Back in the USSR
by
Ian Oakley
(Shutterstock)
One of the little-known facts as about Vladimir Putin is that he had an elder brother, who he never knew, who died in the siege of Leningrad. A man who was brought up by parents who had lost a child in the horror of that siege was never going to be moved by talk of a rule based international order, the territorial sovereignty of Europe or even by the deaths of thousands of innocent Ukrainians.
Who knows what Putin has been thinking as he has been isolated during the last two years of COVID? My guess is that after over twenty years in power he has been reflecting on his legacy as the longest Russian leader since Stalin. Or how he grew up in a state: the Soviet Union, where Minsk and Kiev (before it was Kyiv) were as familiar as Moscow and Leningrad, and all existed in one unified state. I am also guessing he could not care less about what the Russian people, oligarchs, his own technocrats, and the international community thinks. He wants to be remembered as a great leader of Russia and he has decided that to achieve this he is going to take Ukraine back into the Russian sphere, permanently.
I am sure as he has sat brooding in the Kremlin, he also reflected that when he came to power he sought to co-operate with the West. When the United States was attacked on September 11th he gave support to their efforts invading Afghanistan — and how did the USA respond? In 2002 George W Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, so he could seek a missile defence system. For the Russians this was a slap in the face, as the system was going to be directed against them. Then in early 2008 Bush vowed full support for the Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. The Russian-Georgia conflict of August 2008 has been forgotten in the West, but Russia used it to ensure that Georgia did not join NATO, with the strengthening of the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In the case of Ukraine, a country with a special place in Russian history, the West offered the worst of both worlds. It dangled NATO membership, which provoked and enraged the Russians, but it did not deliver on it and therefore did not provide the protection that the Baltic States have. The issue of Ukraine for Putin was taken to another level with the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Putin must have seen the toppling of President Viktor Yanukovych and thought: does the West want to do this to me? His response in annexing Crimea and establishing the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk followed the pattern of Georgia. He would have taken note that while the West imposed some sanctions and issued lofty condemnations, international relations went on much as before, with Russian gas, oil and money still welcome.
What has happened since 2014 will have only strengthened his strategic position. Whereas in 2014 Belarus attempted to be an independent mediator — encouraged by the West — it is now firmly in the Russian camp. The West rightly condemned its President Lukashenko for rigging his re-election in 2020 and oppressing his people, but that rejection also meant he became a full client of Russia and a firm ally of the invasion.
It is to be hoped that the world’s united response to Russia’s invasion will have surprised Putin, just as the bravery of the Ukraine resistance has. Yet for Putin and many Russians there has always lurked a fear that the West was out to get them. The withdrawal from Russia by Western companies will only confirm their suspicion. The lack of luxury goods in high end Moscow stores is not likely to bother many people, but the collapse of the rouble will. Yet Russia is not a responsive democracy, so discontent is not likely to impact policy, certainly in the short and medium term. If large numbers of liberal Russians flee, fearing marshal law and conscription, it will remove the people most vocal against his rule.
Putin’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and the severing of the Russian economy from the world economy will mean that whatever happens in there now, we are all in a new world. A period of Russian-Western hostility is likely, perhaps for the next twenty or thirty years. Even if Putin dropped dead tomorrow the world would not return to 23rd February 2022. The Russians will seek alternative international trading and financial arrangements that protect them from future Western sanctions — and they are likely to find allies in China, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela for that. War crimes investigations in Ukraine are likely to mean permanent hostility between the Russian military and security state and the West. Constant anti-Western propaganda will be a feature of the Russian media. The age of the Russian oligarch is over, but a new Cold War has begun.
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