was doomed to become an anachronism. “The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance … And the death of this ideology means … the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.” Fukuyama hastened to add that terrorism and wars of national liberation would continue, but “large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.” 22

As late as 2011, the most persistent proponent of the liberal convergence thesis, G. John Ikenberry, inveighed against the “panicked narrative” of the rise of illiberal, authoritarian powers: “China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it. Indeed, today’s power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance.” 23

The country that most enthusiastically embraced the narrative of the end of history, the victory of the West through diplomacy and democratic transformation, and the irresistible global spread of a rules-based world order, was reunified Germany. In 2019, the diplomat Thomas Bagger, then head of the planning staff at the German Foreign Office, described Berlin’s interpretation of the Zeitenwende of 1989 with gentle but unmistakable irony:

“Toward the end of a century marked by having been on the wrong side of history twice, Germany finally found itself on the right side. What had looked impossible, even unthinkable, for decades suddenly seemed to be not just real, but indeed inevitable. The rapid transformation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into parliamentary democracies and market economies was taken as empirical proof of Fukuyama’s bold headline. … Best of all, while Germany would still have to transform its new regions in the East, the former GDR, the country in a broader sense had already arrived at its historical destination: it was a stable parliamentary democracy, with its own well-tested and respected social market economy. While many other countries around the globe would have to transform, Germany could remain as is, waiting for the others to gradually adhere to its model. It was just a matter of time.” 24

Thirty years after reunification, the Germans’ remarkably complacent interpretation of the events of 1989 would become a stubborn cognitive blockage against perceiving and adapting to another, much darker period of climate change in international relations and the global security order.

In the United States, however, the representatives of the realist school of international relations viewed this liberal narrative of a linear arc of history with the same skepticism they harbored for international institutions, international law, and the notion of a liberal world order in general. Realist theorists such as Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt argued that competition was the main driver of the international system. But because realists consider interests to be far more important than ideologies, they are also disinclined to consider a rival state or even an adversary an “enemy” in the Schmittian sense. The competitor’s interests are simply different; this also makes it easier to negotiate with them, to come to a compromise, or even to accept their demand for a sphere of influence. 25 This rather relaxed — and quite condescending — view of the phenomenon of interstate competition was doubtless rooted in the fact that until recently the United States had no plausible peer rival. China’s rise has noticeably changed the realists’ tone.

A third school — the constructivists — took exception to the realists’ refusal to acknowledge identity and ideas as key factors in the behavior of states. And it was the constructivist Alexander Wendt who, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, addressed the problem of the enemy head-on. He distinguished between Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian orders — based respectively on enmity, rivalry, and friendship. 26 Explicitly citing Schmitt, Wendt defined the difference between enemy and rival: “An enemy does not recognize the right of the Self to exist as a free subject at all … A rival, in contrast, is thought to recognize the Self’s right to life and liberty.” He adds: “Violence between enemies has no internal limits. … Violence between rivals, in contrast, is self-limiting, constrained by recognition of each other’s right to exist.” 27 Wendt cites post-Cold War conflicts occurring between “Palestinian and Israeli fundamentalists” and in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda as examples of hostility. All of these examples, however, are of internal or highly localized conflicts.

At the end of the first Bush presidency (1989-93) and then under his successor Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the United Nations sent peacekeepers to Cambodia and Rwanda, and NATO intervened in the Balkans with combat troops for the first time since its founding. Justifications for sending troops included the need to prevent regional destabilization, to end a humanitarian disaster, or the violation of basic principles of international law such as the prohibition of genocide. Leading Western states had patronage relationships with some of the conflict actors (France-Rwanda; France/U.K.-Serbia; Germany-Croatia), but they never went so far as to consider their clients’ enemies as their own. Meanwhile, relations among the great powers were for the most part stable and constructive. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Clinton clashed over NATO’s air war against Serbia. Otherwise, however, they largely cooperated with each other; Clinton paved the way for China to join the World Trade Organization.

2001: Terrorists, the West’s new enemy

It was the rise of radical Islamist terrorism, al-Qaida’s attacks on America on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “Global War on Terror” with which the category of the enemy as the enemy of the West returned to trans-Atlantic strategic discourse. The neoconservative strategists of President George W. Bush (2001-2009) were convinced that the terrorists and their state sponsors had to be utterly defeated; they put this conviction into practice by driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan and invading Iraq. Their highly controversial formulas, such as the “axis of evil” or “Islamofascism,” were reminiscent of the “absolute enemy” in Schmitt’s “Theory of the Partisan . ” 28 What distinguished the neoconservatives from the Schmittians, however, was the fact that they were moral universalists and, in the majority, convinced advocates of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. On this issue, they were in broad agreement with the liberal internationalists.

The Islamist enemy, it was hoped, would also be transformed by the pull of freedom and democracy. As my colleague Robert Kagan wrote in 2008: “The best [option] may be to hasten the process of modernization in the Islamic world. More modernization, more globalization, faster.” 29 The great powers of Russia and China would — or so it was assumed — share the task of combating terrorism with the West. For the rest, the great powers would — as the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy put it — “compete in peace.” 30 In 2005, Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said that once China became a “responsible stakeholder” in the U.S.-led world order, all differences could be settled in light of shared interests. 31

A decade later, Le Drian identified the Islamic State group (IS) as France’s “current enemy.” 32 But he simultaneously introduced a distinction that was as precise as it was careful: for France, he explained, IS was an ennemi conjoncturel , an enemy whose status was contingent, depending on the current threat it posed. France, on the other hand, is an ennemi structurel for IS, based on an “apocalyptic, totalitarian, and eliminatory vision of this combat … Our deeds are of little importance from this point of view. We are targeted above all for what we are, and for what we represent.” 33 We will have to come back to this distinction.

2008-present: The pulverization of peaceful convergence

The presidency of Barack Obama (2009-2016) was the last in the post-Cold War era to spell out its national security strategy within the paradigm of peaceful convergence. Obama, however, viewed the interventionism of his predecessors with skepticism. He understood that competition was rising globally, but he was determined not to let that fact define his administration. 34

When Obama took office in 2009, Dmitry Medvedev was his counterpart in the Kremlin. But the power center was Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had served once before as prime minister (1999-2000) and as president (2000-2008). Putin had triggered a sharp revisionist turn in Russian foreign policy in 1999 with the bloody Chechen war. In February 2007, he challenged the West in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. 35 In August 2008, the Kremlin provoked Georgia into a week-long shooting war as punishment for its aspirations to become a NATO member. Obama nevertheless offered Russia a “reset”; it produced the New START Treaty on strategic arms reduction and greater Russian cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran.

In 2012, Putin again assumed the Russian presidency. Yet even as Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and sent proxy troops into eastern Ukraine, Obama — supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — resisted pressure from Congress and his own administration to send lethal weapons to Kyiv. When Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 in favor of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad (triggering Germany’s refugee crisis), the United States also remained reluctant to intervene. Obama believed that the Europeans should take more responsibility for their own security; for him, the most important American security interests lay elsewhere, in Asia.

But China had also become much more power-conscious, both in its own neighborhood and in international institutions. The Obama administration initially took a wait-and-see approach; then it tried to change course with the “pivot to Asia” — with limited success. Derek Chollet, who had served as a senior Pentagon official in the administration, described U.S.-China relations as “increasingly cooperative on select issues, [but] rooted in competition and distrust.” 36 Few people, however, would have been less inclined to view a challenging great power like Russia or a rising rival like China as an enemy than the cerebral Obama; indeed, he notoriously dismissed Russia as a “regional power.”

Donald Trump’s term in office did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been ‘pulverized’ by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism.

Donald Trump’s term in office (2017-2021) did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been “pulverized” by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism. 37 But it became the scene of a bizarre power struggle in U.S. security policy between Republican traditionalists and the president. The former sought to articulate a new paradigm of global great power competition with the 2017 National Security Strategy. The document referred to Russia and China as “revisionist powers”; however, it simultaneously emphasized the importance of democracy, values, and allies. 38 This restrained intonation of systemic rivalry enjoyed bipartisan consensus. It found an increasing echo in Europe as well — such as in the European Union’s 2019 China Strategy, with its description of the emerging great power as a “partner, competitor, and strategic rival.” 39

The commander-in-chief’s political instincts, as it happened, were diametrically opposed to those of his advisers. The president had nothing but contempt for institutions, rules, allies, and especially NATO and the EU; he admired authoritarian leaders like Putin all the more submissively. In all this, Trump was (and is) neither a strategist nor an ideologue, but a transactional “America First” nationalist in a zero-sum world — a theory of American power that an anonymous senior official described as a “no friends, no enemies” policy. 40 Trump’s attacks on the rules-based world order were ultimately unsuccessful, as were his attempts to prevent his successor from winning the election. Nor did he manage to stop the U.S. government from providing Ukraine with lethal assistance, increasing sanctions on Russia, and strengthening the American military presence in Europe. 41

The lasting damage done by Trump’s tenure, however, was and is the normalization of ethno-nationalism, open contempt for democracy, and violence in the U.S. conservative camp. The enemy of the right-wing of the GOP (as is the case with other radical populists) is none other than liberal modernity itself. The Economist reported from a meeting of the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference: “the movement’s goal is the utter destruction of the enemy.” 42

Joe Biden assumed the presidency of a politically and socially deeply divided country in January 2021, in the midst of a historic pandemic that by today’s count has claimed the lives of nearly seven million people worldwide and has shed an unsparing light on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the international order and Western democracies. 43 An administration strategy paper from March of that year described Russia as a disruptor (“determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage”) and China as a potential peer opponent (“the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”). 44

2022: The return of the great power enemy

Only eleven months later, Putin invaded Ukraine; shortly before, Moscow and Beijing had sworn a “friendship” with “no limits.” 45 In October 2022, the administration’s National Security Strategy stated succinctly: “The world is now at an inflection point. This decade will be decisive, in setting the terms of our competition with the [People’s Republic of China], managing the acute threat posed by Russia, and in our efforts to deal with shared challenges, particularly climate change, pandemics, and economic turbulence.” 46 But in the summer of 2023, fears of a U.S.-China war continue to haunt Western capitals; Russia shows no signs that it might be willing to relent.

The free democracies must now understand that they are dealing with a phenomenon they had believed to be historically obsolete: state rivals who see them as ideological enemies. Specifically, “absolute” enemies as defined by Schmitt, or ennemis structurels, as Le Drian put it. Or — to use a more old-fashioned term — mortal enemies. Whether the leadership in Beijing perceives the nations of the West in this sense can be left open here — but in the case of Putin and his regime, the case is clear. Putin’s frequent characterization of the Kyiv leadership as “Nazis,” the tirades with which Putin rails against a “corrupt” Ukraine and a “decadent” West and threatens to “cleanse” “filth and traitors” in his own population, the threats of nuclear Armageddon — these linguistic tropes are familiar from the history of 20th-century genocides. 47

Conceivably, in the case of Putin himself, there is a personal psychopathology at play. Equally possibly, it is — as Fiona Hill argues — simply a cynical terror strategy designed to paralyze the resistance of Ukraine and the West. 48 Perhaps Putin is convinced that he can win this way; perhaps he feels compelled to articulate his invasion as a life-or-death struggle because his power and his life depend on not losing? In any case, the facts are that this unhinged language is amplified daily in the most garish colors by members of the Kremlin leadership as well as Russia’s state-controlled media, that it is taken at face value by much of the Russian population, and that it is implemented in brutal and sadistic ways by Putin’s armed forces. In this respect, Putin’s publicly staged hostility has long since developed a political life of its own. “If anything,” writes Tatiana Stanovaya in a compelling analysis of the hardening mood of Russia’s next-generation security elites, “the country is becoming more committed to the fight … No one is seriously considering or discussing a diplomatic end to the war: a notion that looks to many high-profile Russians like a personal threat, given all the war crimes that their country has committed and the responsibility that the entire elite now bears for the carnage in Ukraine.” 49

Putin Is Taking a Huge Gamble

His decision to assemble an invasion force along Russia’s border with Ukraine suggests that we are about to enter a dangerous new phase of international relations.

I n 2002, at the height of the unipolar moment, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, some of the country’s most prominent international-relations professors tried to solve a puzzle: Why were other major powers in the world that opposed U.S. foreign policy not doing anything about the invasion? Russia, China, France, and Germany made their views known at the United Nations, but they would not back Saddam Hussein. Nor were they building up their militaries or changing their alliances to oppose the United States.

When states push back against other states that they see as threatening or powerful, political scientists call this behavior “balancing.” In a collection of essays titled America Unrivaled , some of these professors suggested that this basic act of geopolitical competition had been missing since the collapse of the Soviet Union because the United States was too far ahead of everyone else. Others argue that the United States was not threatening to other major powers, or that it had constructed a liberal order that was open to all.

Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine

Today, however, balancing is most certainly back—and is popularly described with the rather imperfect and amorphous phrase great-power competition . Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, intervened militarily in Syria, and interfered in the U.S.’s 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, China has built artificial islands in the South China Sea and made rapid advances in military technologies, sometimes surpassing even the United States. Russia and China began to balance as they became stronger but also because Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping worried that if Western liberalism succeeded globally, it could pose an existential threat to their regimes. Even America’s allies are balancing. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses military power and coercive diplomacy freely, cooperating with Russia when it suits. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates no longer defer automatically to the United States and use military power even when Washington prefers they not do so, as Riyadh has done in Yemen.

The decision by other countries to project military power in ways designed to frustrate U.S. actions is a transformative change in America’s external environment. After the Cold War, the United States could, and sometimes did, treat the geopolitical preferences of rival or even friendly powers as an afterthought. It can do so no longer. In fact, Russia’s assembly of a 175,000-person-strong invasion force along its border with Ukraine suggests that we are about to enter a dangerous new phase of international rivalry.

N o one quite knows why Putin appears to be choosing this moment to go after Ukraine. An invasion cannot be credibly attributed to a specific Western action or a precipitating event, such as an intervention in Syria or the European Union offering Ukraine an association agreement in 2013. Some have argued that Putin is frustrated that Ukraine is not abiding by its commitments under the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 to give Russian-dominated regions a veto over Ukraine’s relationship with the West—but this is not a new development.

One interpretation is that Russia is using the threat of an invasion to force a real discussion about the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the future of European security. It will keep the troops in place as a coercive tool, showing that it is willing to use force if the talks stall. This, in some ways, would be an incremental escalation of the type of aggressive balancing behavior that Putin has engaged in since 2014.

The darker scenario is imminent invasion. In a July essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin argued that the two countries constituted “one people” and that “the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Now in his third decade of rule, Putin could well believe that if he does not take decisive action, Ukraine will move further apart from Russia.

An analysis from the Russian International Affairs Council suggested that if Putin decided to invade (which the report advised against), “the apotheosis of the operation should be the encirclement and the subsequent capture of Kiev, and the stabilisation of the front line along the Dnieper. The creation of a new Ukrainian state with the capital in Kiev would be announced and recognised by Russia. It would include the previously-independent DPR and LPR. Russia thereby resolves several historical problems at once. The immediate threat to the southwestern borders is removed. Full control over the Sea of Azov and a land corridor to the Republic of Crimea are ensured. Two Ukrainian states appear on the map, one of which should be ‘friendly and fraternal.’”

Western analysts have long noted that Russian and Chinese assertiveness can be counterproductive. Prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine felt torn between the West and Russia. Afterward, Ukraine began to move steadily westward geopolitically. Similarly, China’s crackdown on Hong Kong hardened attitudes in Taiwan against peaceful unification along a “one country, two systems” model. An invasion would be Putin’s answer to this critique—if small acts of aggression create anti-Russian sentiment, he will just double down and impose his will.

That’s quite a gamble. If Russia does not rout Ukrainian forces quickly, the conflict could be protracted, with Western military assistance pouring into Ukraine. The inevitable civilian casualties and destruction of property could inflame public opinion in the eastern part of Ukraine, which could lead to an insurgency. Russia could not resort to official deniability, as it did with the annexation of Crimea. And with Kyiv the goal, an uprising could not be dismissed as a far-away conflict over a disputed patch of land.

The prospect of an invasion comes at a time when Putin’s relations with the rest of the world are relatively steady. The Biden administration has made clear that it desires a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, by which it means preserving the status quo. French President Emmanuel Macron has long been of the view that Europe should engage with Russia on security matters. Meanwhile, far from being isolated, Putin has actively sought to increase Russia’s ties around the world, most recently concluding a major new arms sale to India.

In the coming weeks, the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom will no doubt seek to strengthen deterrence by raising the cost of an invasion. The Biden administration has also announced that the United States and “at least four NATO allies” will meet with Russia to discuss European security. As it strengthens deterrence and seeks to turn down the geopolitical temperature through diplomacy, NATO leaders should also be sure to remind their counterparts around the world that they have a stake in this crisis too. Indeed, Russia’s ties with the rest of the world mean that other leaders—such as India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Erdoğan, and Israel’s Naftali Bennett—have a significant role to play.

Non-Atlantic leaders are unlikely to take a strong stance in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, but they should know that if Putin takes Ukraine, a Rubicon will have been crossed. The Asian powers ( India and Japan) hope over the long run to dilute Russian-Chinese cooperation. An invasion would make Russia ever more dependent on China and possibly politically indebted to it for support during this crisis. India and Japan have a strategic interest in preventing that from happening. More generally, the destruction of the Ukrainian state would turbocharge rivalry between the United States and Russia, especially if Putin retaliated for Western military assistance to Ukraine. This would result in massive pressure on non-NATO U.S. allies to reduce ties with Moscow and isolate it.

This crisis is not just about the Minsk agreements or the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. It is about whether we are poised to see a dramatic escalation in military confrontation among the major powers that will shake the international order to its foundation. The diplomatic effort to prevent this needs to be global.

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Vladimir Putin's essay - "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians"

12 Jul 2021

Vladimir Putin

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Putin says Russia, Ukraine share historical ‘unity’. Is he right?

The Russian president, who ordered an invasion of Ukraine, has often spoke of tied identities.

St Petersburg, Russia – On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his armed forces to deploy on what he called a peacekeeping mission to Donbas, eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebels have been fighting the central government in Kyiv for the past eight years.

In a televised speech, Putin reiterated his concerns about a possible NATO expansion into Ukraine, describing it as a “direct threat” to Russia’s national security, and made provocative interpretations of Ukrainian history.

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Among other things, the Russian president asserted that “Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood,” and that the nation now known as Ukraine was carved out of Russia by Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

In 2021, Putin wrote an essay titled, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, explaining his belief that Russians and Ukrainians are one people divided artificially by borders and outsiders.

In it, he accused modern Ukraine of an “anti-Russian project” in which longstanding ties with Russia are cast aside, Nazi collaborators are glorified and the Russian language, spoken by around a third of Ukraine’s population, is shunned from public life.

To find out how accurate these statements are, as well as the roots of the current crisis, a closer look at the two countries’ shared history is needed.

Russia and Ukraine, as well as Belarus, share a common ancestry in Kievan Rus’, a loose federation of medieval city-states with its capital in Kyiv.

But in the 13th century, the area which became Russia was conquered by the Mongol Golden Horde, while western portions later fell to the Polish-Lithuanian Empire.

From there, three separate languages, and national identities, evolved.

It was not until the 17th century that Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, rebelled, throwing off Polish rule and willingly reuniting with Russia.

But by the 19th century, the tsars had quite enough of the Ukrainian national spirit, which they saw as undermining their rule, and banned the Ukrainian language from many walks of public life.

The westernmost parts of Ukraine, meanwhile, were never ruled by imperial Russia and came under Polish or Austrian dominion instead, where the Ukrainian language was still allowed and as a result, nationalist sentiments are still strongest in western Ukrainian cities such as Lviv.

This identity split lies behind many of the troubles today.

“People living in these lands developed different geopolitical orientations, have different interpretations of their historical memory, different pantheons of heroes,” Russian political scientist Gulnaz Sharafutdinova told Al Jazeera.

“Additionally, there are the issue of Russian chauvinism relating to Ukraine and Belarus – as ‘younger brothers’ in the elite’s rhetoric, revealing their desire to control Ukraine’s choices.”

As the empire plunged into civil war after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine was one of several nations, along with Finland, Poland and the Baltics, which attempted to break free of Russian rule.

When the Bolsheviks emerged victorious, they indeed created a new Ukrainian state among the fifteen Soviet republics which made up the USSR. But that does not mean a distinct Ukrainian identity did not already exist.

“That [part of Putin’s speech] had me the most confused,” said Emily Channell-Justice, an anthropologist at Harvard University.

“There’s not any kind of historical grounding for that claim.”

“The eastern part of Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union in 1922,” she told Al Jazeera. “That’s only part of the territory of contemporary Ukraine, and the rest of Ukraine spent up until 1945 fighting the Soviet Union. So, that’s far beyond Lenin.”

Stepan Bandera controversy

During the second world war, the Red Army took over Lviv, bringing it under Moscow’s rule for the first time. Unlike southern and eastern Ukraine, and to a degree Kyiv, Lviv and western Ukraine remained distinctly un-Russified.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Stepan Bandera collaborated with the Nazis in their bid for Ukrainian independence.

The hero status sometimes bestowed on him in modern Ukraine hits a nerve with the country’s Russian-speaking minority, as well as in Poland, for committing atrocities against Poles and Jews.

“The view of Ukrainian and Russian people being one nation is not supported by the continuous struggle on the part of Ukrainian nationalists, even during the Soviet period,” Sharafutdinova explained. “Although Ukrainians and Russians are related through their Slavic roots and linguistic proximity, these are different nations, undoubtedly.

Russian national identity is today the more insecure and vulnerable one – because Russia’s national evolution always had an imperial character, and imagining the Russian nation in non-imperial terms is not easy; indeed, it appears to be quite painful.”

As the Cold War reached its final moments in 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, himself of Ukrainian descent, was assured by his Western counterparts that NATO, an alliance established explicitly to contain the Soviet Union, would expand “not one inch” to the east.

A year later, the USSR collapsed and Ukraine, as one of its constituent republics, declared independence.

But the divisions within Ukraine itself were far from settled.

In the 2004 Orange Revolution, mass protests were held against what was seen as a rigged election in favour of Viktor Yanukovych of Donbas, who leaned towards Russia.

His opponent, Viktor Yushchenko, became president, and later bestowed the honour of “Hero of Ukraine” upon Bandera, sparking protests in east Ukraine which burned effigies of the leader.

“Yushchenko started the policies of nation-building that marginalised the national identity of the pro-Russian south and east, and privileged the nationalist interpretations, memories and heroes of western Ukraine,” Sharafutdinova said.

“In Russia, the Orange Revolution was viewed as a political change guided and even organised from the United States. It sparked fear and paranoia in the Kremlin.”

Nevertheless, as historian Robert David English points out, a mere five years later, Ukrainians elected Yanukovych again, suggesting that matters of identity were not as important as ordinary people’s desire to live a decent life.

“And when he failed to improve the economy as well, there was another explosion,” English told Al Jazeera.

In 2014, after Yanukovych signed a trade deal with Russia, rather than with the EU as most Ukrainians had hoped, he was toppled in the Euromaidan revolution and fled to Russia.

Far-right fighters played an active role in the street battles with riot police in Kyiv, which was seen in Russia and parts of Ukraine as an ultranationalist coup evoking memories of Bandera.

Shortly after the overthrow of Yanukovych, Bandera’s portrait was seen hanging in Kyiv’s city hall.

“I am personally very sceptical of the glorification of him as a hero,” said Channell-Justice, “but I do think that Bandera and the neo-Nazi threat has been blown out of proportion by the Russian media.

“Yes, there is a far-right presence in Ukraine. There’s a far-right presence in Russia. There’s a far-right presence in the US. There’s one almost everywhere.

“They do not have significant representation in Kyiv’s government so by that measure, the far-right isn’t very strong in terms of deciding Ukraine’s policy.

“But there is a very vocal far-right within the civic sector.”

Indeed, far-right parties performed dismally in the 2019 elections, winning only 2.9 percent of the vote, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Russian-speaking Jew, was elected president.

Zelenskyy’s platform, among other things, promised to end the conflict with Russia, but at the same time, supported joining the alliance. His unwillingness to give up that support may arguably lie at the heart of the crisis.

“Preventing NATO expansion into Ukraine is Putin’s overwhelming motivation. Ukraine is positioned at Russia’s strategic heartland, and it is so big – so the potential for NATO bases and weapons all over the country is huge,” English, the historian, explained.

“Remember, while in the West people often think of NATO as a defensive force, in Russia, they were long indoctrinated against it, and then it bombed Serbia and Libya with no UN mandate and in violation of international law.”

Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and the Baltics have all joined NATO.

Although Russia, as the successor to the Soviet Union, was not offered any written guarantees the alliance would not expand “one inch”, the Kremlin nevertheless views a potentially hostile alliance creeping towards its doorstep as a threat, not unlike the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Although English considers Ukraine’s special identity to Russia a minor factor in the continuing standoff, Sharafutdinova disagreed.

“As Ukraine has slipped out of Russia’s control and found a greater engagement from the West and the United States – for the Russian political elites, it created a threat of NATO troops in places that are dear to the Russian heart and soul,” she said.

“Given Russia’s attitude towards Ukraine as a little brother, the Kremlin has a hard time imagining such potential scenarios that Ukraine might be able, one day, to join the Western alliance … even a faraway possibility for such a scenario causes them to see red.

“So identity issues and Russia’s view of how Russia and Ukraine are related – connected through blood, so to say –  hinder Russia’s ability to recognise Ukraine as a sovereign nation, as a grown-up country that can make its own choices.”

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Putin’s Use and Abuse of History: Back to the 19th Century

2022, Rome, IAI, March 2022, 4 p. (IAI Commentaries ; 22|10)

Stretching from the “Ancient Rus” to events taking place in May 2021, the essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” provides a highly selective and ideological reading of over one thousand years of history. Despite Putin’s claim that this is “analytical material based on historical facts, events and historical documents”, it would be pointless to engage in a sweeping review to debunk the individual claims made throughout. Instead, the document is interesting as a source about Putin’s world view and that of his inner circle and should be analysed as such.

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