Putin’s war on Ukraine: the Russian perspective

Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Russia could not have come at a worst time. That is what the general perception is about the visit and that perception is built around the idea on how the world is reacting to Russia’s military buildup and its military operations on the territory of breakaway republics of Ukraine. Last week I had written about the context and circumstances under which PM Imran’s visit to Russia is taking place. This week it is the ideas in terms of which Russian ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine — which the west calls invasion — may be understood. Clearly, there have been important circumstances and events that have combined to construct this event that the world now recognises as Ukrainian crisis.

The perceived state of this crisis is obviously different depending on which side of the world you stand with — the Russian or the western world. The world is clearly divided into two sets of audiences — and the success and defeat in a war being fought in the 21^st century’s informational age setting will clearly be won or lost depending on how good a leader is in unifying the audiences to support his strategic narrative. The strategic narrative of the western world is all over the international media and readers can tune on to CNN, BBC and Sky News, etc to get familiar with that. But what is the strategic narrative of Putin’s Russia? The most important strategic audience for Putin is not the western world but his own people, and the only way Putin’s Ukrainian strategy will ever change for worst is when he loses the support of his domestic audience.

War in 21^st century will no more be won or lost on the battlefields, but at home. The world can still recall President Bush’s clenched fist and his famous dialogue “mission accomplished”. That was not one American President with a misconceived notion about his mission, the next three American Presidents also had a hard time accomplishing the broad American mission of creating a globalised world that should function under an order of liberal internationalism. The strategic blunders and the wasted opportunities in an era when the US ruled the unipolar world has only made this world more nationalist than globalist. Russia, China, India, Turkey, Germany, the Philippines, Poland, Hungry and even Trump’s America are nations that glorify and project the rise of nationalism in a very divided world. It was the American mishandling of the world affairs in the unipolar moment that allowed nationalism to re-raise its ugly head in the world. The classic example of this is India where the dark side of Hindutva and BJP-promoted saffron nationalism has replaced secularism and is now demonising the minorities in that country.

The clear distinction between nationalism and patriotism that I always explain to my students is that a patriot is proud of his country “of what the country does” but a nationalist will be proud of his country “no matter what the country does”. The former creates an environment where people share responsibility of whatever happens with the state whereas the later creates a narrow and immoral mindset that only promotes blind loyalty to the country over the wider and deeper commitment to justice and humanity.

The job of a great leader is to maintain a balance in the three elements of Clausewitzian great trinity — government, military and the people. If the people remain passionate about a given policy of the government being implemented by any instrument of power — in case of Ukraine the special operations being carried out by the Russian military — the mutual faith will continue to bind both the people and the government, and the policy will not face any internal threat to its implementation. People get influenced by what they watch and read; and since reading is being rapidly lost as a good habit, it is the watching part in the “narrative building” that becomes more important and sensitive. What are the sensitivities of Putin’s Russia about Ukraine?

Putinism — i.e. President Putin’s philosophy or his doctrine — has a solid foundation built on the idea of Eurasianism or the development of a great Eurasian Economic Zone. Ukraine’s westernisation bent gained impetus during the tenure of Victor Andriyovych, the Ukrainian President from 2005 to 2010. It is during his tenure that Ukraine started showing interest in integration in EU and NATO. Andriyovych’s Ukrainian-American wife was raised in Chicago and had gone on to serve in the American State Department. Putin has always believed that Andriyovych was recruited by CIA which was following the goal of not only undermining the Russia-Ukraine integration but also undermining the greater Eurasian integration that has been President Putin’s long standing dream for which he has been plotting a map and planning a route for a very long time.

Losing Ukraine means losing Russia’s third biggest former Soviet Republic that has 40% of native Russian speaking population. Russia helped transform it from an agricultural to an industrial and major defence manufacturing unit. Most importantly, Ukraine is a vital transit zone for Russian strategic export of its oil and gas. In good times, 85% of Russian gas exports to Europe were taking place through Ukrainian pipeline network. Given this geopolitical and strategic importance of the country, the last thing that Putin wants is for the West to convert it into a Russian underbelly.

From the Russian point of view there is a history of what Putin is doing. The Yalta Conference, also called Crimea Conference, was attended by the Big Three (Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill) Allied leaders for 8 days along with their top diplomatic and military staff during February 1945. What the leaders did during the conference was divide Europe into spheres of influence between East and West. What Putin is reminding the West is about laying the claim to a historic right — a Russian sphere of huge strategic importance right on its borders. Putin’s Russia has no problems with the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine if the West doesn’t mess up with Ukraine’s given historical reality.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, PM Imran’s visit to Russia clearly demonstrates to the entire world that Pakistan no more belongs to any single block, and it is no more entrenched in the block politics. Pakistan has clearly showcased its support for the creation of a brave new world which should no longer exist under the American hegemony alone but should be driven by a world of multipolarity and no more idealised by American motto such as “you are with us or against us” or divided into a “Pro-China and Anti-China” or “Pro-Russia and Anti-Russia” collations.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 28^th, 2022.

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