17-8-23
Dear Partners in Thought,
After eighteen months of the staggering (and failed) Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is worth trying to understand what drove it – and what supports it. Many recall the surprising statement from Foreign Minister Lavrov that led to massive audience laughter at a conference in India that Russia launched its “special military operation” as NATO was about to invade Russia. In July 2022, Putin, who had already written a big pre-war philosophical piece on the existential nature of Russia and its unity with Ukraine in mid-2021, made a speech at the Duma stressing that “the war was unleashed by the collective West, which organised and supported the unconstitutional coup in Ukraine in 2014 and justified genocide against the people of Donbass”. Hence the strange use of neo-Nazi appellation to describe the Ukrainian leadership (all the more knowing the religious roots of the Ukrainian president). Putin made it clear, probably to find some hard to find justification and a way to decrease the lack of results on the ground, that the West was the instigator and the culprit of the invasion of Ukraine. This invasion became no less than “the start of the breakdown of the US-style world order” also responsible for so many Russian and indeed world problems. This was “the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multi-polar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, and not on hypocritical double standards but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live with their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions.”
The invasion of Ukraine had taken on a very practical existential role for Russia so as to make the move very noble, in a drive for Gaullian grandeur-restoration, all the more in what was portrayed as an increasingly value-less world without moral compass. All of this while Ukrainian civilian infrastructure was massively hit, civilians themselves were butchered like in Bucha (even if Russia would later argue this was staged by Ukraine) and a massive number of children were deported to Russia to welcoming new parents, in what would become a clear war crime against humanity. All these official statements would easily project a world upside down that only the boldest science fiction movies and books, like Orwell’s 1984, could have shown before. While many were ready for a Kremlin going to any length to achieve its goals, one of the key questions would then become: How could the Russian people buy this type of story-telling? As they seemed to do.
Russia displays many, largely noble, explanations for this invasion that do not resonate well in the mostly Cartesian (even if declining for the Kremlin and many Russians) West. Notwithstanding the plausible argument that the West is in fact much stronger at many key levels today. Two major features to review are the war, led by a values-based Russia against the degenerative West via Ukraine that needs to be saved, and the feelings of a strong majority of Russians that Putin is right, and the war is just or that they are not opposed to it also in a form of apathy and refusal to see things for what they are. Jade McGlynn just wrote “Russia’s War” (and not just “Putin’s War”) to explain the two key points and its related ones from a Russian perspective. McGlynn is a young King’s College War Studies scholar with much actual exposure to Putin’s Russia, and her needed book is enlightening, even if some Russian critics may point to some unlikely support from MI6 or the dark corridors of Langley. This is a very detailed book that goes into many features around those two key points, making it for an arduous and possibly repetitive read at times, all the more given the challenging times we know.
No leader in the West launching an invasion of a neighbour (admittedly all the more in the heart of old Europe) would enjoy an 80% approval rating – but Putin does. While the reliability of poll ratings in Russia can be discussed, a leader like Putin rarely goes down below 60%. On a key note, even the younger generations (18-24, 25-39 groups) support Putin (although slightly less so than the older ones). This can be explained by a majority of Russians wanting (if not needing) a strong leader—this mainly as the result of the shock linked to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the terrible 1990s that created societal disorder. A consequence of which was the ascension of a kleptocratic system that Putin eventually controlled and used to serve his (and his nascent co-leadership’s) needs in a strange and inflexible virtuous model. Many Russians— especially of the younger and skilled generations with post-cold war global aspirations—left Russia in 2022, some simply to avoid conscription. Yet a vast majority is not keen to go against the war and the authorities (especially in non-major urban areas as expected but clearly not only). This is helped by a unique propaganda machine, operating in a welcoming target population territory, and a highly repressive system that guarantees long-term jail if the word “war” is even publicly mentioned. (On a side note, it would appear that the Kremlin would actually prefer passivity to the actual support of its population).
The Russian liberals who do not like Putin are actually rather condescending when it comes to Ukraine, as seen with the likes of Navalny’s and other groups. As a result, Russians do not oppose the war and are rather apathetic, some even blaming the West for the Western sanctions that deprived them of products they came to like since the 1990s (not the main objective of such sanctions for sure). Some analysts draw bold comparisons with the attitude of most Parisians during the German “occupation”, as they generally preferred to go on with their daily lives as if nothing had really happened (forgetting the many actions of the “resistance” back then, and de facto implying that Russians were actually “occupied” by their own in the Putin era). Even religion is playing a role in supporting the “special military operation” in Ukraine, notably with the well-known and politically-engaged Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, who is naturally close to the Kremlin. To what would be his forebear’s spiritual dismay, the grandson of atheist Soviet leader Molotov, who is a member of the Kremlin-captive Duma, stressed multiple times the “holy” nature of the war.
In one of the ongoing features strengthening the Kremlin’s Orwellian propaganda approach, Russian history is officially rewritten in ways the country has known under Stalin with the main objective of creating a new Russian identity. The focus is permanent and on school textbooks, television shows, films, festivals, military history tours and even historical re-enactment clubs and student discussion societies while murals and even statues are added, especially in the last ten years, to the existential and patriotic display. The Christian roots of Russia, the defeat of Napoleon and the Great Patriotic War are much stressed alongside Peter and Catherine the Great while the lost Gorbachev and anarchic Yeltsin eras are quasi-demonised, the latter responding to the natural sorrows of many Russians. Ukraine, which was initially to be saved, is now often depicted as the ultra-nationalist state where no dissent can exist and opposition is banned while anything Russian is deemed to be hostile. The Russian population is flooded day in day out with messages that underpin an existential Russian and indeed imperialistic rebirth, this without any easy access to alternative views, most if not all Western or opposition conduits being banned as deemed propaganda-flavoured.
Jade McGlynn often refers to Dmitri Trenin, a former senior officer in Soviet and Russian military intelligence, who led the Carnegie Moscow Center, the key local post of the well-known think tank since the mid-1990s (on a personal note he even gave an internship to my older daughter). While a very fine, highly intellectual man, and de facto one of the most sensible Washington-Moscow “conduits”, he decided to leave the Carnegie Endowment a few months into the invasion as he felt deeply supportive of it. Trenin, a former member of the “Westerniser realist camp”, who knows the West better than most Russians, made statements about the need to defend Russian culture also against what the West represents today “with its civilisation of consumption, its gender innovations and so on”. To him, clearly winning in Ukraine and “inflicting damage to the Western enemy” is about survival for Russia – not simply a return to imperial history as Putin likes. I was exchanging with him at the beginning of the conflict but did not foresee such a drastic position and rupture (which I took initially as a proof that he was de facto a prisoner of the system and had too much family in Russia as he does). While Trenin’s statements are very strong, it is also clear the state of affairs across the West (and especially in the US with its great and quasi un-American political divide, wild mass shootings and exacerbated forms of capitalism), does not help in rejecting the Kremlin scenario. Nor does this scenario not fall on deaf ears, with many Russians looking at the world and grieving post-Cold War shocks.
It is also true that Russia was not treated with the most care by Western powers in the early to mid-1990s, as they wanted to ensure it would quickly become part of a nascent globalised, and increasingly rootless, world—even if wanting to improve the material conditions of many along the way. On a side but key note, McGlynn stresses that the main enemy of old Russia is often seen today as Britain, due to its ancient imperial history (and the odd fact that it founded America) far more than the US, in spite of its massive aid to Ukraine to date, or Western Europe—this perhaps also linked to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak’s fierce support of Kyiv. While the invasion is now seen in Moscow as a war of liberation, Russia would also seem to endure it in order to get rid of Anglo-Saxon influence across Europe. To some in the Russian leadership, the Ukraine “special military operation” is not simply about Ukraine but also much more about Europe, of which Russia sees itself as a key part, and its very soul.
It is hard not to try to understand, admittedly to some difficult extent, the Russians who do not want to face the horrors of the war and prefer to find some noble or practical rationale for it or stay away from the topic. Many of us would follow that sad path in their very shoes, and given their too often tragic history. Until late 2021 I wanted myself to ensure that we anchored Russia not only to the West but to the world through globalisation that would ensure a lesser focus on military solutions and would nicely “trap” nations over time into working together, as they would have too much to lose otherwise (a recipe applicable to China today that seems to need it more than Beijing may have initially thought). It is also our duty to explain to Russians that the course taken by the Kremlin goes against the interests of all parties, and at the same time makes them supportive of mass murders and war crimes. This is true, even if the latter are still well managed by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine and totally dismissed as fake news or hard to accept by most of the general population.
Jade McGlynn’s book reveals a Russia most of us did not know, and which needs to gradually change over time, but will also unlikely support a coup in the Kremlin. The sanctions-rooted 40% decline in value of the rouble in 2023, and the likely associated inflation surge and economic crisis to follow (not ideal when funding a large-scale war) may hurt Russians and (some Western analysts hope) make them question the cost of the war, given the roots of such developments. However, it may largely remain a private or dinner table matter, given the known dynamics. As often seen in history, a coup would more likely come from the current weakened leadership (the odd Wagner insurrection, if there was one, being an erratic example, even if it showed inherent autocratic weaknesses) but is no guarantee for a better scenario for a Ukraine war that will otherwise last long—possibly with Western population support gradually waning as seen today in the US and that could be lethally dealt with in a “Trump 2024”. Hence the need for a strengthened Western resolve and speedy delivery of what is needed to win or reach the negotiation table (also making sure Kyiv is not adopting unmanageable positions like regarding the future of Crimea).
On a very personal note that may resonate with many in the West, I would like to stress that we should not see all Russians as evil, even if one supports Ukraine and/or is naturally opposed to outdated imperialistic moves, especially in old Europe. Many Russians left their country as they could not stand the invasion, or did not want to be part of it for many personal reasons. Many Russians lived outside Russia before the invasion and even liked a Putin style, following the shambolic state of their country in the 1990s. Russians should never be rejected for being Russian, even if they ought to be sensibly and respectfully engaged on the matter of the Ukraine tragedy and its many ramifications at all societal and world levels. At some point, we will rebuild Ukraine (as many development financial institutions seem to be ready to go for in a well-planned but premature way) but we will also need to help re-building and re-shaping Russia – with the Russians and for us all.
Warmest regards,
Serge
Desperate Measures 