by Lev Tsitrin
The New York Times‘ Roger Cohen — the paper’s long-time columnist and now its Paris correspondent — traveled recently the length and breadth of Russia to give us a long and thorough study of the mysterious Russian soul in the age of Ukraine war. Mr. Cohen talked to die-in-the-wool working-class Putin supporters, with Russian government officials, with the opposition figures — and the gist seems to be, “Our values are different. For Russians, freedom and economic factors are secondary to the integrity of our state and the safeguarding of the Russian world” — as per one “Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the State Duma and a direct descendant of the great novelist Leo Tolstoy.
“Safeguarding” seems to be the key word here; as a car mechanic who was wounded in the storming of Mariupol and now lives in Russia’s far east explained to Mr. Cohen, “10th-century Kievan Rus — comprising territory that partially overlapped with today’s Ukraine — was the birthplace of modern Russia and the region has always constituted the inalienable borderlands of greater Russia. Russia and Ukraine are “one body,” [that has] a tumor — it is in Ukraine, and we have to cure it, The tumor comes from Americans who go places they have no need to go.”
According to this view, the problem is Ukraine’s demand for real independence (rather than acquiescence to the nominal “independence” a la Belarus’). Allowing Ukrainians to choose their alliances would violate Russia’s territorial integrity. Ukraine’s freedom is Russia’s dissolution.
This, in essence, is also the argument of those in the West who claim that the Ukraine war was caused by the expansion of NATO — to which Russia, in their view, reasonably reacted by invading Ukraine to shield itself from the encroaching threat.
Well, this is utter hogwash. Consider, for starters, a rather unusual place: Bill Clinton confessing that “he regrets pressuring Ukraine to give up its nuclear warheads in a high-stakes negotiation in 1994. … He said he believed that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in 2014, and in 2022, had the weapons still been in the country.”
Why not? Because it is very dangerous indeed to attack a nuclear-armed state, so have Ukraine retained its nuclear arsenal (third-largest in the world, after US and Russia), Putin would have hardly dared to attack. Now,, replace “Russia” with “NATO”, and “Ukraine” with “Russia” — and the question now becomes, would NATO dare attack Russia? The answer is an obvious “no.” NATO, in any territorial configuration, would not attack Russia, because Russia is nuclear-armed. And (and this is the key to understanding Putin’s war on Ukraine) — the opposite is also true: Russia cannot dare to attack NATO, which is nuclear-armed too.
NATO membership is thus the line of ultimate escape from Russia’s brotherly embrace — and signifies the moment of irrevocable independence from Russia, an escapee being past recapture. Naturally, for the person for whom restoration of the pre-1917 Russian Empire (which, for those who forgot, included Poland, Finland, and the Baltic republics too) is the historical life mission, Ukraine’s potential escape beyond the NATO border represents the ultimate danger — not the danger to the present Russian state of course (it is perfectly safe behind the wall of some 6,000 nuclear warheads), but to the Russian state as it ought to be in Mr. Putin’s mind. So, to Mr. Putin, it was “now or never” — he had to act before Ukraine became a NATO member. Else, goodby Russia’s imperial glory!
The motivator here, I think, is best described by the notion of apostasy. Apparently, apostasy is abhorred not just by Moslems (for whom it is a capital crime), but by Russian nationalists too. To them, what was once part of imperial Russia must always remain the part of Russia. Mr. Cohen put is somewhat differently — “Mr. Putin’s rule is all about the reconstitution of this imagined Russian world, or “Russkiy mir,” a revanchist myth built around the idea of an eternal Russian cultural and imperial sphere of which Ukraine — its decision to become an independent state never forgiven — is an integral part” — but given the mystical light in which Putin and Putinists see Russia’s universal mission to promote the good, and combat the evil (that is incarnated in Western freedoms), the religious motivation explains him best. He fights apostasy that Ukraine represents — and to defeat it, he went to war — “a civilizational conflict with the West far larger than Ukraine,” as subtitle to Mr. Cohen’s piece put it.
It is a passable subtitle — but “Putin’s war on apostasy” would have put it much better, it seems to me. And infinitely better than the New York Times-assigned title, “Putin’s Forever War“
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8 Responses
A useful historical analysis.
There is no evidence presented by anybody who argues that Putin wants to recreate the “Russian Empire” or the old Soviet borders. This is the great empty trope of the American left and completely unprovable. The author is correct that Russia would not purposefully attack the US due to their military capabilities specifically nuclear weapons, etc. (although stumbling into a conflict is not out of the realm of the possible). Prior to this ugly war Ukraine was noted as the most corrupt country in Europe. Numerous well-known (and highly placed) Americans made a fortune there in nefarious activities. As an outpost of American moral and ethical corruption Ukraine became the stand-in for America itself. As the greatest corruptor of liberty, morality, and ethics in the world other than China, America is the greatest threat to Russia. American moral corruption is the greatest threat to Russia’s unity and existence. Finally, there are military units in Ukraine that wear Nazi insignia which fuels Putin’s assertion that Ukraine must be de-nazified which was his justification for the invasion and one of Putins most oft-stated war aims. Ukraine was notable during the Great Patriotic War as enthusiastic in its cooperation with Nazi racial murder efforts against the Jews. This is a proxy war and the people living there suffer for the anti-civilizational corruption that spreads from America. It is indeed a civilizational conflict.
I’m afraid I will have to disagree, Geraldine “boom boom”. That Ukraine was Lenin’s creation is indeed Putin’s standard peeve (upon googling “putin ukraine was created by lenin” this came up first, posted 3 days after the invasion, https://huri.harvard.edu/news/serhii-plokhii-casus-belli-did-lenin-create-modern-ukraine — and let me quote from it: “In his de facto declaration of war, Putin stated that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land.” He developed that idea by stating: “Soviet Ukraine is the result of the Bolsheviks’ policy and can rightfully be called ‘Vladimir Lenin’s Ukraine.’ He was its creator and architect.””)
As to Ukraine being corrupt prior to invasion — I’m fully in agreement (in fact, Zelensky got elected precisely because of his promise to rid the country of corruption). Ukraine in fact was as corrupt, and as infested with oligarchs as Russia is (If you count Russia as “Europe” — some of it is — than it is Russia that is by far the most corrupt country on the continent. Navalni who investigated this stuff would be the best person to explain, but he is in jail after having been near-poisoned, and just the other day got an extra 19 years added to his term in an additional trial that was held right in the prison — why inconvenience him by having him travel?)
And you are again right that not a few Americans pocketed a kopeck or two from Ukrainian corruption — a gentleman with a last name of Biden coming readily to mind (the Germans of course filled their pockets from the corrupt energy deals with Russian oligarchs).
So you are not all wrong, Geraldine “boom boom” — but still, the legal grounds for invasion were nil (de-Nazification is not a valid reason to invade a neighbor), and Russia’s claim to being some kind of antidote to “anti-civilizational corruption that spreads from America,” as you put it, is plain bonkers, I am sorry to say — as is the claim that this is a “proxy war.”
You’re not at all sorry to say that my view point is “bonkers.” Only liberals do that, Mr. Author. They do that because they have no argument to make and no refutation to make. Because you are rude I will insult you by calling you the most horrible thing: you’re a liberal.
Sixty years ago the Soviets sited their missiles in Cuba and Kennedy ordered a US blockade of the island which was an act of war. Yet Cuba is ninety miles away from the US whereas Ukraine is just next door.
No one should be surprised that Putin would take exception to Ukraine joining NATO about which he has been warning us since 2007. When we recall that, in 1990, the US promised Gorbachev NATO would not expand eastwards, since when 14 countries have joined providing the US and its allies with a front line directly on Russia’s border extending from Finland to Turkey interrupted only by Belarus and Ukraine, it’s hard to see what else any Russian leader could have done regardless of any attachment to Kievan Rus’.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early
The argument it is “hogwash” to claim Russia is threatened by the advance of NATO as Russia has nuclear weapons is disingenuous. There are more ways of bringing down a nuclear-armed country than attacking it directly. As part of the old Soviet Union, Putin knows this only too well.
Russia is as entitled to view NATO as threatening as we in the West regarded that rickety old construct of the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union at least had the justification of having just been been invaded and lost 30 million people. Recalling that early on in his presidency Putin wanted to join NATO and Russia to be part of Europe again as we shared basic values, given that, since the fall of the Soviet Union the West has held all the cards, what is our justification for this relentless eastwards expansion that Russia justifiably sees as imperilling it?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule
To be clear, “the evil (that is incarnated in Western freedoms)” that Putin wishes to combat is transgenderism which he calls Satanism. In this age of new, streamlined Western freedoms we should recall, too, that here in the UK people are having their bank accounts closed, their employment terminated, their careers ruined, their children taken away––even being refused hospital treatment––all for holding the “wrong” views. This cancel culture is something else Putin has been warning us about as that’s what happened in the Soviet Union.
With all the misery of his country’s history to persuade him, twenty years ago Putin offered the West friendship. In return, we spat in his face and have been baiting him ever since. We do not have to see Putin as an innocent or blameless to sympathise with Russia’s situation, but these developments have taken place during a period of his country’s weakness following the fall of the Soviet Union when Russia was not a threat to the West. They are largely the West’s responsibility.
It seems that without the old Soviet Union there to keep our aggression within check, we have now got the point where even the old MAD doctrine doesn’t hold sway any more:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19868/ukraine-bomb-russia
Well, the US did not invade Cuba during the missile crisis. And I find it bizarre that we in the West would need Putin’s armies to come here to put the end to transgenderism. We can stop the crazies promoting it by simply pointing out that no doctor can turn a man into a woman or a woman into a man. Plenty of us are pointing to this basic fact. And even as matters stand now, transgenderism is not a state mandate — but a free choice of a bunch of fools. What we need, is regulations of the medical industry to not promise what it can’t deliver, that’s all. As to banks account, I read on this very site that once the Farage story got public, it was the bank president who lost her job — which tells me that the system is capable of self-correction under public pressure. What we need is not Putin’s iron fist, but free speech — which is indeed stifled in the West by the new, woke orthodoxy. But Putin is no help here. He is a stifler of speech, not its enabler (in Russia, you get arrested for even calling the war “war,” let alone publicly protesting it). No, Putin is not a civilizational ally — he leads a feudal society in which the oligarchs are allowed to operate in return for obedience and kickbacks. Hardly a system we need here, or praise.
Are you saying Kennedy was only bluffing, that he would not have invaded Cuba had the Soviets not withdrawn their missiles? Because that is the only way to make sense of your opening sentence.
Since US readers may not be familiar with the story I have to fill in what you’ve left out of the Nigel Farage story. Yes, Dame Alison Rose, the CEO of NatWest, was forced to resign. But that was not because she had closed his account. It was because she had given false and misleading information about the reason for the closure––in itself a confidential matter––to a journalist. And, moreover, NatWest, which owns Mr Farage’s bank Coutts, is partly tax-payer owned, meaning the Government was able to apply pressure.
Many others have had to suffer in silence, however. Since the story about Mr Farage emerged, the scale of the problem in the UK has become apparent. A thousand people a day are now being denied access to banking facilities in this way:
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/nigel-farage-debanking-website-natwest-account-closure
I take your point about Farage situation. Yet — are accounts of a thousand people a day getting closed because of those people’s political views? How do banks know about their politics? Are all those people in the news?
As to Kennedy — I doubt he would have invaded given presence of Russian nukes in Cuba. In fact, he agreed to remove US nukes from Turkey in exchange for removal of Russian nukes from Cuba — not exactly a sign of belligerency.
Bottom line — Putin is no ally. He is nostalgic for the former Soviet prowess, power, and territory (how else to interpret his famous statement that collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”?) The West can cure itself from the idiocy of some of its populace without Putin’s help. We don’t need him to figure that 2+2 is 4