putin essay ukraine pdf

Utility Menu

GA4 Tracking code

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.

Russian nationalists rally recently in Moscow, venting against the migrants they accuse of increasing the crime rate and taking their jobs. (Pavel Golovkin / The Associated Press)

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.

A warning sign is pictured behind a wire barricade erected by Russian and Ossetian troops along Georgia's de-facto border with its breakaway region of South Ossetia in 2015 REUTERS

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.

Search News

News by topic, related news.

Serhii Plokhii: Casus Belli: Did Lenin Create Modern Ukraine?
What Do Increasing Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia Mean? HURI Experts Respond
Rory Finnin on Literature in the Ukrainian-Crimean Tatar Encounter
Why the Maidan? How the Square Became a Place of Civic Action
Ukraine’s Cycles of History: Taras Kuzio Presents His New Book

Publications

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.

Do wysłuchania w serwisie Spotify

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

Help Ukraine win, strengthen Europe’s defenses, and avoid the mirroring trap

So how should the West grapple with this dilemma? Peace for Ukraine must at some point involve negotiations with Russia. But given the Kremlin’s implacable attitude, the burden of proof for the credibility of its negotiating offers would be extremely high. An armistice based on a freezing of the status quo in the form of continued Russian occupation of Crimea and the Donbas would reward Putin’s aggression and merely pause hostilities. The fact that the aggressor’s identity and the extent of his war crimes are beyond legal doubt will weigh heavily on any negotiations; an end to the fighting without some form of accountability, atonement, and reparations is hard to imagine. Diplomacy, in other words, would have to be very largely on Kyiv’s terms. That does not necessarily presuppose a Russian military defeat or a Ukrainian military victory. Conceivably, Russia could be forced to conclude that the price of pursuing Ukraine’s subjugation is unsustainably high by, for example, losing the support of a key non-Western power like China, or if the so-called Global South turned away from it. But as long as neither of those scenarios is within reach, helping Ukraine means helping it win on the battlefield. 50

Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance.

Would that lead Russia to stop seeing it, and the West, as enemies? Certainly, Germany only embarked on the road to atonement after utter defeat, capitulation, and occupation — a scenario that seems unimaginable for Russia in this conflict. Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees — a clear, constructive, and hopefully short path to NATO and EU membership — can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance. The EU has accelerated membership talks, and the European Council is expected to kick off accession negotiations with Ukraine in December, a process that my Brookings colleague Carlo Bastasin notes comes with “huge political, financial, and institutional implications.” 51 Managing it carefully is all the more crucial because NATO member states were unable to agree on accelerating Kyiv’s NATO accession at the Vilnius summit in July; the question will unquestionably return with full force at the alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC in July 2024.

Meanwhile, NATO, as well as the European Union, will have to continue to radically rethink their security provisions and address their huge deficits in deterrence and defense. Given the evolving U.S. presidential election campaign, Europeans especially will have to do more (much more) to defend themselves. As long as Russia is internally totalitarian and externally neo-imperial, Europe’s security can only be defined against Moscow.

Finally, as Le Drian put it succinctly in his 2016 essay: we must not fall into the intellectual trap of mirroring. This risk is not trivial, as was demonstrated by the attempts of Justice Department officials under the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks to justify “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding by invoking a quasi-unlimited executive prerogative. 52 The current debate on how to deal with China’s increasingly assertive global stance also has hysterical overtones, even if the concern itself is justified. And, yes, there is a very real danger of subjecting those who leave authoritarian regimes to blanket suspicion, racism, and dehumanization.

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the abyss for a long time, the abyss also gazes into you.” 53 In an age of what a recent U.K. strategy paper calls accelerated, constant, and dynamic systemic competition and faced with authoritarian great powers who think of us as the absolute enemy, that warning is especially pertinent. 54

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

Boston busing in 1974 was about race. Now the issue is class.

History of Chichén Itzá written in DNA

Examining the duality of Israel

Yale historian Timothy Snyder, Emily Channell-Justice, Serhii Plokhii,.

Yale historian Timothy Snyder (clockwise from top left) discussed how the past, both real and imaginary, is driving the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Snyder gave the Petryshyn Lecture with moderator Emily Channell-Justice and Director of Ukrainian Research Institute Serhii Plokhii.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Upending Putin’s Russia-Ukraine myth

Christina Pazzanese

Harvard Staff Writer

Historian rebuts claims of two nations as inseparable, argues leader is trying to control narrative to justify actions

In a speech Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation, along with that of the other former Soviet republics that broke away after the collapse of the Soviet Union starting in the late 1980s. The speech was widely viewed in the West as part of a prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces now surrounding its borders.

Last summer, in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russia and Ukraine,” Putin argued the people of the two countries share a common history and identity and Ukraine had been unjustly severed from Russia through the work of anti-Russian forces and must be reunified.

For Putin, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is about correcting an event 30 years ago that he believes never should have taken place, said Timothy Snyder , professor of history and global affairs at Yale University, during the annual Petryshyn Memorial Lecture in Ukrainian Studies hosted by the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University Friday.

“The conflict, and the threatened conflict, over Ukraine has to do with the past. I don’t mean that the conflict has to do with history. Rather, that [it] has to do with something like memory or myth or memorialization or the selective ways that governments and leaders choose to talk about the past and choose to instruct their people to think about the past,” said Snyder, a scholar of Eastern and Central European history and author of “On Tyranny” (2017) and “The Road to Unfreedom” (2018), which detailed Russian efforts to influence Western democracies.

Snyder walked through centuries of Ukrainian history, back to the Middle Ages, arguing that despite relentless Russian propaganda that paints Ukraine as aberrant or devoid of any unique history separate and apart from Russia, the country is decidedly conventional.

“The degree to which the past of Ukraine receives intense and usually distorting attention from other countries — that is abnormal. But the history of Ukraine itself, I think, is rather normal,” though the situation the country faces right now is anything but, he said.

“It’s not normal to have an ongoing war with a much larger, nuclear-armed neighbor. It’s not normal to have three of your provinces either completely or partially occupied by a much larger nuclear-armed neighbor,” said Snyder. “In the war that’s been ongoing since 2014, some 14,000 citizens of Ukraine have been killed. If we projected that to the scale the United States, that would be more than 100,000 people — more than the United States has lost in any war since the Second World War.”

Though Putin has been “very, very effective” at framing the issues between Russia and Ukraine in ways that serve and further his agenda, Snyder said the West can push back just as effectively by telling stories that show the richness and complexity of Ukraine today.

“What’s most important is that people understand that Ukraine has opera houses, … that Ukraine has kindergartens, that Ukraine has literature,” he said. “If you’re going to tell stories, don’t tell stories about the past. That’s Mr. Putin’s territory — to make everything into a kind of fairy tale. History is not a story. Tell stories about things that are happening now, which are interesting, which give the country a face.”

The Biden administration has done a “pretty good job” explaining to the American public why Russia’s actions threaten Ukraine’s sovereignty, he said, and broadly, there’s been a positive shift in the way policymakers view and the U.S. press covers Ukraine today since 2014. In February of that year Russian troops seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine after a violent uprising in Kyiv toppled pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych. Two months later pro-Russia separatists claimed control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where fighting with Ukrainian forces has continued ever since.

On Tuesday Putin ordered “peacekeeping” troops sent to Donetsk and Luhansk one day after declaring them independent countries. The move triggered economic sanctions from the U.S. and other Western powers.

More like this

Is Putin going to invade Ukraine?

What’s Putin’s next move?

“The way that people were speaking about Maidan [Revolution] in mainstream American media was almost impossibly distanced from the experiences of my friends and people who were there,” said Snyder, who lived in Europe at the time, of the protests that led to Yanukovych’s ouster. “It was Russian tropes, contradictory Russian tropes, that drove the conversation. Compared to then, now is much, much better.”

The U.S. strategy to pre-emptively announce what Russia may do next in Ukraine, putting Putin back on his heels by seizing control of the public narrative about the unfolding conflict, has worked quite well, “at least so far,” said Snyder. Across “the U.S. government, there is much broader recognition now than there was in 2014 that propaganda and narrative are important.”

The debate over whether NATO should admit or bar Ukraine from joining, as Russia demanded during recent negotiations with Western diplomats, is largely a red herring, Snyder contends.

“For me, the most important thing is that everyone talks about Ukraine as a sovereign state which can seek to join whatever alliances it wishes to join,” he said. “I think he’s more afraid of the European Union, and, in the general idea of prosperous, rule of law, pluralist democratic states. He’s much more afraid of that than he is of NATO.”

Ultimately, why we should pay attention to Ukraine and its history is not merely as a counterweight to Russian mythology and propaganda, Snyder argued.

“My sincere view is that Ukraine is the most interesting country in Europe; it has the most interesting history in Europe,” he said. “Ukraine is a place that helps us to understand other places, that Ukraine has a lot to give in terms of understanding. It’s not just a vacuum. It’s not just a place which gets defined by Russia. It’s a place which helps us to define ourselves.”

Share this article

When should Harvard speak out?

Institutional Voice Working Group provides a roadmap in new report

Had a bad experience meditating? You're not alone.

Altered states of consciousness through yoga, mindfulness more common than thought and mostly beneficial, study finds — though clinicians ill-equipped to help those who struggle

College sees strong yield for students accepted to Class of 2028

Financial aid was a critical factor, dean says

20.500.12592/1kpc9b

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

12 Jul 2021

Vladimir Putin

Related Lists

Ukraine - russia: the …, related topics, share artifact.

Or copy link:

If your institution is a member, please log into Policy Commons from a link provided by your institution. This typically involves logging in via a menu managed by your library.

Accessing this content requires a membership

Add to list

You have no lists yet

Create your first list:

1 ? 's' : ''}`" >

Full-page Screenshot

Letters from an American

June 28, 2024.

There is huge news today: in the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo , the Supreme Court overturned the Chevron defense doctrine that underpins the administrative state.

I am putting that down as a marker because I’ve had a very busy week of travel and writing (the paperback edition of Democracy Awakening is coming out in October and I am working on a new afterword) and I am just too tired to cover it and its history well tonight.

Instead, tonight I want to make a note of something that has been nagging at me for weeks now: Trump’s focus on 32-year-old Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested by Russian officers in March 2023 and is currently on trial for the trumped-up charge of espionage. The State Department considers him “wrongfully detained,” a rare designation indicating that the person is being held by a hostile government as a bargaining chip. That designation means the U.S. government will do all it can to secure his release.

At least three times now, Trump has interfered with those negotiations by vowing that Russian president Vladimir Putin will release Gershkovich for him and him alone. He said it in last night’s CNN debacle, where he also made a big deal out of the idea that Putin will do it as a favor, without an exchange of money.

He said something else last night in his slurry of words that jumped out. Somewhere in his discussion of Putin’s invasion of eastern Ukraine in February 2022, Trump said: “Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my—this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.”

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election explained that Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager and then conduit to Russian operatives, in summer 2016 “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.”

Manafort had helped to get the pro-Russian oligarch Yanukovych into office, and when Yanukovych fled to Russia after the Ukrainian people threw him out, Manafort was left unemployed and in debt to other oligarchs. When he went to work for Trump, for free, he promptly wrote to his partner Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee identified in 2020 as a Russian operative, asking how “we” could use the appointment “to get whole,” and made sure that the Russian oligarch to whom he owed the most money knew about his close connection with the Trump campaign (p. 135).

The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine” (p. 140). The region that Putin wanted was the country’s industrial heartland. He was offering a “peace” plan that carved off much of Ukraine and made it subservient to him. This was the dead opposite of U.S. policy for a free and united Ukraine, and there was no chance that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency against Trump, would stand for it. But if only Trump were elected….

And, in November 2016, he was.

According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, Manafort’s partner and Russian operative Kilimnick wrote that "[a]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor 'wink' (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying 'he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine' and a decision to be a 'special representative' and manage this process." Following that, Kilimnik suggested that Manafort ‘could start the process and within 10 days visit Russia ([Yanukovych] guarantees your reception at the very top level, cutting through all the bullsh*t and getting down to business), Ukraine, and key EU capitals.’ The email also suggested that once then–Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko understood this ‘message’ from the United States, the process ‘will go very fast and DT could have peace in Ukraine basically within a few months after inauguration’” (p. 99).

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018.

In last night’s debate, Trump insisted that Putin never would have invaded Ukraine on his watch (although Putin in fact continued his 2014 assault during Trump’s term, and Trump tried to withhold support for Ukraine).

After Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Jim Rutenberg published a terrific and thorough review of this history in the New York Times Magazine , pointing out that Putin’s attack on Ukraine looked different with this history behind it. Once Biden took office in 2021, the many efforts of the people around Trump, including most obviously Rudy Giuliani, to influence Ukrainian politics through their ties to the White House were over.

“Thirteen months later,” Rutenberg wrote, “Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian frontier.” Once his troops were there, Putin claimed he had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, two of which were specifically named in the Mariupol Plan, and instituted martial law in them, claiming that the people there had voted to join Russia.

Last night, Trump claimed that the Ukrainians are losing the war and described how sad it was that their country is being destroyed (without mentioning that it is Putin’s unprovoked war that is doing that damage). He also significantly exaggerated how much money the U.S. has contributed to Ukraine’s defense.

That misrepresentation lines up with Putin’s offer of Friday, June 14, 2024, in a “peace proposal” to Ukraine: Ukraine would give up Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, including far more territory than Putin’s troops occupy, in exchange for a ceasefire. Putin said, “If Kyiv and the Western capitals refuse it, as before, then in the end, that’s their…political and moral responsibility for the continuation of bloodshed.” He also demanded an end to all sanctions and that Ukraine abandon its plan to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). (Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky rejected the plan and noted that there is no reason to think Putin will stop his land grab once his forces regroup.)

So when Trump last night said about the 2022 invasion, “Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my—this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream,” it sounded as if he had been in on the Mariupol Plan. And when he talked about how the war needed to end, especially in light of Putin’s recent “peace” plan, it sounded as if perhaps he still is.

And he promised, yet again, that he and he alone could get Gershkovich released.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/nx-s1-5019408/american-journalist-evan-gershkovich-is-on-trial-for-espionage-in-russia

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/evan-gershkovich-wall-street-journal-reporter-wrongfully-detained-russia-what-does-that-mean/

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf

https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/06/14/vladimir-putin-demands-war-ukraine/

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/11/russia-to-hold-presidential-election-in-annexed-ukrainian-regions-interfax

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russian-held-regions-ukraine-endorse-their-choice-join-moscow-2023-09-29/

atrupar/status/1806501254031429917

The President had an off night at an inopportune moment. I was disappointed on Wednesday, but today I was angry. Not discouraged, not worried, not frightened, ANGRY. Angry at the hysterical responses here and elsewhere treating a landmark leader like perished food because he dared to tell truth while sounding hoarse. Angry at unrealistic insinuations and garment-rending. Purely angry, and even angrier and more fired up after I saw him in perfect voice and with an open heart in his rally today, not giving up and speaking MY plain values in MY plain language. I almost cried I was so touched. Angry tears. I will be volunteering whenever I am not looking for work or a new house. I will see to it that we win if I have to do it all myself.

Shame on most of the commenters online, including - frankly - many on these pages. Shame on you for thinking a poor TV appearance means Americans will abandon our country to a dictator (who also had a poor TV appearance btw). Shame on you for that lack of faith. Shame. There is no actual evidence that we can't or won't win this thing other than your own insecurities and anxieties. Shame on you for airing that out to such a degree. Shame on you for letting drama-hungry pundits push you around. Enough. Our party leaders - everyone from Obama to Pelosi to Jeffries to Harris to Newsom - people who actually know how to win at politics, have spoken with one voice today: regroup and continue. The voters who will decide this election did not watch CNN, don't know what Substack even is, and could care less about all of this. There is one person they will listen to:

A fellow American. Speak about our candidate and platform with confidence. No one is perfect, but together we will keep winning.

We learned from the “debate” how Dems need to rally each other (appear together in public; often quote, cite each other) – not only to fend off Trump’s sewer of lies, but also to make up for how even the U.S.’s best, established media "moderators" haven't the slightest clue as to moderating such a sewer.

Now, too, the Clarence court has killed the Chevron precedent, gutting federal health, safety, finance, and environmental protections. Dark money has been corrupting that court. Now it can expand U.S. predations.

A singular evil entwines Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Citizens United, and the ruling two years ago aborting the rights of American women.

Such massive, organized, far-right assault the American public is facing – continuous since, as Heather wrote “ . . . the South Won the Civil War.”

Ready for more?

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Ukraine and Putin's Post-Soviet Imperialism

2022, Political Insight (vol. 13/1 pp. 15-17 March 2022)

Ukraine has a month to avoid default

Lending to a borrower at war entails an additional gamble: that it will win.

A fabric trader shines a torch during a blackout in an underground shopping mall in Kyiv, Ukraine, June 19th 2024

W ar is still exacting a heavy toll on Ukraine’s economy. The country’s GDP is a quarter smaller than on the eve of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the central bank is tearing through foreign reserves and Russia’s recent attacks on critical infrastructure have depressed growth forecasts. “Strong armies”, warned Sergii Marchenko, Ukraine’s finance minister, on June 17th, “must be underpinned by strong economies.”

Following American lawmakers’ decision in April to belatedly approve a funding package worth $60bn, Ukraine is not about to run out of weapons. In time, the state’s finances will also be bolstered by G 7 plans, announced on June 13th, to use Russian central-bank assets frozen in Western financial institutions to lend another $50bn. The problem is that Ukraine faces a cash crunch—and soon.

For the past two years, Ukraine’s creditors have agreed to suspend debt-service payments. The let-off—from both government and private lenders—is worth 15% of GDP a year. Indeed, if payments had been required, they would have been the state’s second-biggest expenditure, behind defence. Now, however, the moratorium from private foreign bondholders, including Amundi, a French asset manager, and PIMCO , an American one, is set to expire on August 1st.

Thus Ukraine has a month to avoid default. The IMF is keen for Mr Marchenko to negotiate a write-down, but a deal seems unlikely in the time available. If Ukraine does default, it would reflect a troubling lack of faith among private investors concerning the West’s commitment. In the long run, that could spell disaster for the country’s recovery.

Few restructurings have been undertaken in the heat of war. Countries do so to ensure access to financial markets, which requires manageable debts. A quick restructuring takes months, a difficult one years—creditors are never eager to give up claims. But Ukraine has been shut out of capital markets since the war began, meaning there is little urgency to proceedings. In June Mr Marchenko offered creditors a deal that cut 60% from the present value of its debts. The creditors coolly replied that they thought 22% was more reasonable.

Ukraine is in desperate need of fiscal room. At the end of the year, its debt-to- GDP ratio will approach 94%—high for an economy with its rocky financial history and of its size. The sums that allies provide are impressive, but come in the form of artillery, tanks and earmarked funds, rather than cash. Only $8bn of America’s recent package will go directly to Ukraine’s government, an amount equivalent to just over a quarter of Ukraine’s annual spending on social benefits, and even this is in the form of a loan. The EU is planning to offer a little more, but still only $38bn over three years.

Although the let-off Ukraine wants is modest—$12bn from 2024 to 2027—the country has no spare cash to stump up if it is not granted. Under a restructuring deal as drastic as the one Ukraine proposed, and bondholders rejected, the country would only just be able to make ends meet, according to the IMF . For their part, bondholders question how the fund can be so sure, especially since its analysis is now a few months out of date.

In the absence of a deal, Ukraine has two options. One is to negotiate an extension on its debt-service freeze, as it has already with official creditors, who will forgo payments until 2027. The other is to default. That may sound drastic, but in reality there is little difference between the scenarios. Either way, Ukrainian payments will not resume.

The reticence of private-sector investors does not just reflect Ukraine’s financial outlook. In a normal restructuring, creditors gamble on a country’s economic prospects. Lending to a borrower at war also entails a second gamble: that it will win. “There has to be a country in existence to repay at the end of this,” as a bondholder notes. A lot depends on the extent of Western support. Taxpayers may tire of handing over billions. Donald Trump, who has been sceptical of the amounts disbursed, looks increasingly likely to return to the White House in November. The IMF ’s usual models struggle to take such factors into account.

Bondholders are also sceptical about plans for Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction in the case of victory. Although allies and the IMF have argued that restructuring now will enable Ukraine to re-enter financial markets as soon as the war ends and its allies forgive debts, investors are not convinced that such a day will ever materialise. Rather, they think a restructuring would be the first of many attempts by Ukraine’s allies to push the financial burden of war, and the cost of reconstruction, away from governments and on to the private sector.

Much of Ukraine’s recovery—including the construction of basic infrastructure and civic buildings, as well as training people to rebuild the country—will never turn a profit, and will thus need to be shouldered by the country’s allies. The current impasse raises a worrying prospect: that distrust between them and private investors will slow down progress. Mr Marchenko was right to remind Ukraine’s commercial creditors that a country’s army is only as strong as the economy behind it. He could also have reminded Ukraine’s allies that an economy is only as strong as the army keeping it in existence. ■

Explore more

The economics of the tennis v pickleball contest

Don’t hate the new players—or the new game

Is coal the new gold?

The world’s dirtiest fuel is a disturbingly safe investment

How Chinese goods dodge American tariffs

Policymakers are unsure what to do about a tricky loophole

American stocks are consuming global markets

That does not necessarily spell trouble

McDonald’s v Burger King: what a price war means for inflation

American consumers will be licking their lips. So will Federal Reserve officials

Will services make the world rich?

American fried chicken can now be served from the Philippines

Make a gift to PBS News Hour and your donation will be doubled !

Support Intelligent, In-Depth, Trustworthy Journalism.

Russian President Putin visits North Korea

Sue Mi Terry, Council on Foreign Relations Sue Mi Terry, Council on Foreign Relations

Stephen Sestanovich, Council on Foreign Relations Stephen Sestanovich, Council on Foreign Relations

Leave your feedback

Copy URL https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/russia-struck-defense-pact-north-korea-what-does-it-mean

Russia and North Korea signed a defense pact with each other. What does this mean?

This Expert Brief combines interviews with Sue Mi Terry , senior fellow for Korea studies, and Stephen Sestanovich , George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies. Terry was a deputy national intelligence officer for East Asia at the National Intelligence Council from 2009 to 2010. Sestanovich was the U.S. State Department’ s ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union from 1997 to 2001.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just signed a new defense pact. Why now?

SUE MI TERRY: Putin capped off his two-day trip to North Korea today with the surprise signing of a new comprehensive strategic partnership pact. The actual text of the document has yet to be released, so the details are uncertain, but the treaty is said to include a mutual defense provision, calling for each country to provide military assistance should the other be attacked.

STEPHEN SESTANOVICH: “Why now?” This is the easy question. North Korea has been supplying Russia with arms for its war in Ukraine, and Putin is paying them off with a great big thank you.

WATCH: Putin signs pact with North Korea that could increase weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine

TERRY: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced Moscow to look to North Korea for munitions — and Pyongyang has delivered, providing artillery ammunition and short-range rockets that Russia has used against Ukraine. In return, Russia is likely to provide not only economic aid, as North Korea desperately needs cheap oil from Russia, but also military aid to help improve North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.

The new treaty is a sign of the growing closeness between these two pariah states. As Putin said , “This is a truly breakthrough document, reflecting the desire of the two countries not to rest on their laurels, but to raise our relations to a new qualitative level.”

SESTANOVICH: But let’s also remember to ask, “Why ever?”

For years, North Korea has not been part of international polite society. All major powers — and the entire UN Security Council — stood against its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Putin hadn’t visited North Korea since 2000, for a reason. But he’s now cast his lot more irrevocably with the world’s rogues, and even if he claims it’s part of building an anti-U.S. “world majority,” the result in Japan and South Korea — in virtually all countries that Russia used to treat as more important than North Korea — has to be shock. There’s probably even some cringing within the Russian elite, asking themselves if they really want to be Kim Jong Un’s “dearest friend.”

What does this pact commit the two countries to do?

SESTANOVICH: Even after the text is made public, important questions will likely remain unanswered. Russian diplomats will likely be telling other governments not to worry and that they won’t do anything stupid — that Putin is just paying Kim off with a show, with meaningless gestures. What we don’t know is what’s been promised in secret — or will be promised over time. Kim has learned he’s got Putin where he wants him. So don’t be surprised if, before the next delivery of artillery shells, North Korean officials say, “you know, we were wondering whether you could help us out with X or Y.”

What does the treaty say about North Korean and Russian intentions?

TERRY: This treaty makes clear that Putin has abandoned all hopes of joining the West and is instead intent on bringing down the U.S.-led international order by making common cause with China, Iran, and North Korea. In the process, he is throwing a vital lifeline to a North Korean regime that remains weak and impoverished despite the success of its WMD program. Having failed to reach a deal with the United States under former President Donald Trump, North Korea has now broken out of its diplomatic isolation by making a deal with Russia.

What is the significance of the treaty?

TERRY: Because neither country is likely to be attacked by an aggressor, the mutual defense provision is unlikely to be invoked — unless North Korea chooses to pretend that the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine is not an unprovoked invasion, but rather (as Putin pretends) a defensive measure against aggression by Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

If that were to happen, it’s possible that North Korea could send soldiers to fight in the Russian army — a military version of the “guest workers” that Pyongyang has sent around the world for years as a way of earning hard currency. Russia could certainly use more manpower given the heavy losses it is suffering in Ukraine and its own demographic woes in recent decades.

The more likely consequence of the treaty is simply closer cooperation in weapons production, with North Korea manufacturing more munitions for Russia and Russia providing more high-end help for North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, likely including aid in developing submarines capable of launching ballistic nuclear missiles. Both countries will become more dangerous as a result of this new partnership.

North Korea and Russia are both nuclear powers. Does this mean Russia will provide help to improve North Korean WMD capabilities?

TERRY: The likelihood is that, yes, this will lead Russia to improve North Korean WMD capabilities. There is some evidence of this already happening, with Russia possibly providing help to North Korea with its successful satellite launch last November, just two months after the last Putin-Kim meeting. This is deeply concerning because of the substantial overlap between the technologies used for space launches and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

READ MORE: North Korea claims progress in developing a hypersonic missile designed to strike distant U.S. targets

Russia can also provide North Korea with critical help in areas where its capabilities are still nascent, such as submarine-launched ballistic missiles. There is no way to tell how much assistance Russia will provide — and Moscow will always be wary of parting with its most cutting-edge technology — but there is no doubt that Russia has the capability, if it so desires, to substantially increase the threat that North Korea poses to its neighbors.

Is this new pact a revival of the now defunct 1961 treaty between North Korea and Russia?

TERRY: The mutual defense provision in the new Russia-North Korea treaty recalls the 1961 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance [PDF] between North Korea and the Soviet Union that was voided by the collapse of the latter in 1991. The mutual defense clause was notably missing when the two countries signed a Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation in 2000 at the beginning of Putin’s reign.

In subsequent years, Russia cooperated with the United States to try and limit North Korea’s WMD program by imposing sanctions at the United Nations. Those days have clearly passed — and are unlikely to return. This year, on March 28, Russia actually vetoed the UN Security Council resolution reauthorizing an independent panel of experts to monitor North Korean sanctions compliance. The new treaty symbolizes the growing closeness between Moscow and Pyongyang.

SESTANOVICH: This new pact may or may not fall short of the one signed in 1961, but the wording isn’t the only interesting comparison.

In 1961, Soviet policy was on a tear. Premier Nikita Khrushchev revived nuclear testing, exploding the biggest bombs ever; built the wall between East and West Berlin; had a famously confrontational meeting with U.S. President John F. Kennedy; was waging a fierce rhetorical war with Chinese leader Mao Zedong; and was probably starting to think about missiles in Cuba, which he deployed a year later. The question for Western policymakers now is whether Putin is becoming comparably reckless. His language in North Korea — where he denounced the United States as a “worldwide neocolonialist dictatorship” — might make you think so.

What does the pact mean for Ukraine?

SESTANOVICH: Ukraine, has, of course, been feeling the impact of North Korean supplies for some time. It’s not clear to me whether there’s anything that Kim has been holding back from the Russian war effort, so there may not be much change in that respect. But we probably ought to look at the impact of this alliance in broader terms.

On the one hand, Ukraine can say to its Western friends that Putin has made absolutely clear that he poses a threat to Western allies everywhere. In conversation with their counterparts in Japan and South Korea, Ukrainian leaders will have even less trouble saying we’re all in this together. On the other hand, Putin has also telegraphed a readiness for escalation that will surely unsettle some Western governments. We don’t know yet how this will play out.

What is China’s view of this pact?

TERRY: The Chinese are conflicted. They are North Korea’s biggest supporters, but they also have an uneasy relationship characterized by suspicion on both sides. Chinese President Xi Jinping didn’t even meet with Kim Jong Un until Trump decided to meet with him.

From the Chinese perspective, close ties between Russia and North Korea are a welcome distraction for Washington. But China is also wary of having Russia dilute its sway over North Korea by offering itself as an alternative source of support. North Korea’s increasing military collaboration with Russia undermines Beijing’s almost exclusive geopolitical influence over Pyongyang. Beijing may also be concerned that the Russia-North Korea axis could bring the United States, Japan, and South Korea closer together and increase the U.S. military footprint near China.

Given that there are some overlapping concerns in Beijing and Washington, it would make sense for the Joe Biden administration to reach out to the Chinese government and try to foster greater unease about closer Russia-North Korea alignment.

What should the United States do in response?

TERRY: The Biden administration has extremely limited options for responding. The best that it can do would be to double down on sanctions on both North Korea and Russia while strengthening the trilateral relationship between the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

At the same time, the Biden administration should also continue to pursue efforts to bring together U.S. allies in Asia with those in Europe — an effort that has already borne fruit with the leaders of Australia, Japan, and South Korea attending NATO summits. South Korea has also reportedly provided artillery ammunition to the United States to enable U.S. ammunition transfers to Ukraine. Washington’s Asian allies need to double down on their support for Ukraine because of the growing links between Russia and the countries that threaten them in Asia — namely China and North Korea. If the world’s dictators are uniting against the U.S.-led international order, the world’s democracies need to unite in its defense.

READ MORE: Russia and China are supporting each other’s territorial reach, says Taiwan’s foreign minister

SESTANOVICH: The Putin-Kim alliance further adds to the importance of “helping Ukraine win the war” — that exact phrase is directly from the new U.S.-Ukraine bilateral security agreement announced last week. There’s no better way to show the limits of North Korean arms supplies than to associate them with a losing cause. And there’s no better way to give Putin (or his successor) second thoughts about his foolish opening to Pyongyang than to show its futility. Fortunately, the shock of Putin’s visit is great enough that policymakers — in Washington and elsewhere—may understand what they need to do.

This Expert Brief was c ompiled and edited by Diana Roy and Asher Ross.

This article is republished from the Council on Foreign Relations. Read the original article here .

Support Provided By: Learn more

Support PBS News:

Educate your inbox

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

Supported by

news analysis

Putin Shows He Can Antagonize the U.S. Far Afield From Ukraine

His support for North Korea’s military ambitions showed he can inflict pain on the U.S. and its NATO allies in ways beyond aggression in Ukraine.

Share full article

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia stands at a podium in Pyongyang.

By Paul Sonne

Reporting from Berlin

When the United States and its Western allies declared that Ukraine could strike Russian territory with their weapons, President Vladimir V. Putin began ratcheting up the threats.

He triggered drills in Russia to practice the use of tactical nuclear weapons . He said Moscow would consider changing the doctrine that outlines when it would use its nuclear arsenal. He reminded unnamed NATO countries in Europe of their small territories and dense populations, implying they could be easily obliterated.

And this week, the Russian leader took his threats to another corner of the globe, reviving a Cold War-era mutual defense pact with North Korea and warning that he may arm Kim Jong-un in response to the loosened restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western arms.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say that ‘we don’t control anything here at all,’” he said Thursday, failing to acknowledge the limits Washington and its allies have placed on Ukraine . “We can also say that we delivered something to someone, and then we have no control over anything. Let them think about that.”

His ominous warnings, at the end of a two-day trip to North Korea and Vietnam, placed Russia and the West in a new round of escalation over Ukraine. They come amid distraction and political uncertainty among Kyiv’s chief backers, with potentially game-changing elections on the horizon in the United States and France.

Beyond using nuclear weapons or causing more destruction on the battlefield in Ukraine, the Russian leader is seeking to prove he can pressure and antagonize the West in other ways and other places.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

IMAGES

Understanding Putin’s Russia and the Struggle over Ukraine
Amazon.com: On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians: Essay
Putin's new Ukraine essay reveals imperial ambitions
Putin Wrote Essay on 'Obsession' With Ukraine Before Invasion
Putin Wrote Essay on 'Obsession' With Ukraine Before Invasion
Putin and War: How He Sees the World and How this Led to Ukraine

VIDEO

Russia vs Ukraine: Part 1
Михаил Касьянов о докладе "Путин.Война"
Окопная война в Украине: что может планировать Кремль?
Essay on Russia-Ukraine War #russiaukrainewar #essay #shorts
🎢 Мария Максакова и Гари Табах
В. Путин вне истории? К оценке статьи президента РФ "Об историческом единстве русских и украинцев"

COMMENTS

PDF Article by Vladimir Putin "On the Historical Unity of Russians and
Microsoft Word - 220201_Putin_UkraineEssay.docx. Article by Vladimir Putin "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" July 12, 2021 17:00 During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people - a single whole. These words were not driven by some ...
On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians
Ozero. v. t. e. On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians [a] is an essay by Russian president Vladimir Putin published on 12 July 2021. [1] It was published on Kremlin.ru shortly after the end of the first of two buildups of Russian forces preceding the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin's new Ukraine essay reveals imperial ambitions
Meanwhile, Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets claimed the essay was Putin's "final ultimatum to Ukraine." Nobody in Ukraine needs reminding of the grim context behind Putin's treatise. Since spring 2014, Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in an armed conflict that has cost over 14,000 Ukrainian lives and left millions displaced.
Contextualizing Putin's "On the Historical Unity of Russians and
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 ...
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 return of the enemy: Putin's war on Ukraine and a cognitive
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 ...
Why Russia Invaded Ukraine
in his 2017 book Putin s War Against Ukraine . Putin s July 2021 essay is his ideological treatise for the February 2022 invasion. Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin has held a long-term obsession with Ukraine as a Little Russian part of the pan-Russian nation (obshcherusskij narod ), together with Great Russians and White Russians (Belarusians).
Ukraine and Putin's Post-Soviet Imperialism
part of this approach. Putin's 'history essay' setting out the Russian imperial story of Ukraine is another part. The longer-term war against Ukraine, including the eight-year war in the Donbas and the propaganda or information-war 'wraparound' which goes with it, is another. Putin's aggression towards Ukraine in
Vladimir Putin answered questions on the article "On the Historical
Vladimir Putin answered questions on the article "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" 2021-07-13 22:15:00 St Petersburg Question: Mr President, thank you very
Read Putin's Speech and His Case for War in Ukraine
Feb. 24, 2022. When Vladimir V. Putin announced Russia's invasion of Ukraine in a televised address on Thursday, he articulated aims far beyond those of Russia's prior assaults on its ...
Upending Putin's Russia-Ukraine myth
In a speech Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied Ukraine's legitimacy as a sovereign nation, along with that of the other former Soviet republics that broke away after the collapse of the Soviet Union starting in the late 1980s. The speech was widely viewed in the West as part of a prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by ...
PDF The Ukrainian invasion: Implications for Putin's power
52% in February to 69% in March. Putin ,s approval rating increased from 71% to 83%. (7) Levada also indicates that support for the war (or +special operation in official parlance) is overwhelming: 81% of respondents support Russia ,s military action in Ukraine, while only 14% answered in the negative; another 6% were undecided. (8)
PDF Putin's War in Ukraine
Putin's War in Ukraine. By Maksymilian Czuperski, John Herbst, Eliot Higgins, Alina Polyakova, and Damon Wilson. transmitted quotations 2015 The in in any form of Atlantic Council Washington, 15th Street, NW, 12th Floor DC 20005 village 978-1-61977-996-9 of Novokaterinovka credit: Reuters/Marko in eastern. reserved. in inquiriesPro-Russ.
PDF Russian Public Accepts Putin's Spin on Ukraine Conflict
President Putin has repeatedly claimed "denazification" as a motive behind the military operation in Ukraine. He has compared Ukrainian elected officials to the Nazi regime, claiming that they oppress, and are even committing genocide against, the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine. This survey used the terms "denazify" and
PDF Ukraine: Background, Conflict with Russia, and U.S. Policy
Ukraine-related legislative initiatives in the 117th Congress include the Crimea Annexation Non-recognition Act (H.R. 922), the Ukraine Security Partnership Act of 2021 (S. 814), the Ukraine Religious Freedom Support Act (H.R. 496, S. 1310), and the Restraining Russian Imperialism Act (H.R. 3144).
(PDF) The Russian-Ukrainian war: An explanatory essay through the
This essay seeks to explains Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, along with the subsequent response made by western countries, through the lens of international relations theories.
PDF The Ukraine Russia Conflict
OF PEACE www.usip.org. , NW • Washington, DC 20037 • 202.457.1700 • fax 202.429.6063About the RepoRtAs the Ukraine crisis escalated, staff at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) with experience in the region mobilized for a comprehensive conflict analysis with the aim of identifying plausible conflict scenarios and the forces and factors ...
PDF Vladimir Putin on The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians
Russia and Ukraine that is favored by elites within the current power establishment in Moscow. It also provides an interesting lens onto the thinking and motivations of the Russian president. In the essay, Putin presents many of the talking points that he had used even before2008 , when he told President Bush, "Ukraine is not a real country."
PDF Great-Power Competition and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine, but few believed that an initial invasion would include an attempt to take Kyiv. Instead, Russian forces attempted to take the Ukrainian capital while ... willing to levy heavy sanctions against Russian president Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs supporting him. Even small states, which in normal times would lack the domestic support to ...
PDF What Putin's War in Ukraine Means for the Future of China-Russia Relations
when Putin recognised the separatist Donbas republics and officially dispatched Russian "peacekeeping" troops there on 21 February. Two and a half days later, Russia began its wholesale invasion of the remainder of Ukraine.4 China's Reaction: " Don't mention the war" Since Putin's war began, China's official
Vladimir Putin's essay
20.500.12592/1kpc9b. Vladimir Putin's essay - "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians" 12 Jul 2021
(PDF) The Historical Background to Putin's Invasion of Ukraine
dead Ukraine is his objective. Jason Stanley explains that Putin's grotesque claim to be 'de - Nazifying' Ukraine by toppling. a Jewish President whose family fought against the Nazis rests ...
June 28, 2024
After Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Jim Rutenberg published a terrific and thorough review of this history in the New York Times Magazine, pointing out that Putin's attack on Ukraine looked different with this history behind it. Once Biden took office in 2021, the many efforts of the people around Trump, including most obviously Rudy ...
Putin Vows to Make New Nuclear Missiles and Weigh Putting Them Near
The threat to produce more nuclear-capable missiles was also just the latest example of how Mr. Putin has tried to gain leverage in his war against Ukraine by invoking the power and reach of his ...
Russian Casualties in Ukraine Mount, in a Brutal Style of Fighting
May was a particularly deadly month for the Russian army in Ukraine, with an average of more than 1,000 of its soldiers injured or killed each day, according to U.S., British and other Western ...
Ukraine and Putin's Post-Soviet Imperialism
Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times aptly described Putin's view of Russia's relationship with Ukraine, outlined in his now infamous summer 2021 'history essay', as that of the 'spurned abusive husband, combining protestations of undying love with threats of violence'.
Putin aims to resume Russian production of previously banned
Left: Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Russian-installed leader of the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo, amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, in Moscow, Russia June 25 ...
Ukraine has a month to avoid default
War is still exacting a heavy toll on Ukraine's economy. The country's GDP is a quarter smaller than on the eve of Vladimir Putin's invasion, the central bank is tearing through foreign ...
Russia and North Korea signed a defense pact with each other ...
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just signed a new defense pact. ... [PDF] between North Korea and the Soviet Union that was voided by the collapse of the ...
Putin Shows He Can Antagonize the U.S. Far Afield From Ukraine
Rogue arms transfers or increased sabotage attacks outside Ukraine would be a logical escalation for Mr. Putin, analysts say, given Russia's unique Soviet inheritance — global reach, weapons ...