The invasion of the Ukraine has been raging for a year now, and while it’s not looking particularly good for either side, the situation is especially dire for Russia. While the outcome of the war remains difficult to predict (as is typical with armed conflict), one thing can be confidently stated: Russia almost certainly cannot “win”.
A key problem nested within such a statement is that it is becoming unclear what victory would actually look like for Russia, whereas anything which doesn’t cede land would have to bee seen as victory for Ukraine (whose modest and under-resourced army was initially expected to be easily overwhelmed by superior Russian firepower and manpower). And even if Russia did manage to scrape out some kind of capitulation from Ukraine—which is very unlikely—the damage to its military and moral reputation is already irredeemable.
Conversely, that Ukrainian forces have resisted with such audacity—keeping in mind that Western assistance did not begin until well after they had already successfully defended their capital, Kyiv, from Russia’s initial assault—is now taken for granted, but should not be. Everyone from the frontline soldiers to the people of Ukraine and their remarkable leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appear to have radically overperformed in the face of existential crisis. Which this invasion most certainly is.
At times it has seemed, or perhaps merely been inferred, that the euphemistic “special military operation” announced in February 2022 has sought to do a variety of things, from securing parts of the Donbas region and cementing Russia’s control of Crimea, to outright conquest of the entire country. Given the disparity between the starting position of these two nations, it is not unreasonable to think that Russia may have assumed it would break the country open quickly and quietly, just as it did in Crimea in 2014.
The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, speaks to Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Which one of these two is more directly responsible for Russia’s blatant failures in the field of battle is difficult to discern, but on the strategic scale it surely must be Putin. Image: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
It certainly seems likely that complete domination of the country was Russia’s initial expectation. And by “Russia” I mean Vladimir Putin, its autocratic ruler, whose obsession with Ukrainian integration within Russia is long-standing. Putin’s dominance of the political landscape in Russia is one of its key weaknesses. Even the initial invasion was not fully vetted by Russian military commanders, it seems, as Putin could not trust them all to maintain secrecy. Corruption has consequences even for the corrupt.
This uncertainty, and the shifting of apparent goals, is in part always the nature of war. As the realities of any unpredictable situation begin to interact with the theory and assumptions of pre-determined strategy, not even something as complex as the Schlieffen Plan can remain in tact for long. But this particular case is also emblematic of the Russian State’s infuriating habit of communicating in a combination of vagaries and outright deception. The very phrase “special military operation” is an excellent example of this. When your entire modus operandi is confusion and disinformation then it follows that any sort of clarity around actual objectives seems unlikely.
And it seems, at least to me, that those who traffic in disinformation do so out of a position of inherent weakness. Because if your position is strong, it makes sense to say so, plainly. That goes for both cause, and capacity. Russia is patently weaker than it pretended (or believed itself) to be, and I don’t think many beyond its borders (perhaps excepting the naturally conspiratorially-minded individuals who seem to have a fascination with him) will have seriously accepted the ludicrous justifications Putin has regularly provided for the invasion.
But before we stick it to Russia specifically, this isn’t a uniquely Russian flaw. The United States, for example, used information which we now know—and at the time suspected, with as much certainty as we currently question Putin’s propaganda—were falsified reports of “weapons of mass destruction” to justify not just the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the twenty-year disgrace that was the occupation of Afghanistan.
Despite the strong and almost universal suspicion outside the United States that the information presented to the United Nations (Anthrax, allegedly possessed by Saddam Hussein) was absolute bullshit, the fact that it was Colin Powell, hugely respected retired general and (at this point in time) Secretary of State, certainly didn’t harm the optics. Perhaps if this was one of the Bush Administration’s more pallid and sleazy characters—a Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, for example—it wouldn’t have gone down so easily. But it wasn’t, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it was Powell by choice, perhaps precisely because the “Powell Doctrine” for which he had been known as a military leader was one of avoiding war at all costs, unless there was no other option. Ergo, if Powell was making the case for war to the UN, then there must be no other option. He was, uniquely within that Administration, a man of enormous integrity (at least until this very moment). History is full of rubbish casus bellis, none more famously so in the third millennial era than this one. Image: AFP
You may have already noticed that Putin likes to throw around contextually confusing references to terrorism (and Nazism for that matter, for different reasons) when he speaks of Ukraine or Chechnya or any other place he is considering crushing with military force. That’s because he is using the same rhetorical justification that the US has got away with for the last 20 years. If the ubiquitous “War on Terror” (a ridiculous conceit of semantic jargon if there ever was one) justifies invasion and gets you a grumbling pass from the United Nations, then all you need to do is point at a few extremist groups amongst the population of your desired target, and you’ve got yourself a legitimate casus belli (in Latin, cause for war).
But why is Russia so interested in Ukraine, of all places? I think it’s difficult to fully understand the Russian perspective of the current conflict without also reflecting on the initial invasion of Crimea (which in my view, while not discussed all that often, is in many ways inseparable from the current conflict). And, following from that, what in turn might be special about Crimea?
Crimea: COLONY, Khanate, REPUBLIC, Plaything
One of Russia’s greatest geopolitical problems, historically, has been its limited access to the sea. Not so much in the east, where whole swathes of eastern Russia jut into the Pacific Ocean, but on its western flank.
Russia’s Northern Fleet consists of submarines, patrol ships, and icebreakers, with subs making up the majority of its naval vessels. Image: Foreign Policy
The small wedge of land around St Petersburg (where the Russian Navy is headquartered) is Russia’s only access to the Baltic Sea and trade via the North Atlantic. If it wasn’t for that territory (conquered by Tsar Peter I, “the Great”), Russian vessels would have to make the arduous arctic trip from much further north, which has historically been encased in ice for much of the year. This isn’t so much a contemporaneous concern, thanks to climate change, which has opened up a lot more of Russia’s northern oceans to both economic and military activity.
Russia can still utilise its northern bases, as the Gulf Stream keeps coastal temperatures mild enough not to lock ships in harbour throughout winter. But it’s not an ideal location for a major naval base. This potential restriction, though, has a far smaller impact for submarines, because they can travel beneath the ice, so the obstacle isn’t the same kind of impediment it is to surface-going vessels.
On its southern flank, Russia does have a reasonably long coastline along the Black Sea, though much of it is contained in the Sea of Azov, a bay which adjoins the Black Sea proper. The largest protrusion of coastline available to it when the Soviet Union existed was Crimea. Take a guess at who conquered Crimea just prior to founding St Petersburg? The same imperial Tsar. The point is that neither of these areas are originally Russian.
After the collapse of the USSR, Crimea became a part of the Ukraine—the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR)—which, interestingly (albeit briefly) gave it claim to the entire Soviet Black Sea Fleet based there at the time. Diplomatic conflict between the Russian Federation and independent Ukraine on the subject of Crimea, and Russian access to the peninsula, was not uncommon in the 1990s and early 2000s. Ukraine had granted Crimea the status of “Autonomous Republic”, allowing it a degree of self-determination within the larger nation-state. That only the capital, Kyiv, and Sevastopol (the largest city in Crimea and an historically important port) hold this special administrative status in Ukraine should indicate its significance.
It’s worth noting that Sevastopol, thanks to its location, is quite comparatively wealthy in the local region, as it is a major trade centre, and has a milder climate than much of Ukraine and especially Russia, as well as being a popular tourist destination on the Black Sea. So in addition to its strategic value the peninsula holds economic value as well.
Crimea itself has been the site of several historical conflicts. Sevastopol was originally a Greek colony called Chersonesus, and existed under the Roman Republic and Empire and its Byzantine successors, before being sacked multiple times and eventually destroyed by the Mongols. The region then became a Khanate under the Golden Horde; then a protectorate and ally of the Ottoman Empire in the middle ages; it even rose to prominence and challenged Muscovy for dominance in the region before the latter prevailed and imperial “Russia” was constituted. Finally, it was gradually annexed and crushed into submission by, in a moment of retrospective irony, an alliance of Ukrainian and Russian forces (under the empress Catherine II, also “the Great”), after which it was subsumed into the Russian Empire.
Yalta, where the eponymous World War II conference took place, is in Crimea. It still seems a little strange, growing up in the ‘80s as I did toward the end of the Cold War, to conceive of Britain and the US, in particular, as allies of the Soviet Union. I suppose that’s what the desire to punch Nazis does to those otherwise indisposed to one another. Image: Britannica
At this point, the city of modern Sevastopol was founded (by Catherine) close to the remains of the Greek ruins, first as a fortress, before becoming a naval base; later a seaport. But within half a century its importance attracted the attention of other European forces, and Russia was defeated in the Crimean War (against the Ottomans, France, and the U.K.) and had to relinquish its ability to create naval fleets in the Black Sea (which would have threatened Ottoman interests in the area). Later, when the Soviet Union was formed, the Tartars—the descendants of the original Mongol conquerors—were forcibly ejected from the region, and it became a part of the Ukrainian SSR. During the Second World War it was occupied by Nazi forces. After the collapse of the USSR, Crimea remained a part of Ukraine, until 2014 when it was yet again invaded, this time by the Russian Federation.
It is contextually interesting to note that the Crimean conflict in 2014 took place concurrently with the Winter Olympics, coincidentally held at Sochi, a very short geographic distance from the Crimean peninsula (and also the most expensive Olympic Games ever held; about three times more costly than the 2012 London Summer Olympics). It always surprises me just how close those locations are, and how seamlessly the two events were reported; there was remarkably little international outrage—perhaps because at that time the Ukrainian government was a shambles, post-revolution. But the Winter Olympics were right there, next to this sneaky invasion.
While other events preceding the invasion which affected its timing—most notably the aforementioned revolution in Ukraine itself, which was used as an excuse for Russia to “protect” ethnic Russians in Crimea—could not possibly have been foreseen by Russia, it is nevertheless a fantastic coincidence that it occurred in parallel with these particular games. I can remember the news making note that Vladimir Putin, then still relatively little-known as an international figure, leaving the Olympics in order to personally oversee aspects of Russia’s involvement in Crimea (a portent of his instinct for micro-management).
While initially the confluence of events drew more attention to Crimea than perhaps would have occurred otherwise, ultimately the festivities of the Olympics overshadowed the bleak events happening nearby, perhaps shielding Russia from the kind of criticism it has received with its latter foray into Ukrainian territory.
In terms of how it was executed, the most notable elements of the 2014 conflict—in a general sense and in hindsight—were the use of private military forces (mercenaries, basically, which we would now have to assume with near certainty were the Wagner Group’s first major deployment) and how Russian trolls bombarded various social media outlets and released various “documentaries” in response to the conflict.
Back then it was pretty obvious that this was all propaganda. But not unlike the similarly-ubiquitous falsehoods of one Donald Trump, even the most blatant fabrications can become so wearisome from sheer repetition that after a while one begins to wonder whether after enough persistence even total bullshit can seem real.
Questions of Autonomy
Russia doesn’t have a great record when it comes to dissent. It might be worth considering a few egregious forays into a region called Chechnya, which is in the Caucasus region at the most southern flank of Russia’s south-eastern border, on the other side of the Black Sea to Crimea. This region, which is largely Muslim, was first swallowed by the Russian Empire in the 1800s and has caused it an enormous amount of grief—mainly in the form of uprisings or partisan resistance to Russian rule—ever since.
The First Chechen War (1994-96), under Boris Yeltsin and an early test of the post-Soviet Russian Federation, resulted in largely the same heavy-handed response to internal ructions which had characterised Soviet autocracy. It ended in what would almost universally be seen as a humiliation for Russia, thanks largely to their own brutality and also the resolve of the Chechen people, who are largely Muslim and (like Ukrainians in the current conflict) were fighting for their very survival. The USSR had forcibly deported large portions of ethnic Chechens in the 1940s, falsely claiming collaboration with Nazi Germany (a tactic still used by Putin), despite fifty thousand Chechens having fought on the front lines for the Red Army during the Second World War. It did not reflect well on Yeltsin that his disorganised regime could not even handle an uprising in some far-flung southern rump of the country.
The Second Chechen War (1999-2000) played out somewhat differently. See if this sounds familiar: a series of tensions along the Russian border trigger a build-up of military forces. Local political figures are targeted by assassination attempts, pro-Russian separatist fighters appear in force and claim their territory an “independent” republic which conveniently also wishes to secede to the Russian Federation. Separatists are supported by well-armed and organised paramilitary forces which aren’t national but are perhaps mercenaries, and certainly not funded locally. A critical strategy of the early conflict includes missile strikes against civilian areas under the pretext flushing out local terrorists or loyalists; the point being that civilian casualties became a secondary concern to any ostensible military objective.
That’s how Russia dealt with Chechnya the second time, and it worked. The war was won by brutal means, but won it was. While the reliance on overwhelming force remained, it was clear that the pre-war preparation, propaganda, and destabilisation played a key part in the different outcome.
The contemporary Chechen cabinet pose for the media with their elected president in the traditional attire of their Tatar forebears. Just kidding. The little guy in the middle with the extra padding in his boots is Ramzan Kadyrov, a brutal warlord who keeps the Chechen “Republic” under control for Putin. He is about as stereotypically dictatorial as you can probably even imagine; the corruption and crimes of his regime are truly legion. He makes Putin look positively benign. Image: Yelena Afonina/TASS/picture alliance/dpa
This conflict also coincides with the astonishing rise a Russian deputy prime minister (one of three at the time), who in the course of a single day became Prime Minister, was anointed Boris Yeltsin’s successor, and announced a run for president. Virtually unknown, he went on to exploit his status as a former KGB agent to run a law-and-order campaign which would subsequently win him 53% of the vote—the lowest percentage he would ever receive in an election. I’ll give you one guess who that was.
Now, don’t get me wrong: Chechnya was, during and between both wars, in a state of absolute chaos, ruled by various competing warlords, and riven by religious extremism and internal conflict. Its government was tenuous at best, and left to its own devices Chechnya would almost certainly have remained a violently conflict-plagued place.
The context here is to illustrate how Russia in the Putin era has handled dissent and its territorial ambitions within what it considers to be its sphere of influence. A post-conquest referendum in 2003 resulted in a literally incredible 95.5% of the vote supporting formal integration with Russia. And yet terrorism, insurgency, and civil dissent remain enormous challenges in the region, suggesting that this vote wasn’t, to put it mildly, as representative as Russia might suggest.
Not So SEPARATE ISSUEs
Crimea is not the only former flank of the USSR which Russia has eyed strategically, in order to protect its power projection or allow it to press further into neighbouring regions.
When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 (which is south of the Caucasus mountains just as Chechnya is north of them), it was in theory to defend the rights of an ethnic group called the South Ossetians and their “separatist” movement. Pro-Russian separatists, again—followed by invasion, again. In practice, though, Russia’s goals were likely quite different, even if they were never explicitly stated.
A legitimate concern regarding modern Russian ideas about its sphere of influence—its “rightful” territory or region of control—relates to the areas which used to be considered part of its empire, whether under a Tsar or the Central Committee. After all, Stalin was himself Georgian, and Russia is inarguably the successor state to the USSR. Therefore, in many Russian minds, Georgia could be considered—if not in an absolute sense—within some kind of historical jurisdiction over which Russia intends to express dominance.
Back in 2008, one of Russia’s primary goals was likely snatching up more of the Black Sea coast in a region called Abkhazia. Russian forces occupied this area while ostensibly supporting other “self-proclaimed republics” in the country. An extraordinarily aggressive form of peacekeeping, perhaps?
Separatism in and around the edges of Russia might, with some justification, be considered synonymous with “potential target for Russian imperialism”. In 2014—with the conflict largely fallen out of Western political interest—it was announced that Abkhazia’s military would henceforth be considered part of the Russian armed forces. That’s essentially annexation by another name.
It is important to consider how Russia’s actions serve both to increase its own geopolitical influence in the region as well as to dissuade nearby states—through a display of military force if necessary—from showing too much interest in alliances with the United States, or “the West”, depending on the rhetorical moment.
A Matter of Perspective
From a Russian perspective it might be understood (rightly or wrongly) that region like Crimea or Chechnya or even Georgia or the entirety of the Ukraine are de facto a part of “Russian” territory. While such claims may not recognised as such by the international community, they have for significant stretches of its history been aligned with Russia or whatever iterative empire Russia has controlled.
This isn’t any kind of justification for any of its invasions, only a reflection of the kind of mindset that conservative or patriotic Russians—in particular Putin himself—might currently have in regard to the country’s territorial ambitions in and around its sphere of influence. Of course, this kind of politically lascivious glance toward any area where “ethnic” [insert nationality here] reside becoming a part of the “homeland” isn’t a new idea. Germany once had the same kinds of ideas about Austria, the Sudetenland, and half of Poland. We know how that turned out.
But there is another aspect to Russia’s perspective of history, particularly in regard to the Cold War and its aftermath, which shapes the geopolitical grievances of Russian perspectives more than any other. It still smarts, I imagine, and it is a perpetual thorn in the Russian hide—and, unlike many of its other grudges, not without some merit either.
Nato: AN Anti-Russian Alliance?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is a Cold War-era union originally created in 1949 between the United States, Canada, and ten of their European allies. The alliance sought, among other things, to resist the perceived expansion of communism, manifest in the form of the Soviet Union, whose control over eastern Europe had been solidified in conjunction with the end of the Second World War.
In response to NATO, the Soviet sphere created the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in 1955, a similar defensive alliance which is usually referred to as the Warsaw Pact, after the capital of Poland, where it was ratified. NATO is occasionally referred to as the Washington Treaty for the same reason. Both alliance systems represented, in a way, the shape of trans-Atlantic attitudes at the time toward the dominant players in the ideological struggle we now refer to as the Cold War.
At the time of its creation, NATO consisted of mostly western (geographically as well as culturally) European nations; the Warsaw Pact contained the entirety of the Soviet sphere of influence. That is, all of the countries which at that time had embraced a version of communism (and, less politely, which had coincidentally also been steamrolled by the USSR during its “liberation” of Nazi-occupied territory at the end of World War II).
Both were designed as collective defence treaties; the signatories agreed that to invade or wage war on one would necessitate doing so to the entire group. It was likely a factor which, not unlike the Bismarckian Triple Alliance of the early 20th century, in theory (but not necessarily in practice) ensured peace through the potentially extraordinary cost of conflict. Unlike the Triple Alliance, these two treaties arguably worked.
Given the stakes involved during the Cold War, it is legitimately amazing that the USA and USSR managed to get through half a century of proxy war and nuclear escalation without destroying the planet. The US took a slightly more diplomatic approach, wielding soft and hard power in equal measure, winning enemies via its various intrusions, and friends by the largesse distributed among its chosen supplicants. Russia, on the other hand, with its identity irrevocably intertwined with past glories as an empire, sought a more direct approach to its servants and allies. It was undeniably the head atop the Soviet machine’s shoulders, and was unafraid to brutally suppress even moderate resentment or reform among its subject-states; as it did for example in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Fascist fall-out
While it perhaps seems self-evident why NATO might have been formed, given the various aggressions and suppressions of the Soviet Union, it might not be so obvious why the Warsaw Pact even came to be. It was initiated not by the Soviet Union, as one might expect, but by Czechoslovakia (now the Czech and Slovak Republics) and Poland.
You might wonder, why? And it would be a good question with a reasonably simple answer. The nation which, less than a decade ago, had brutally conquered both countries under the regime of Adolf Hitler had been torn in half by the victors of the Second World War. Imagine if the Western half of that nation was being rearmed within the protective sphere of NATO. Under defensive pretexts or not, that’s unlikely to be taken lying down.
From a Western European perspective, the rearmament of West Germany would have been nested within arguments for a strong resistance against communist expansion, the cultural bugbear of the time. But from an Eastern European perspective, giving weapons back to a nation who had less than a decade ago literally embodied the most tyrannical form of government the world had arguably seen since the Middle Ages was not cool. It would have been fairly simple to argue the creation of the Warsaw Pact was a righteous resistance against fascism, and a means of ignoring all the problematic elements of Stalinism in particular. Overly simplistic, sure, but the argument could be made.
One might then care to recall that Putin’s modern-day arguments often include statements along the lines of Russia being a bulwark against fascism. Putin has explicitly made the argument that Ukraine—in its more recent iteration aligned with the West—harbours “neo-Nazis”. I wonder why that might be? It seems ludicrous to Western ears, but that’s the point; such arguments are not intended for Western ears at all.
It is easy in hindsight to assume some kind of interference in, or manipulation behind, the creation of the Warsaw Pact, which helped solidify Soviet power in central Europe. To be clear, that isn’t helped by events like the USSR either engineering, or certainly supporting, a coup d'état in Czechoslovakia in 1948 (before either alliance was even created) to solidify communist control of the country by military rather than democratic means. The later Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the 1960s only reinforces suggestions that it wasn’t quite as communist as it may have appeared.
Yet none of that acts as an effective justification of NATO’s willingness to see the geographically larger and economically dominant half of Germany—the successor state to Nazi Germany in the same way that Russia is the successor state to the Soviet Union—rearmed so soon after its recent demise. Keep in mind that Germany, unlike the USSR, wasn’t some crumbling empire but a fanatically racist, belligerent aggressor fixed on conquest and genocide and whose threat to Europe at the least (and probably the entire world) was existential in nature. And Nazi Germany didn’t let up until the entire Reich had been burned to ash. We now know, almost a century later, that Germany is no longer the threat it once was and appears to have learned its lesson. But that was not so evident only a decade after its defeat.
One of the greatest arguments for “communism” as a positive ideology at the time was that it created the means—via the Soviet Union itself—for the ultimate defeat of fascism. The Second World War is known in Russia as The Great Patriotic War, and the Soviet people paid a truly staggering price for their resistance to that particular foe, without which the Allies may have taken decades longer to defeat Germany, if at all.
Many Soviet-aligned states felt comfortable calling out fascism as a raison d'être for the direct expression of political strength (by which they meant oppression)—and they got away with it because it resonated with those among their populace (and no small few foreigners also) who might not have approved of communist repression but greatly preferred it to fascist tyranny. In many of these post-Soviet states, even now, Western lenience toward fascist rhetoric is likely viewed as a significant factor in its recent resurgence. And that’s an argument which, regrettably, holds water.
The Case for Encirclement
Perhaps the single greatest figurative elephant in the room (a phrase, incidentally, which originated in Russia) in regard to international relations in eastern Europe is the perception that NATO—especially since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact—has shifted from a defensive system for protecting western Europe from communist influence into an aggressive means of gradually throttling and encircling Russia specifically.
The exact proportions of this general idea are difficult to gauge and so multi-faceted that suggesting some kind of absolute answer one way or the other is impossible anyway. In other words, it depends, and it probably often depends on any given action or intent that NATO, or Russia, or any number of the bit-players around the periphery of that opposition, takes.
Part of Russia’s perceived aggression, and its poorly-disguised entitlement to the control or dominance of regions in its direct vicinity stems from its previous imperial status. Whether that has more to do with sprawling Soviet structures or the Tsarist regimes prior probably matters very little. Russia has been a great power in the past and it seeks to remain so, especially under Putin.
The region over which those two entities claimed dominion spreads an incredible distance, its direct territory reaching across distances exceeded only by superpowers as vast as the Mongol Empire of the early middle ages, or the British Empire of the early modern era. Is it any wonder Russia continues to have such delusions of grandeur?
NATO could easily—though wrongly—be perceived as the reason for the frustration of that ambition (the real reason is Russia’s own stagnation and incompetence; sanctions and counter-alliances have only exaggerated glaring deficiencies which already existed).
Rather than opposing “Russia, the nation-state”, NATO was created as a means of resisting the Soviet Union specifically and, by extension, the threat of the authoritarian communist construct it was birthed from and promulgated. The Comintern, essentially. It is important to consider whether, from the beginning, NATO was as much an ideological tool as a strictly military one. Over time, however, the degree to which NATO has continued to operate as an anti-communist bulwark can legitimately be called into question, no matter its genesis. Communism as an ideology has not held much legitimate sway for nearly half a century, even (and sometimes especially) in previously “communist” countries.
It might be worth noting at this juncture that I use the word “communist” in talking marks because the communism in question is really Stalinism. That is, an authoritarian cult of personality, and about as close to the ideas of Marx and Engels as the contemporary U.S. Constitutional Republic—an oligarchy, and by design—is to actual democracy. That is to say, not very close at all.
Observe, on the left, the Warsaw Pact in its original form; that is, the nations in blue held beneath the brutal heel of the former USSR. And it was brutal. Yet, on the right, it’s pretty hard not to see how, from a Russian perspective, some kind of “western encirclement” taking place across Europe. This image was chosen not simply to clearly reflect that visual encirclement but also, for a change, to represent the good guys™ as red, for a slightly different visual alternative to the typical rendition. Misguided though it may be, try to imagine if you grew up with the world order being represented by the “balance” on the left, what it might be like to have it transform into the lopsided situation on the right. Image: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The image above illustrates the once-extent of Soviet power throughout Europe, and the forces arrayed to resist it by 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. When NATO was formed in 1949, it did not then include Greece or Türkiye (1952), West Germany (1955, and East Germany in 1990 when it was reunified), or Spain (1982). If that wasn’t enough, the nations joining NATO have since come to include almost all of the Soviet satellite-states, with the notable exceptions of Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia, as well as a few members of the former Yugoslavia.
This general trend is considered in Russia, and those sympathetic to its perspective, to be a form of conscious “encirclement”. The more conspiratorially-minded might even suggest that the United States has manipulated NATO to “expand” toward Russia in order to contain it. In reality, this is absurd; while the US certainly has considerable international clout, it can hardly coerce another nation to the extent that it might unwillingly join an alliance against its sovereign will.
The flip-side of that particular argument is that, as previous examples have shown, Russia has hardly been a reliable neighbour itself, and is often its own worst enemy, in terms of its treatment of former dependencies and territories. Those countries inclined toward neutrality may well have been actively persuaded to consider NATO membership more by Russia’s unnecessarily aggressive posturing and use of outright force than any other single factor. Clearly, countries like Sweden and Finland have been reticent to be included, but Russia’s treatment of Ukraine has pushed them into the waiting arms of the so-called “encirclement”. The United States didn’t have to do anything more than stand by and let it happen; that’s hardly coercion.
Not One Inch
There is another aspect of NATO’s change over time which, while it doesn’t excuse Russian behaviour, certainly explains it. A hell of a lot happened in the year 1990 in Europe, not least of which was the collapse of the Soviet Union in conjunction with the reunification of East and West Germany as a single nation for the first time since Berlin fell in 1945 and swastikas were replaced; with the hammer and sickle in the east, and various versions of red, white, and blue in the west.
These two colossal events cannot be separated. Germany’s reunification stemmed from the protests in Berlin—at the time physically partitioned by the gigantic eponymous Wall and separated by a highly militarised no-man’s land—which triggered a wave of anti-communist sentiment throughout Europe. Thanks in part to the long period of Soviet neglect and stagnation (particularly under Brezhnev), the USSR, already severely weakened, lost its grip and its empire slipped through its fingers.
One of the central figures in the midst of this process was Mikhail Gorbachev, the final Chairman of the Supreme Soviet as well as both the first and last president of the Soviet Union before its dissolution. Incidentally, Gorbachev was half Russian and half Ukrainian. As the last ostensible leader of the USSR, his policies attempted to usher in a period of open dialogue (glasnost) and progressive restructure (perestroika), but it was too little, too late. Soviet inefficiency, idleness, and casual brutality had done more damage than any external threat ever could.
However, there was, predictably, much politicking involved with the process of German reunification (which was less a joining of East and West and more of an absorption of the East by the West). Essentially, the Soviet contribution was relinquishing control of a satellite state rather than any assistance with the formation of a new nation. In particular, the notion that West Germany—that is, the nation which would soon become just “Germany”—was, and would continue to be, a member of NATO was of significant concern to Russia, and a sticking point in the negotiations.
Rumours persist to this day of a meeting wherein the US Secretary of State James Baker (under George H.W. Bush, the first Bush president) said something along the lines of ‘NATO will not move one inch further east’ beyond German borders, if the Soviet Union would accept German reunification. This is the “not one inch” line which, even if it is based on some kind of actual agreement, is almost certainly apocryphal.
In essence, the argument goes that Baker suggested if the USSR allowed a unified Germany admittance to NATO, that would be it; a line would be drawn on the eastern border of Germany, and everyone would respect that as the separation between “east” and “west”. A slight shift east from the same line which was colloquially called the Iron Curtain only a few years prior. Nothing too shameful.
It’s certainly possible that something like that statement was made. And equally possible that it was not. The problem is that even if it is something Baker did say to Gorbachev, or a diplomat, or some other bureaucrat, it clearly wasn’t intended to be a formal promise. On the other hand, it is not hard to imagine that this was precisely the perception the statement engineered within the Soviet hierarchy at the time. If so, it would have been designed as a means of salving some of the painful wounds which Soviet pride was in the midst of suffering. It goes without saying that if this was the strategy, then it would have been prudent of the United States to discourage other member states in Eastern Europe from joining NATO.
Gorbachev himself has said:
The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991.
For context, this interview was in 2014 (Gorbachev died in 2022). So while not recent, his statement nevertheless makes it quite clear that there was neither a formal agreement nor promise made that NATO would never invite or accept the offer of former Soviet republics or other areas east of Germany to join the alliance.
Also keep in mind that NATO is an alliance—it’s not some tool the United States wields arbitrarily, no matter what Russian trolls or other cynics might have you think. Is it US-led? Certainly, and it would be incredibly naive to think they were anything less than the most dominant player in the alliance, given that they are the dominant player in almost every global interaction they are involved in.
Yet it isn’t within the power of the US to unilaterally approve (nor disallow) membership of NATO. That’s what makes it especially peculiar that so much hangs on what Baker is purported to have said. That’s not to say that it wasn’t suggested nor that the US didn’t strongly infer that they would dissuade what might be perceived as NATO “expansion”. But such promises would be foolish, because if—or when, as it turns out—those promises are broken, that only reinforces the sense of paranoia within Russia that they were, in fact, betrayed. The particulars don’t really matter, because it’s easier for a Russian to think that those nasty Americans lied to their face to keep the Soviets sedated while they dismembered what was left of their empire.
Psychologically, the cold reality that the Soviet empire was already crumbling can be conveniently excused because of this perception. In the very same interview as the last quote came from, Gorbachev also notes that:
the decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990
So here he refers to the “spirit” of the assurances made. That sounds very much more like the kind of thing that the ‘not one inch’ theory refers to. So while the exact statement may never have been made, it likely came to represent a sense that the United States gave the Soviets that NATO was nothing for them to be afraid of, long-term. That is, NATO would not interfere with the Soviet sphere of influence.
It is one of the ridiculous pedantries of human nature that such a big deal is made about lines. On maps, or the colloquial one “in the sand”, but when it comes to territory this goes all the way back to when we pissed on trees to remind outsiders to stay outside. Whether called a land, a home, a patch or a stomping ground, it’s why an awful lot of blood is lost: where the line is drawn.
One glaring problem for Russia is that it isn’t an empire any longer. But it has a relatively recent memory of both actual imperial Russian territory as well as that of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; most Russians likely look at places like Ukraine and Georgia and even perhaps Poland or the Czech Republic and think “not so long ago, that was part of our country”. That they were often also under the heel of the Red Army—or autocratic Tsars—comes less quickly to mind. But that is undoubtedly the instinct.
In my view, NATO encroachment did not “cause” the invasion, and even if it did, it would be an extraordinarily tenuous reason on which to hang a war. The issue of whether it enflamed Russian resentment enough to add fuel to other factors which did have a more direct causality is more difficult to overlook.
So: can Russia legitimately hold the US, or NATO, or whoever it perceives to be the architect of what are legitimate sovereign decisions by European nations to join an alliance, to account for its own aggression? Absolutely not. It’s ridiculous to think so. Does it explain their position, unjustified as it might be? It certainly does.
This moment always comes to mind when I think about the end of the Cold War, both events full tension and rivalry, both combatants exhausted by it. Muhammad Ali, in the very moment of triumph over George Foreman during the legendary Rumble in the Jungle, clearly pauses—briefly, but distinctly. It’s more evident in the footage itself (which is absolutely worth watching if you can). Ali seems momentarily unsure whether to pound Foreman again on the way to the mat, with that right arm he has readied, wound up, like a coiled spring. In that fleeting half-second, he ensconced his dignity and allowed the self-evident nature of his supremacy illustrate its own grandiosity. As expected, Foreman did not get up again. The way the US treated the USSR was not so gracious. Instead, it was like what we might expect to see at the end of some over-hyped contemporary MMA contest; fists unnecessarily battering an already unconscious skull and lots of dancing and prancing around the octagon. Image: Anonymous (inexplicably)
Also, was it wise for the United States, on the cusp of “winning” the Cold War and gloating over the staggering form of its crumbling rival, to kick the living shit out of it on the way down? Absolutely not. In my view, many of the vitriolic resentments held by Russians—not least Vladimir Putin—stem from the cruel treatment of Russia by the US in the early 1990s, as it revelled in its unfettered power and influence and began meddling, unopposed, in affairs across the globe.
Again, is this a legitimate excuse for the invasion thirty years later of the last-straw NATO applicant? Of course not. But it’s hard not to sympathise with the notion that NATO represents yet another example of American hegemony across the globe. While such an opinion seems a touch hyperbolic to me, it certainly is understandable.
And so we have that last-ditch effort to hold NATO’s encroachment at bay. While I don’t pretend the invasion is solely a response to Ukraine’s application to join the treaty, it can’t be discounted as a significant contributor, either.
Invasion
It doesn’t take an expert to recognise that Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has been an unmitigated disaster, from its very inception. There’s so much to say about why this is the case, and a few of those elements are worth considering.
You’d think that Russia, of all countries, would realise that you have to be careful about where and how you move your armies in Eastern Europe during the notorious winters in that part of the world. Perhaps it was mere ignorance of the nuanced differences between Russian and Ukrainian seasons, but one of the physical features of the Ukrainian winter is what happens right after it.
Wading Through Mud
After being covered in ice for half the year, when all that snow melts the poor drainage inherent in the clay-heavy soil of Ukraine (the same soil that makes it so good for growing things) turns much of the landscape into a sloshy mush. It’s wet, it’s slippery, half the country turns into a bog. Except for major roads. Anyone paying any attention to the early phases of the war will have noticed a high degree of interest in the road network in Ukraine, whether they lead into or out of Kyiv, or connect to this city or that city along the front lines. Kharkiv, for example, is connected by a few highways which at the present moment are positively littered with the shattered husks of cars and tanks and various military vehicles.
There’s really no excuse for this; the Russians even have a word for it: Rasputitsa, which means something like when roads stop existing, or season of bad roads, with its literal definition being closer to ‘dissolved way’. Rasputitsa—which is bezdorizhzhia, or ‘roadlessness’, in Ukrainian—is arguably even more intense in the Ukraine in spring, whereas it is a feature of both late autumn and early spring further east.
Interesting philologicial sidebar: “Stalin” is actually a pseudonym; the dictator’s birth name was Josef Jughashvili. The prefix stal means ‘steel’, inferring ‘steel-man’. In the same way, put means ‘road’ or ‘path’, and while it isn’t a pseudonym in the same sense of Stalin or Lenin, it suggests that ‘Putin’ has something to do with roads as well; ‘road-man’. Something of an irony in this situation.
Russia quickly discovered at the beginning of the war that any vehicle not on a road would quickly become bogged and halted and therefore useless—or, worse, an easy target for local partisans—and what was true of any vehicle was usually doubly so for heavy vehicles such as tanks. This is one of a few reasons why Ukrainian forces ended up with more tanks after that initial invasion than they started with; simply recovering abandoned tanks with farming tractors designed for that kind of swampy terrain netted them free armour. Ergo, the Russian invasion of Ukraine quickly became restricted to long, thin convoys snaking along properly paved and elevated roads. Even then, they weren’t immune to blockages if even a few vehicles became stuck or incapacitated.
Water and steel don’t interact all that well over time. Image: AP
Crazy LIttle Thing Called Morale
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of warfare will know that striking the supply lines of an army can be just as, if not more, effective as hitting the fighting force itself.
Russia’s first, and perhaps even worst, blunder of the war was to assume its supply lines were relatively safe because it was the aggressor. Because they aren’t complete idiots, the Russians pushed their main offensive along the major highways toward Kyiv. Yet drones and rockets are a thing, and while Ukraine didn’t have all that many at the beginning of the war, they had enough to really blow some holes in those supply lines. Once you hit a few static vehicles on a highway, they tend to make the road practically impassable. With the reliance on roads, what does that do? Puts more pressure on other roads… making them more vulnerable to similar strikes.
There’s a very old military axiom that “an army marches on its stomach”, which suggests that soldiers can only march and fight while they are fed—but it has also carried an inference about the supplies an army must carry with it in a more general sense. In the modern era, that also includes ammunition and fuel, amongst numerous other things. Without those supplies, Russian forces became quickly depleted. No tank can operate indefinitely without fuel, and no soldier can fight for long without food. The Ukrainians didn’t need to bring the front line to a standstill with direct fire if attacking supply lines would do that for them.
Another factor is existential threat. Imagine you’re some kid from the arse end of Siberia or a horribly poor, desertified steppe somewhere, with basically zero job prospects which aren’t pathetically-paid, back-breaking labour. Statistically, you’re likely to be dead by your mid-40s by drinking yourself to death, especially as a young male. Like many of your backwater countrymen, the sudden offer of recruitment into a (relatively) well-paying military and the status of having fought for your country starts to become pretty appealing. So you join up because why not? What else is there to meaningfully do?
Consider, then, that you’re a Ukrainian citizen who senses the oncoming threat of a hostile foreign power into your territorial borders as a very real insult to the concept of sovereign integrity as you understand it. You’ve long understood that this particular power (or, at least, the latest of its long line of autocratic leaders) considers your nation as a part of its own territory, to be re-absorbed by any means necessary. The enemy army rumbles along your highways and rocket strikes begin to obliterate entire blocks of your capital, hit schools and hospitals, and create rubble everywhere in places you can’t help but feel belong to you.
Those two soldiers are going to fight very, very differently in the field. Especially after the first six or twelve months of gruelling battle. Avoiding hopelessness (temporarily, before the realities of war sink in) and defending one’s own homeland are on opposite ends of the motivational spectrum. And while both sides obviously began the conflict with existing armed forces, a large proportion of the war will be fought by those who volunteer or are conscripted after the conflict begins. Whether by free will or not, both sides have found any additional manpower essential to their objectives.
Never mind that a large part of Russia’s front line forces are supplied by an organisation called the Wagner Group who, among other things, recruit soldiers from within the Russian prison system. Fight for Russia for a year, get paid, earn your freedom. It is probably, contextually, a decent deal. But guess who Wagner tend to throw straight into the meat grinder of theatres like Bakhmut, throwing masses of bodies against the enemy to compensate for ever-poorer equipment? That’s right: the expendable prison cohort.
How long before the penny drops and they simply surrender? We already know the answer to that question, and it isn’t long. From early on in the conflict, Ukraine offered Russian prisoners of war humane treatment, food and lodging and medical attention, possibly to a degree which may have seemed better than their prospects remaining in their own country’s military. Ukrainian forces, on the other hand, have been fighting furiously, sometimes literally to the last man.
Depressingly, Ukrainian soldiers have an additional incentive not to surrender: there are already countless examples of Russian soldiers horrifically torturing their captives, and often not even for intelligence or information. Presumably for that same animal need to feel, and assert, power. Cruelty is what it is, but it’s often glamorised and made a part of military culture (and that’s certainly not unique to Russia).
Micromanagement
So, Russia gets bogged down; its initial assault flounders. What then? The excuses start flowing: it’s a feint, the real attack has yet to begin; sabotage; betrayal; Western hocus-pocus. Yet the only question that matters is what to do next.
There are, undeniably, factors of peculiar efficiency in the operation of autocratic governments. Red tape tends to simply get cut when the guy in charge needs something done. Resources can be arbitrarily pulled from one budget and dumped in another. As someone who works in a bureaucracy, that feels in some respects like the ultimate dream. No accountability, no blundering or bleating around budgetary allocations, no having to convince ten people of a higher level of authority that, yes, this is a good idea and it will yield results even though they’re not immediately measurable.
But the downside of such heavy-handed authority is that the autocrat becomes inured to criticism. The people around them depend on a personal relationship with the leader in order to survive. When you have two advisors and you ask for an outcome, and one says “no, that’s too complex” and the other says, “it’s a challenge but I’ll get it done”, which do you think the leader will prefer? When things go wrong and one advisor points out all the inherent problems with a plan, and someone else clears out all the bad news and paints a pretty rosy picture, it’s human nature to go with the more pleasing account. However, that doesn’t make it so.
Corruption has consequences even for the corrupt
Astonishingly, reports have surfaced in mid March this year of Russian military commanders actively attempting to eliminate Wagner forces in the siege of Bakhmut by throwing them into the most vicious fighting and demanding unattainable objectives in order to potentially thin out and wear down both their elite units and the bulk conscripted from prisons.
Why, why, why, you might rightly ask, would any sane actor do such a thing? Well, yet again context is required for a fuller understanding of the situation. The Wagner Group, who were so successful in the invasion of Crimea back in 2014, became a key component of the second invasion into Ukraine proper last year. The founder of this organisation is Yevgeny Prigozhin, a financier, oligarch, and political operative who actively denied any link to Wagner until 2022 when he openly admitted his control of the organisation. This was also about the time that the Wagner Group itself abandoned its subterfuge, openly taking part in the initial invasion of Ukraine.
Prigozhin is colloquially known as “Putin’s Chef”, because several of his many companies provide catering services to the Kremlin, and has likely been a confidant of Putin’s for well over a decade. The exorbitant contracts he won as part of these deals may have also funded intelligence programs which later interfered in foreign elections, including that of the United States of America. He appears, therefore, to have been a key player in many of Russia’s most effective geopolitical actions of the last decade or more.
However, Prigozhin seems to have made a critical error when, after the early gains made by Russia during the war, he began taking personal credit for these operations. Incredulously he went on to criticise members of the Russian Ministry of Defence, seeing them as weakened and vulnerable, and understanding that his own position was very strong in contrast. Protected by his close association to Putin, it was unlikely that even top military figures would have struck at Prigozhin directly, so he likely felt safe. But it was not long before rumours circulated that Prigozhin wasn’t just after more military influence, but political influence also. To Putin, that likely signalled a problem.
Whatever you might think of the efficacy of autocratic rulers, the one thing they will not tolerate is a threat to their regime. And Prigozhin has became a legitimate threat. Real or imagined, Putin likely sees him as a power player whose herd of loyal soldiers required thinning. Given Prigozhin’s belligerence toward his commanders, it is unlikely Putin met much resistance among his top military aides, whom Prigozhin had also criticised. I wouldn’t be surprised if suggestions of Prigozhin’s ambitions had come from them in the first place.
And so, this most ridiculous of situations has almost engineered itself; the Russian military may have just thrown Prigozhin’s forces into the toughest fighting in the Ukraine, not necessarily to achieve an actual objective but simply to eliminate his power base. Possibly the biggest threat in Putin’s mind is that the Russian people may have begun to believe that it is Progozhin, and Wagner, who have won the most critical battles of the invasion—sorry, “special military operation”, and not Putin and the Russian Army. This is an example par excellence of corruption at work: Putin would rather see a sharp tool blunted simply so it cannot strike at him, than use it effectively in the war—perhaps especially now that things are not going so well.
To illustrate just how confident Prigozhin is presently, he even risked calling Putin something along the lines of a ‘sleepy grandpa’, alluding to his lack of decisiveness. The apparatus surrounding Putin knows nothing but sycophancy toward “the leader”; even military objectives themselves become secondary when your own survival depends on the autocrat lending you his ear. So if Prigozhin knows he can get away with actually criticising the president, he may know something the rest of us do not. Perhaps something that even Vladimir Putin doesn’t understand yet.
Perhaps had the initial invasion been successful, and Putin’s own reputation not taken a hit, Prigozhin might have likely remained part of Putin’s inner circle, just one of a number of oligarchs with a seat at the high table. As it is, he made his move and possibly exposed himself. Yet, in acting on even the potential threat Prigozhin poses—and it’s hard to deny the strategy won’t be effective—it has literally cost Russia one of its most effective tools in the war. That, to my mind, is the cost of corruption.
Or, it could be that Prigozhin—who, for all his foul-mouthed trouble-making, is actually at the front lines and so can see with his own two eyes what is happening in Ukraine—actually knows how dire Russia’s position really is. Whether his dissent is tactical, strategic, or outright rebellious, is yet to be seen.
Putinism and (un)Reality
So what do we, or can we, even know about Vladimir Putin, the man most directly responsible for this mess? That he is autocratic by nature? That he hoards power, but is inconsistent in its deployment? He has been at turns meticulously intrusive, and negligently absent from various degrees of the decision-making process throughout his tenure, none more so than during the invasion. Yet this very venture is undoubtedly his personal brain-child.
Putin is essentially the dictator of Russia. That much is clear enough. Whatever the nation decides to call itself—an empire, a federation, a republic, a union—and whatever title he happens to hold—president, prime minister, emperor—it is clear that he wields a vast amount of personal power. Atop the hierarchy of the Russian Federation, it’s Putin Rex; he may not have been born in the purple but he has certainly taken to it over time. But that doesn’t make him, as the media sometimes, suggest, unhinged.
Paranoid? Yes. Insane? No.
There are several considerations worth elucidating in regard to Putin, his regime, and its relationship to reality; that is, how much information Putin actually has, how accurate it is, whose interests are served in its modification between receipt and delivery, and following directly from that who ultimately delivers that to him directly. All of these factors play into what Putin himself may even understand, or not, before his actual motivations are even factored into the actions he takes.
Autocratic, but neither insane nor an idiot
What can we even say about Putin that isn’t just rumour or conjecture? Not much of him can be read on face value, though perhaps some of it might be open to interpretation. For instance, the fact that he is fairly short, and began balding early, may reflect a certain insecurity about his masculinity, particularly given that in my opinion he looks much more like his mother than this father.
He appears to compensate for this in several ways, not least during his phase of parading around shirtless, either fishing or riding horses. Few facts are really known about Putin, but his proficiency with Judo is one of them. Why? Perhaps because it, like other similar activities, lends him an aura of personal strength.
Say what you want about Angela Merkel, she is indefatigable. Putin seems pleased with himself, but it’s the reaction of the attaché behind Merkel which offers the most insightful reaction. Image: Getty.
When dealing with foreign dignitaries his compensation tends to involve psychological manipulation instead. An example of this was an infamous meeting with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2007, wherein he brought his black Labrador into the room. Why might he do such a seemingly random thing? Well, it just so happens that Merkel has a phobia of dogs.
To me, this is the archetypal Putin play. He can (and did) claim ignorance, and offer a tepid apology, but the message is undeniably clear: “don’t get too comfortable around me”. He wants his potential adversaries to be wary of him, and recognise that he may deploy unconventional practices and behave in unpredictable ways.
The dog itself, Konni, was harmless, and well trained. Putin would have known that when he let her into the room. Again, it wasn’t about intimidation—not directly, at least. Konni was occasionally seen in other meetings with Putin (including one with Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space), perhaps as a means of diluting the specificity of the meeting with Merkel and deflecting the sense that, in her first appearance, Konni had been deployed tactically.
In destabilising Merkel, Putin sought to gain an advantage, simply thanks to the distraction of something awkward or distressing. This can be inferred from many of his other political behaviours as well.
Something about this photograph suggests it exists somewhere betwixt the grandiosity of 2001: A Space Odyssey and a Monty Python sketch, a very strange place indeed. Image: Getty
In one particularly memorable incident in more recent times (prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine), Putin met with French President Emmanuel Macron across a table whose bizarre length—given it was just the two of them—could only be called unreasonable. It was ridiculous enough, in fact, that Putin’s Long Table has since become its own meme. As it turns out, Macron refused to take a Russian COVID test at the time, which was the ostensible reason for the separation.
(However, rumour has it that Putin has become paranoid about, or perhaps even phobic of, germs since COVID, and the table was as close as he gets to anyone he doesn’t know for sure doesn’t have the virus).
With Putin there is always some form of deniability, so in this case the attempt to paint Macron as being offensive for having refused a minor medical test was the reasoning. Yet, no doubt the table length also expressed to Macron—as it does in the visual image itself—the sense that Putin is keeping him at a generous arm’s length.
It does the semiotic work of suggesting the political or even ideological gulf between the two men and their respective nations. I would also suspect that Putin did not take kindly to being lectured by France on the topic of invasions. A not entirely unreasonable attitude given the behaviour of one Napoleon Bonaparte.
While it might be tempting to think of Putin as some singularly effective figure whose iron grip throttles every part of the country, that’s not how power actually works. Putin controls Russian politics by dominating its most powerful political party, United Russia. No single person can single-handedly control an entire nation, and as with any autocratic system, it is the party which does the work of altering or manipulating the apparatus of State—via elected officials and their means of appointment, and institutional figures such as judges or generals, depending on the power structures of that particular nation—in order to control it. Putin didn’t one day just start making commandments which the Russian people began slavishly following.
It is also why the United States should be far more concerned than it appears to be about the decades-long, insidious collusion of the Republican Party and its allies with autocratic ideology, whose worst impulses coalesced in the form of Donald Trump. That same instinct, albeit present in far more obvious ways, created Russia in its current form. The only difference is that the American iteration followed in such a chaotic and ham-fistedly incompetent manner that it failed in a way which a group led by, say, Putin, wouldn’t have.
How Putin came to the position he currently holds today also contains some interesting elements. In 1999, before anyone outside the Russian bureaucracy had even heard his name, he was a virtual nobody, overseeing the shift of Soviet assets into the fold of the Russian Federation. He was literally just a middling bureaucrat. However, he caught the attention of Boris Yeltsin and became a member of his presidential staff; soon after he rose to become director of the Federal Security Bureau—the FSB, successor to the KGB—and it was this position which likely solidified his stature within the power structure of the Kremlin, once he was able to manipulate state security to a certain degree. This shift took little more than a year, and shortly after he became one of the Federation’s three deputy prime ministers. It is almost unfathomable how quickly he solidified his position within the chaotic death-rattle that was the final years of the Yeltsin administration.
Vladimir Putin looked remarkably different when he first became President of the Russian Federation, and while it might simply be a matter of age, stress, and a comfortable lifestyle, it has been (almost certainly spuriously) suggested that he is not the only Russian powerbroker who strikes at his enemies with poison. Image: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office
Putin did eventually become Prime Minister—and, as previously mentioned, in the very same day became Yeltsin’s successor and announced his run for president. His focus on law and order appealed to the large portion of Russians who were sick and tired of the utter disorder of Soviet dissolution and the subsequent Yeltsin years. That Putin’s apparent determination and authoritarian leanings appealed to a people thoroughly exhausted from unpredictability should, in that context, come as no surprise. But it also illustrates the dangers of any kind of leader whose instincts are oppressive. While it took time, Putin now dominates the United Russia Party to such a degree that he effectively calls the shots no matter who stands in for him, as Dmitri Medvedev did as President between 2008-12. He has since remedied the inconvenience of Presidential term limits (as well as elections themselves, it seems), changing the constitution to allow himself unopposed access to the Presidency.
In popular Western rhetoric, Putin is sometimes referred to as a “madman”, an uncontrollable dictator, a loose cannon. A threat to the international order. But personally I disagree with this assessment, except for the last statement. Whilst anyone couched in a circle of sycophants which coalesced over 24 years in power will undoubtedly be out of touch with many aspects of reality, this does not make him an irrational actor. He patently is not. Whilst paranoia certainly marks much of Putin’s behaviour—which defected members of the Russian intelligence agencies have confirmed—inasmuch as he receives inaccurate information by virtue of the corrupt system he oversees, he almost certainly acts rationally upon that (albeit misleading) information.
This is evident in all sorts of behaviours and diplomatic strategies Putin is inclined to deploy.
I would also argue that the West’s depiction of him as unstable, unreasonable or, at the very least, unknowable, actually plays to many of his strengths. And in this respect he may even encourage it at times himself. The vague nature of his decrees, the wholly propagandistic language he uses, all might be interpreted by listeners as different things. I would argue that Vladimir Putin likely constructs his speeches very, very carefully. It’s easy for Western media outlets to see two hours of ramble as the unconstrained ego of a tyrant unleashed on a captive audience of his highest-ranking cronies. And this may indeed be a part of it.
But a lot of his speeches include statements designed for different audiences. Some element of his ramble will be broadcast domestically, the parts where he speaks of, for example, dedicated social workers to address the needs of conscripted soldiers and their families. Other parts of the speech speak directly to the physical audience at his disposal and, by proxy, their minions in the field—his intent to drive home the nature of the conflict and reframe it from “invasion” to some patriotic struggle between Russia and ‘the West’. Yet other aspects of his speech will have been tailored for foreign audiences; that’s the part where he talks about nuclear weapons and underscores the threat which western arms pose to things like “sovereignty”.
Each of these will be deployed for specific reasons. Of course Putin is likely to be incredibly irritated by the degree of support Ukraine has received. That has kept it in the fight, notwithstanding the outrageous degree of fortitude the Ukrainian Army showed early in the conflict. Russia vastly outweighs Ukraine in both boots on the ground and basic materiel, despite the ever-shrinking quality of Russian supplies and equipment.
The colossal mass of often literally throw-away troops Russia regularly deploys (which Ukrainian soldiers have likened to zombie hordes) can only be dealt with effectively by the kind of force multipliers Western technology can provide. In other words, arms and armaments from the United States and Western Europe have given individual Ukrainian soldiers enough of an advantage against their enemies that those soldiers now count (are “multiplied”) as more than one Russian soldier. Probably more like three or four. If they’re facing the poorly-trained, seemingly endless hordes of Wagner recruits from the criminal body, that might be more like six, or eight, or ten.
And it needs to be, because even before Wagner dipped into the prison corpus, the Russian Army outnumbered the Ukrainian Army by about three to one.
Which is why Putin is somewhat obsessed with those Western supplies and is doing everything in his power—including rattling the nuclear sabre—to dissuade them from persisting. These are not the actions of a “madman”, who would have simply used nuclear weapons in the field if they were to their advantage. Instead, they are the tactical actions of a rational actor who is leveraging one of the few remaining fears Western powers have of Russian military force now that their conventional military has been humiliated by a much weaker opponent.
Remember the incident with Merkel and the Labrador? Same thing: the purpose of the dog wasn’t to bite or growl at her; it was to make her uncomfortable. Nuclear weapons are literally Vladimir Putin’s last resort. That said, the why of such a statement deserves a bit more of an explanation.
The Psychology of Mutually Assured Destruction
For most of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union possessed the power to annihilate one another. That is, to actually obliterate the other nation, and almost certainly threaten the existence of human life across the entire planet. Their ludicrously massive stocks—numbering in the many thousands—of incredibly powerful atomic weaponry could lay waste to entire regions if necessary, and no extant defence system was able to intercept them.
In other words, if a nuclear exchange occurred, it would be utterly disastrous for every human being on the planet, and most likely hundreds of thousands of other species as well. While it probably wouldn’t actually destroy “life on earth” entirely, in all likelihood it would reduce the planet’s life to simple plants, like algae or mosses, and insects for the most part, and even then only the hardiest forms of each. Understandably, nuclear anxiety ran high. Yet, somehow, both sides managed—despite a few genuine crises—to avoid the worst-case scenario.
Gentlemen, gentlemen! You can’t fight in here, this is the war room! It is almost impossible to do justice to the absurdity of mutually assured destruction without a reference to Dr Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The Bomb, because it so meticulously ridicules the very concept of the “rational” use of atomic weapons. Even in a shot like this, lit so beautifully with the circular halogen lamp hanging over the heads of the top brass, the looming missile-map in the background, it’s easy to miss the strings of the spider-like structure itself hanging above like some kind of puppet-master commanding their subconscious actions. Image: Columbia Pictures
It is now largely understood that the underlying psychology of this concept, Mutually Assured Destruction—often referred to as the apt acronym “MAD”—is likely what we have to thank for our survival. That neither side had an incentive for triggering a nuclear exchange is the most salient detail. That, and possibly the fact of nuclear Armageddon looming as a distinct disincentive. Yet the lack of rational incentive has ensured that, since the use of Little Boy and Fat Man by the United States of America upon the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, back in 1945, no nuclear weapon has been deployed in an act of war since.
Which in itself is pretty amazing. I reckon if you’d said something along the lines of ‘no nuclear weapon will be used in an act of aggression for over seventy years’ in 1950 you would have seemed almost ridiculously naïve.
The bombs used on Japan were first known as “atomic” bombs, involving nuclear fission “splitting” an atom in order to generate colossal amounts of energy. Little Boy used uranium, and released fifteen kilotons of energy—a kiloton is the equivalent of one thousand tonnes of TNT—whereas Fat Man used plutonium and released twenty one kilotons of energy. These weapons also contained a high degree of conventional explosives to exaggerate the effect.
The next iteration of bomb was known as a “hydrogen” bomb, and if you’ve ever heard the term “H-Bomb”, that’s what it refers to. It’s a more advanced iteration, known as a thermonuclear weapon, and involves a second step, where the fission process triggers a second reaction in a separate core of deuterium and tritium; these fuse (hence, fusion, yet another name for the bomb) and create helium, but that same process creates rolling chain reactions which engineer even greater amounts of energy—and, hence, destructive power.
Modern nuclear weapons make atomic bombs look pretty modest in comparison, and contain something more like 1.2 megatons of energy—a megaton is a million tonnes of TNT. That’s about 80 times what Little Boy could produce. The point being that they are now truly terrifying weapons of mass destruction, and the use of even one of them would likely have catastrophic consequences.
However, that’s also the point. Actually using such a weapon removes its use as a deterrent.
It is also important to understand the distinction between these massive weapons, almost ridiculous in the scale of their power, which are really strategic weapons—they are used to obliterate a massive area—and a much smaller-grade tactical nuclear weapon, much smaller in scale, which would more likely be used to target, say, an army or unit. When the use of nuclear weapons is bandied about, it’s not Putin threatening to drop a 1.2 megaton weapon on Kyiv and erasing it from the face of the earth. It would be the use of smaller weapons to eradicate, say, an entire entrenched formation.
But regardless of size or strength, once such a weapon is used, deterrence ends: escalation begins. And not the escalation of rhetoric, but the use of anything from massive conventional military responses to nuclear counter-attack might be on the table. NATO, and the United States specifically, would have a casus belli to “stop Russia from doing that shit ever again”. A great deal of the world, except for China and a few fringe players like Iran and North Korea, would surely condemn the act, and Russia would become an international pariah on a level perhaps never seen before in history.
Perhaps most importantly, it also ruins Russia’s reputation as future combatant. Should it become involved in an armed conflict with another nuclear power in the future, that power would know for certain that Russia will eventually lower itself to the use of nuclear weapons. So what’s the incentive there? To do it first. They will be far, far more likely to pre-emptively deploy nuclear weapons themselves, almost certainly to knock out Russia’s own nuclear capability. This scenario is clearly to Russia’s detriment, and Putin will know it.
So long as nuclear weapons are deployed as a threat rather than literally, they remain effective. However, the problem with threats is also that if they are challenged, you only have two options: to back down and admit you don’t have the spine to follow through; or to actually go ahead and use them. Deterrents only work, ironically, so long as they are never actually used, or called out.
Imagine: a showdown between a couple of boys posturing and threatening to punch one another. In most cases, neither will want to back down because it cedes power to the other. That, I think, makes sense to most people. Yet, both implicitly understand that threats of “I’ll smash your face in” are pretty useless once they are actually used—they then simply become actions. And at that point, there’s going to be an outcome, and anyone who has been in a fight will tell you it can end badly pretty easily. This applies even more intensely when it comes to military conflict and its vast array of unknowns.
So the real question is: do either of the participants actually want a proper fight, which involves all sorts of collateral risk and is almost never walked away from without injury?
That is the scenario facing Russia. Putin might be wandering around clenching his fist ready to punch anyone who comes too close, and wagging his finger and reminding all and sundry that his country still possesses the world’s largest actual fist. Russia does indeed still own the largest nuclear nuclear stockpile in the world, though much of it is, like most post-Soviet materiel, almost certainly outdated or of questionable quality. But if he actually starts using them—especially those strategic weapons of catastrophic power—it will not even affect the vast majority of the people he is currently trying to psych out: Americans, and Western Europeans.
That is, Russia can really only use a nuke in Ukraine. Not the United States, which is the enemy Putin fears the most. Not in Germany, or the UK, or Poland, all of whom are highly motivated to support Ukraine. Russia can’t strike any member of NATO without ensuring the doom of his nation. Because if Putin does that, he knows perfectly well the war will turn from third-party support to regime change—and that is what Putin would want most to avoid.
Fallout
The actual reality of using nuclear weapons is also far more complex than tends to be illustrated in the news, or movies, or popular culture in general. For example, they aren’t useful weapons for doing much except large-scale destruction. While that might sound good, it is difficult to deploy in practice. Most powerful nukes are highly inaccurate—which they make up for by obliterating an enormous area.
But the smallest thing, like a prevailing wind, how energy is forced through a mountainous valley or if it can be dissipated in lowlands, will all play a part in a nuclear weapon’s efficacy. If Russia used such a weapon even tactically and had any of its own units nearby, there is a significant risk they could injure or even destroy their own forces. A sudden large-scale withdrawal beforehand is not only difficult to achieve under the best of circumstances, but would surely be analysed by Ukraine and possibly understood for what it was.
Huzzah! The bomb! These things tend to make for great authoritarian PR campaigns where anything appropriately phallic might compensate for the stink of fear permeating a paranoid leader and their chosen sycophants, but ultimately the cylinder in the front of this photo could be plastic for all we know. It’s the symbolism that matters. Nuclear weapons are sometimes seen as the “ultimate” weapon, but they really aren’t, and while they might look impressive in military parades, their functional use is kind of like bringing a sledgehammer to a knife fight. Bigger is not always better. Image: Korean Central News Agency/AP
While tactical nukes are considered to exhibit limited fallout in the common understanding of the term, it is in fact insufficiently tested and could easily have unpredictable effects which might vary from making anyone in a very wide area very sick, to making an area uninhabitable for a period of hours through to days, and perhaps longer if anyone moving through the area wanted to live a normal lifetime. Other uncertainties, such as the interaction of fallout with inclement weather—especially rain—could easily make the manoeuvre backfire on Russia, or wreak havoc well beyond their intended outcome.
And even if Russia could, somehow, deploy a weapon given all these unpredictable variables, under the extraordinarily unlikely best-case scenario, could the Russian military even exploit the result? Or might it end up being yet another military failure, showing that even with the grandest of weapons, Putin’s forces simply cannot get their shit together? In which case, why use a weapon if there’s no outcome to exploit somehow?
In other words, what’s the point of even using a nuclear weapon? Simply to… destroy something? That’s not much of a reason for anyone other than the truly sociopathic or insane. It certainly doesn’t match with Putin’s very self-interested behaviour, strange as it may appear to outside observers.
Depending on the level of international political outrage, using a nuclear weapon of any type or degree would almost certainly cement Russia’s status as a pariah state, likely alienating some of its moderate allies such as India, and possibly even closer allies like China. However, that is another factor far too hard to predict with any accuracy.
It would also act as an excuse for NATO to engage Russia directly, because the threat Putin personally presents would become existential, and crosses a line which has existed uncrossed for almost a century. And one thing is absolutely true: Russia definitely cannot win a war against NATO.
Yet perhaps the biggest, and most consequential, threat of all is that Putin could alienate his own populace. Many Russians might be happy to hand-wave the invasion of Ukraine as having some meaning it doesn’t, for the sake of cognitive comfort. But as the war drags on, that is likely to raise more and more questions. The use of nuclear weapons in the conflict will make those questions much more intense. If popular support wanes, or even enough of his oligarchs start becoming nervous, it would likely trigger some form of internal dissent, as has already been seen with the bellicose Prigozhin.
On the most extreme end of that spectrum is, of course, civil war—even triggered by those who simply want to be rid of Putin so they can get their country the hell out of Ukraine and thereby prevent more misery for their own people. If Putin is threatened from within, the outcome in Ukraine will quickly become almost irrelevant. If he cannot hold on to power at home, winning a foreign war won’t matter at all.
Endgame
So despite all of Putin’s posturing, and the legitimate danger of nuclear weapons and their use, it simply is not in his interests to do so while the invasion of Ukraine remains contained to that country. Perhaps, if parts of Europe or the U.S. begin talking about regime change, that might shift—if Putin’s actual status or existence is threatened from without, this entire line of thinking loses its rationale. This is the reason why NATO is extremely unlikely to become directly involved in the war. Right now, everything Putin fears is far more likely to happen if he does resort to the use of nuclear weapons, which suggests that any rational person in his situation wouldn’t use them.
And for all his terrible flaws, Putin remains a rational actor. One who might be surrounded by yes-men, unaware of certain uncomfortable realities, with inconvenient facts withheld from him, and in possession of an extraordinary ego incapable of accepting defeat. But not an irrational actor.
The use of nuclear weapons resurrects the ghosts of the Cold War era—which, it is worth noting, has been behind us for decades, and the Cold War was arguably the reason NATO was created in the first place—as well as stoking popular anxiety in the form of post-apocalyptic imagery. While weapons of mass destruction are undeniably frightening, the likelihood of their wartime use remains, in most cases, very slim.
Putin won’t use nuclear weapons, not just because it isn’t in Russia’s interests, but because it isn’t in his. Doing so would likely threaten his own image, legacy and, most importantly of all, his own safety. One of Putin’s greatest fears is reportedly to end up as Muammar Gaddafi did; brutalised, and ultimately beaten to death by his own people. Poetic, but terrifying if you’re Putin.
So, while vague fears of Armageddon may haunt the minds of us regular folk, the potential consequences for Putin involve his unseating, an end to everything he has spent over two decades building. While it is a nightmare-fuel of a completely different sort, it must certainly haunt his dreams enough that he recognises that it remains existential for him, too.
So, if nuclear weapons are not likely to be the endgame here, what is? Unfortunately for the miserable soldiers doing the actual fighting in this war, an endless slog is now the most likely scenario.
War of the Waldemars
Both Putin and Zelenskyy are named Vladimir or Volodymyr (the same name), which in Germanic would be Waldemar; Voldemar in Finnish. Etymologically it means something like ‘great ruler’ (vladi; ruler, mir; famous), and Waldemar (waltan; govern, mari; shining). The closest English name might be (the, ironically, Frankish) Robert (hrodr; glory, beraht; shining), but eastern European names don’t tend to translate particularly well west of Germany.
A summit in Paris in 2019 was the only time Volodymyr Zelenskyy (far left) and Vladimir Putin (far right) met or were even in the same place at the same time. Zelenskyy was a relatively raw and unpolished president at the time and probably not taken all that seriously by Putin in particular, who expected to dominate proceedings (and arguably did). However, Zelenskyy proffered the first signs of his defiance of Putin, and the predictably inconclusive event probably marks the end of Putin’s control of the narrative around Russia’s efforts to militarily subsume the Ukraine. Image: Charles Platiau/Reuters
Of this War of the Waldemars, only one of them will likely be remembered as being particularly great. Each will certainly have an enclave of devotees prepared to explain in detail why in their opinion one or the other might be the one most deserving of glory. But so much of that legacy will hinge on the outcome of this conflict. If Ukraine submits, or exhausts itself, the shine of Zelenskyy’s efforts may fade; likewise, no matter his entrenched reputation over the last two decades, Putin’s legacy will crumble if Russia is overrun.
The risk for both is extraordinary, though it really is Putin’s war, so he bears the lion’s share of the potential reputational damage. And even now, backed into a corner and enduring consecutive embarrassments, Putin has kept his head low and remained largely quiet.
In my view it is far more likely that Putin will simply dig in and become stubborn about Ukraine, and—not unlike Afghanistan—we could be looking at yet another hungry quagmire of money and blood and energy for no ostensible benefit to anyone at all. Sadly, if this war is still grinding away in another decade without much in the way of a significant shift it wouldn’t really be much of a surprise. If that happens, it may take the economic collapse of one or the other of these states to force a resolution, barring revolution, civil war, or Putin’s removal via force majeure, whether by design or natural causes.
Perhaps, if Ukraine manages to fully utilise the impressive Western arsenal at its disposal in its upcoming offensive, and can breach Russian lines enough to surround a couple of armies and actually threaten Russian territory, there could be a resolution.
But even then, Ukraine is hamstrung by the United States’ insistence that its approval of the use of its technology (which is also the technology underpinning much of the German and French and Polish materiel provided to Ukraine) is contingent on it not being used to enter Russian territory. It is one of the bizarre insanities of war that certain rules, like this one, are obeyed, whilst others—like those stomped into dust when Russia invaded—are blatantly ignored. The US proffers its remote assistance in the name of “neutrality”, because the U.S. doesn’t want to be seen as interfering directly in a way that might threaten Russia. In turn, Russia accepts this illusion because if it were to spit in the face of that posture, the entirety of NATO might simply take up arms and obliterate them.
It is extremely likely that Putin will not yield in this matter. So what might bring Russia to its knees, in the face of such autocratic obstinance? Well, he could travel, for one. Having broken several international laws by engaging in what are now well-recorded war crimes, there is a possibility he could be apprehended in a foreign state should he travel to a country who is a signatory to particular agreements. Is this likely? No. But it is a possibility nonetheless.
One factor which might not simply break the gruelling monotony but in fact be predicated upon it, could be rebellion, or revolution; that is, an armed uprising from within Russia itself. Prigozhin has already alluded to something similar, though talk is cheap. While Wagner are indeed powerful, they are not the entirety of the Russian Army, Air Force, and Navy.
Yet, if the Russian people themselves get sick of this vanity project or, more likely, the impoverishment it is certain to eventually create, the threat could be far more widespread than even Putin could contain. Disaffected rebel forces from within Russia have already begun causing headaches behind the main lines, usurping smaller towns along the border to remind the top brass that if the entire Russian Army is tied up kicking Ukraine’s teeth in, Russia itself becomes vulnerable because there’s not much left to defend it.
Miserably, perhaps the two most significant factors likely to affect the war have nothing to do with Europe at all. The first is that Joe Biden may lose the 2024 presidential election and the United States may plunge back into the hectic chaos of a second Trump presidency (the notion of DeSantis winning the Republican primary is a joke while Trump lives; an ex-presidential heart attack is probably the Floridian governor’s best hope).
Trump has made no effort to disguise his admiration of Putin, and it would be a nightmare beyond recognition for Ukraine if he were to win that election. Unlikely as that scenario is, it was also incredibly unlikely in 2016, and yet here we are. A second Trump presidency would, among other things, almost certainly throttle the aid the United States has been providing and, without that, a decisive victory for Ukraine would seem hugely improbable.
The other looming issue is a potential clash between the United States and China. If the USA was to become engaged in a war of its own, without all the caveats and fancy-dress of a proxy war, that might turn American attention away from what would then surely be considered a secondary, tertiary, or even lower, priority. Again, Trump’s distaste for China, and the loudly-expressed bigotry of a swathe of the American population, combined with Xi Jinping’s own growing confidence and authoritarianism, make this not just possible but depressingly likely. Throw in a bit of racist baiting by some Russian trolls, a few missiles launched over Taiwan and all of a sudden the forever-war in the Donbas becomes a sidebar.
Ultimately, however the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends, the next decade is likely to be scarred by it.