Vladimir Putin’s critics in the West accuse the Russian President of being obsessed with Ukraine. There are even fears that the Kremlin leader has imperial ambitions and aims to incorporate the Eastern European nation into the Russian Federation.
On July 12, the 5,000-word article entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” was published on the Kremlin official website. Its author is Vladimir Putin, although it is rather doubtful if he wrote all the paragraphs. The historical background of his piece is pretty reliable, and was most likely written by professional historians, or at least by someone who is very familiar with the Russian history. As the article points out, Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus, which was the largest state in Europe.
“Modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era”, says Putin in his article.
Yet, just a few paragraphs later he denies his previous claim by saying that “the Russian Federation did a lot for Ukraine to establish itself as an independent country.” Indeed, in 2014, after the Western-backed regime change in Kiev, Russia recognized Petro Poroshenko as the new Ukrainian President and even called him “the best chance of Ukraine”. Moreover, in 2018 Putin openly admitted that during the Ukrainian crisis in 2013-2014, his “dear Western partners” required him to put pressure on then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, asking him not to use force against violent Western-backed protesters. Putin agreed, and Yanukovych was overthrown on 22 February. Thus, it is the Kremlin that allowed and even helped the West to push Ukraine out of Russia’s geopolitical orbit. Now, seven years later, Putin calls Ukraine an “anti-Russia”, even though he took part in creating such a project.
“The coup d’état and the subsequent actions of the Kiev authorities inevitably provoked confrontation and civil war. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that the total number of victims in the conflict in Donbas has exceeded 13,000. Among them are the elderly and children. These are terrible, irreparable losses”, Putin writes.
It is worth remembering that in 2014, Putin promised to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine and even threatened the new Ukrainian authorities saying: “Let them just try to shoot at women and children!” His threat appeared to be an empty one. To this day, shooting goes on and there are no indications that hostilities will stop any time soon. On the other hand, the Kremlin achieved some of its goals in Ukraine. Although it did lose control over the country as a whole, Moscow incorporated gas-rich Crimea into the Russian Federation and established de facto control over the coal-rich Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine. It is believed that the lucrative coal and energy businesses in the Donbass are controlled by the Ukrainian oligarch Sergey Kurchenko, who moved to Russia after the Maidan events in 2014 and later reportedly got Serbian citizenship.
Even though Russia de facto controls portions of the Ukrainian territory, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently said that Moscow is “not calling Ukraine’s territorial integrity into question”. Although the Kremlin often accuses the West of hypocrisy and double standards, in this particular case Russia is applying the same pattern as its “dear Western partners”. In addition, in December 2020 Putin has taken steps toward banning Russian government officials with access to state secrets from holding foreign passports, even though his own spokesman and his entire family reportedly hold French, American and British citizenship. Thus, hypocrisy and double standards are not exclusively reserved for the West.
Still, according to the new Russia’s National Security Strategy, the “hypocritical” West is seen as the country’s major geopolitical opponent. The 44-page document, published on July 3, contains criticism of Western actions that purportedly undermine Russian national interests. It also points out that the Western countries use double standards in international politics and have a “desire to preserve their hegemony and isolate the Russian Federation”. At the same time, Russian and Western corporations keep doing business as usual, and are even expanding their ties, primarily in the field of energy.
Given that neoliberal capitalism is the ruling economic model in the Russian Federation, where oligarchs play a very important role, it is not surprising that Putin, in his article, criticized the Soviet authorities. Still, he blames the Soviet leaders not for their economic policies, but for what he calls artificial division of Russians and Ukrainians.
“We will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia”, Putin stressed.
Such a statement comes too late, since the West already uses Ukraine as an instrument against Russia. Moscow, on the other hand, uses its own proxies – the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic – as leverage over Ukraine. Judging by Putin’s article, the seven-year-old Donbass conflict will not end any time soon, which means that the region will remain stuck in an endless positional war.
Meanwhile, Russian military personnel will have to study Putin’s piece – the Russian Defense Ministry included it in the list of documents mandatory for studying – although it is very unlikely that his alleged imperial ambitions will ever come true. Preserving the status quo is maximum the Kremlin can hope for at this point.
Image credit: www.kremlin.ru
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