Nationalism - Atlantic Council

Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy

Vasyl Sehin — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:04:12 +0000

The participation of veterans in public and political life has the potential to transform Ukrainian democracy. If managed inclusively and responsibly, it can strengthen legitimacy and trust. However, this trend could also carry real risks if veterans are used by traditional political actors or inadequately prepared for their role in public life.

Ukrainian legislation does not allow for elections under the current martial law conditions. Beyond legal constraints, the practical obstacles to wartime elections are also overwhelming. Fair campaigning conditions and safety during voting cannot be guaranteed. Meanwhile, over ten million Ukrainians have been displaced by Russia’s invasion, with millions more currently serving in the military or trapped in Russian-occupied regions.

The impracticality of elections is broadly accepted by Ukrainian society and among the country’s European partners. They recognise that any premature vote would risk undermining the legitimacy of Ukraine’s institutions and eroding public trust at a moment when democratic resilience is essential. Tellingly, the idea of wartime elections is mainly promoted by Russia as part of Kremlin efforts to weaken Ukraine from within.

When conditions allow for free and fair Ukrainian elections to take place, a key issue will be the inclusion of those who are currently defending the country. According to a preliminary forecast by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, after the war ends, the number of war veterans and their family members will reach five to six million people, or one in six Ukrainians.

Opinion polls indicate strong public trust in the Ukrainian military along with widespread support for the participation of veterans in Ukrainian politics. In contrast, Ukraine’s existing democratic and political institutions are among the least trusted entities in society. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that veteran involvement in politics could help counter this trust deficit and strengthen Ukrainian democracy.

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It is important to note that most Ukrainian veterans are not career military personnel. The vast majority of today’s Ukrainian soldiers joined the military voluntarily or were mobilized and expect to return to civilian life in peacetime. Veterans are also not a homogeneous group and do not represent a specific political agenda. They differ in views, values, and priorities, and should be understood as individuals seeking meaningful participation within legitimate democratic institutions.

Electing military personnel to public office is not without risk. Military experience does not automatically translate into political skill. Veterans transitioning from the battlefield to politics may face challenges in terms of essential political know-how such as policy coherence, negotiation tactics, coalition-building, and working within institutions. Without targeted support and a clear civilian framework, veterans risk being marginalized within political parties or exploited as symbolic figures without real influence.

Ukraine has previous practical experience of veterans entering politics, notably during the country’s 2014 parliamentary elections. One of the former military personnel elected on that occasion was Oksana Korchynska, who recalled at a recent Kyiv event how she “came from the front line, from Mariupol, two days before taking the oath of MP.”

Korchynska noted that in 2014, veterans were frequently included on electoral lists without being integrated into decision-making structures. While veterans enjoyed high public trust, their actual influence within parties and parliament has so far often been limited. This experience underscores a critical lesson: Political inclusion must be substantive, not symbolic. Veterans need pathways to real influence within parties and institutions, not mere visibility.

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Members of Ukraine’s veteran community do not need to wait for elections to take up a role in public life. Many are already serving in local government or building civic organizations and veteran associations. Kateryna Yamshchykova is a veteran who became acting mayor of Poltava in 2023. “Opportunities already exist for everyone,” she reflected. “Did I really want the position of acting mayor? It was the last thing I wanted in my life, but I understood that this responsibility had to be taken on in order to build the country we are fighting for.”

This kind of local engagement can help veterans develop the skills they need to run as candidates in national elections after the war ends. Democratic participation, civic habits, and political responsibility cannot be developed overnight. Instead, early engagement can help bring about a stable postwar transition.

For established Ukrainian political parties, engagement with the country’s veteran community is already becoming increasingly necessary to maintain public support. This will likely lead to intensified internal competition as veterans seek leadership roles alongside longstanding party members.

Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former commander of the Ukrainian army, has warned that established political elites might see veterans as a threat to their position. If this happens, everyone in Ukraine stands to lose. Public trust in politicians would erode further, undermining the legitimacy of decisions that will be essential for European integration and postwar recovery.

A critical step toward the meaningful political participation of veterans is the development of a clear legal framework for Ukraine’s first postwar elections. This should ensure inclusive participation, clarify registration requirements for new political parties, and potentially impose stricter campaigning rules to protect electoral integrity.

Ukraine’s democracy is not on pause; it is being reshaped under fire. The emergence of veterans as political actors represents a profound structural change in Ukrainian society. In and of itself, this change is neither a threat to democracy nor a guarantee of positive change. Instead, it requires a deliberate and inclusive approach. If Ukraine succeeds in integrating veterans into civilian political life while preserving pluralism, accountability, and fair competition, it may emerge from the war with a more resilient democracy capable of sustaining inclusive recovery, reforms, and European integration.

Vasyl Sehin is the WFD Country Director in Ukraine.

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Russia’s refusal to embrace the idea of a compromise peace should come as no surprise. After all, Putin has built his entire reign around the promise of restoring Russian greatness and reversing the perceived humiliations of the Soviet collapse. After nearly four years of full-scale war, a negotiated settlement that secured Ukraine’s status as an independent country would represent a major political failure.

Since 2022, Kremlin officials and Russian state media have consistently portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against Western aggression with the aim of establishing a new world order and returning Russia to its rightful place as a great power. However, a peace deal based on the current line of contact would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the West. Such an outcome would be viewed in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat.

This framing creates a political trap of Moscow’s own making. Putin knows he would face a potentially disastrous domestic backlash if he accepted anything less than a clear Russian victory in Ukraine. Peace terms that failed to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit would raise difficult questions about the enormous costs of the invasion. Russians would want to know why the country had spent vast sums of money and sacrificed so many men in order to achieve so little. Putin would risk entering Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

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Putin has begun 2026 in a challenging position. He remains reluctant to upset Trump, but he dare not accept the compromise peace the US leader is proposing. Instead, Putin needs either total victory in Ukraine or indefinite conflict. Any attempt to end the war without establishing complete political control over Ukraine would threaten the stability of Putin’s own regime. His interests are therefore best served by seeking to prolong negotiations while working toward a military solution.

If Western leaders wish to change the current political calculus in Moscow, they must first acknowledge that there is no alternative to increasing the pressure on Putin. At present, the Kremlin dictator views escalation as necessary for regime survival and has no plans to end the war.

Two scenarios could disrupt this trajectory. A collapse in global oil prices combined with successful secondary sanctions enforcement could create an economic crisis that would force Putin to revise his priorities. Alternatively, mass casualties during a failed spring 2026 Russian offensive could trigger domestic instability, while also highlighting the fading prospects of a military breakthrough.

Both these outcomes are realistic but would require significant additional action from Ukraine’s partners. If the West is unable to muster the requisite political will, escalation remains Moscow’s most rational path in 2026. Putin has little choice but to continue his invasion. Even if Russian victory remains out of reach in the coming year, he knows he cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specialising in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security.

Putin’s reference to “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”) raised eyebrows and was widely seen as a signal that Russia may be preparing to increase its territorial demands. The Czarist era term “Novorossiya” was first employed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by imperial administrators to describe large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine then under Russian rule. It fell into disuse during the Soviet period, only to be resurrected by the Kremlin following the onset of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2014.

Russian nationalists have yet to agree on the exact boundaries of Novorossiya, but most envisage a territory stretching far beyond the partially occupied Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson that are currently claimed by the Kremlin. Putin has indicated that his definition of Novorossiya encompasses approximately half of Ukraine, including the country’s entire Black Sea coastline and major cities such as Odesa and Kharkiv.

Then there is the question of Kyiv. According to Russia’s own national mythology, the capital of Ukraine is also the mother of Russian cities and the spiritual birthplace of Russian Orthodoxy. Putin has repeatedly referenced the sacred status of Kyiv in his many essays and speeches denying the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood. It is therefore extremely difficult to imagine him accepting any peace proposal that secures Kyiv’s postwar position as the capital of an independent Ukraine. Putin can hardly claim to be reuniting Russia’s historic lands if he leaves the most Russian city of them all firmly in the hands of a hostile state.

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Based on his own public pronouncements and extensive writings on the subject, it seems reasonable to conclude that Putin’s understanding of historically Russian lands includes the whole of Ukraine. Indeed, he has made no real secret of this conviction. “I have said many times that I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin told guests at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in summer 2025. The real question is whether his imperial agenda extends beyond the borders of Ukraine.

In a geographical sense, Putin’s vision of historical Russia is definitely not confined to Ukraine alone. Instead, it includes the vast additional expanses of the Czarist Russian Empire and its Soviet successor. “What is the Soviet Union? It is historical Russia,” Putin declared in 2022. A year earlier, he had lamented the fall of the USSR as “the disintegration of historical Russia” by another name. “We turned into a completely different country,” Putin stated. “And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost.”

When European dictators start ranting about lost thousand-year empires, it rarely bodes well for international security. Putin is no exception. The Kremlin dictator’s determination to reverse modern Russia’s fall from grace has come to dominate his reign and has led directly to the biggest European war since World War II. His deeply felt sense of historical grievance over the Soviet collapse has fueled a poisonous obsession with Ukraine, which Putin regards as the ultimate symbol of the injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Due to its large size, geographical proximity, shared history, significant ethnic Russian population, and perceived cultural closeness, Ukraine occupies a prominent place in Russia’s imperial identity. However, it is wishful thinking to imagine that sacrificing Ukraine will appease Putin or persuade him to forget about the rest of the former Russian Empire. Instead, the same bogus historical arguments used to justify the invasion of Ukraine could easily be applied to a host of other nations. Any country that was previously subjected to Russian imperial rule could technically fall within Putin’s broad definition of historically Russian lands. “We have an old rule,” he commented earlier this year. “Wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”

Based on the boundaries of the Czarist Empire at its greatest extent on the eve of World War I, potential targets of future Russian aggression could include Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the nations of Central Asia. Nor is this list exhaustive. A truly maximalist approach would also require the inclusion of the many former Soviet satellite states that made up the Eastern Bloc during the second half of the twentieth century.

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With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine about to enter a fifth year, many in the West are now beginning to take Putin’s imperial ambitions increasingly seriously. According to Reuters, recent United States intelligence assessments confirm that Putin has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that once belonged to the former Soviet Empire. “The Europeans are convinced of it. The Poles are absolutely convinced of it. The Baltics think they’re first,” the report noted.

Not everyone is so sure. Skeptics tend to question Putin’s ability to wage a major war against the West, with many pointing to his army’s underwhelming performance in Ukraine as proof of Russia’s military limitations. This is comforting but dangerously misleading. In reality, Russia’s lack of progress since 2022 is not a sign of any fundamental weakness; it is testament to the formidable strength and staggering sacrifices of the Ukrainian nation. However, Ukraine’s remarkable resistance against overwhelming odds cannot continue indefinitely and must not be taken for granted. If Ukraine falls, Europe will face a challenge it is utterly unprepared for.

Today, the Ukrainian army is by far the biggest and most experienced fighting force in Europe, other than Russia itself. It is backed by a rapidly expanding and highly innovative domestic military industry that is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. If Putin is permitted to succeed in establishing control over Ukraine, all this will be rapidly integrated into the Kremlin war machine. A partially disarmed Europe will then find itself confronted by a dramatically emboldened Putin, who will have the continent’s two largest armies at his disposal. In such uniquely favorable circumstances, the chances of him choosing not to press home his advantage are next to zero.

The internal logic of the Putin regime is an additional factor driving Russia’s expansionist impulse. Economically, politically, and culturally, Russian society is now deeply militarized in ways that will be extremely difficult to reverse without destabilizing the country. Nor is the Kremlin in any hurry to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers currently fighting in Ukraine. These men are now used to receiving vastly inflated salaries and have been brutalized by the bloodiest invasion in modern history. Keeping them occupied, and preferably as far away from Russia as possible, is now a very real national security priority for Moscow.

Putin may also be encouraged to act by the current geopolitical climate, which presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to advance Russia’s imperial agenda. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has signaled a radical shift in US policy toward the war in Ukraine and the broader defense of Europe. This has led to a mounting sense of insecurity in European capitals amid unprecedented concerns over America’s commitment to NATO collective security. Would a Russian attack on the Baltic states trigger an Article 5 response from the US? Given Trump’s posturing on NATO budgets and his administration’s ambivalent attitude toward Europe, some believe this can no longer be taken for granted.

Europe alone is not yet in a position to defend itself against Russia. After decades of defense sector neglect, effective rearmament will take years to complete. European leaders have also failed to demonstrate the kind of collective political will necessary to deter the Kremlin. The recent failure to agree on the use of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort was the latest in a long line of climb downs that have signaled Europe’s chronic disunity and crippling fear of escalation. There are many good reasons why Putin may not rush to expand the war, but concern over a potentially decisive European response is not one of them.

As evidence of Western weakness continues to mount, Putin is growing bolder. In recent months, he has escalated Russia’s hybrid war against Europe with sabotage attacks on critical infrastructure and drone incursions across the continent. In the diplomatic arena, Kremlin officials recently renewed calls for NATO to retreat from central and Eastern Europe, a move that would expose more than a dozen countries to the threat of Russian aggression for the first time in a generation. Meanwhile, rhetoric in the Russian state media targeting Finland, the Baltic states, and other front line countries now increasingly echoes the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Ukraine.

As he plots to rebuild the Russian Empire, Putin is unlikely to be working to any set schedule or clearly defined territorial goal. Instead, the gradual escalation of Russia’s Ukraine invasion over the past twelve years indicates that he is an opportunistic imperialist whose appetite grows with eating. At the same time, it is obvious that his radical revisionist agenda is not limited to Ukraine and poses a very real threat to European security.

Putin believes he is on an historic mission to restore Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower and the dominant force in Europe. Erasing Ukrainian statehood is just the beginning. While we cannot know for sure where he will strike next or how far he ultimately plans to go, it is delusional to think that handing Putin victory in Ukraine will convince him to stop. On the contrary, a Russian success in Ukraine would almost certainly mean more war and lead to decades of European instability.

Putin’s vow to liberate historically Russian lands is an open-ended excuse for imperial expansion that makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace based on limited Russian gains in southern and eastern Ukraine. Clearly, this would not be enough to placate Putin and cannot serve as the basis for a sustainable settlement.

The peace terms currently being discussed would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue integrating with the West. This is exactly what Putin aims to prevent. After four years of fighting to reverse the verdict of the Cold War, any peace deal that safeguards Ukrainian independence would be recognized in Moscow as a Russian defeat of historic proportions. Instead, Putin knows he must continue the invasion until a fully subjugated Ukraine can become a stepping stone for the next stage in his expansionist agenda.

In his quest to secure a place in history among Russia’s greatest rulers, Putin has long since passed the point of no return. He will not deviate from this messianic goal for the sake of sanctions relief or minor territorial concessions. Any efforts to establish a lasting peace must be firmly grounded in this sobering reality. Peace is possible, but only if the pressure on Putin is increased to the point where he begins to fear defeat on the battlefields of Ukraine and potential collapse on the home front inside Russia.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been, by any metric, a strategic nightmare for Moscow. Not only has Russia lost more soldiers in Ukraine than in any war since World War II—and might well end up losing more troops than the United States lost during the entirety of WWII—but the Russian economy has lurched between overheating and stagflation. All the while, the Kremlin’s decision to expand its invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a NATO both enlarged and enhanced; in Russia’s transition from regional hegemon to a “junior partner” (and even potential vassal) of China; in waning influence in places such as the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe; and the creation of a heavily armed, deeply resentful neighbor in Ukraine, which will see Kyiv nurse both an animus toward Russia and a desire to reclaim much of the occupied territories for years to come.

The entire war has been an exercise in Russian myopia, accelerating Russian decline and leading to a broad range of self-inflicted wounds. Mirroring other neo-colonial wars—France in Algeria, the Netherlands in Indonesia, Portugal in southern Africa—the war has exposed Russia as a pretender to great-power status and a shell of a once-swaggering empire. While Moscow might yet gain more towns scattered throughout Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, any remaining victories will remain pyrrhic, with Russia continuing to sacrifice its future prospects for any present gains.

Much of Russia’s failure rests on Ukrainians’ ongoing sacrifices, as well as on the broader West’s willingness to back Ukraine’s troops. But a great deal of this disaster also stems from a series of muddled narratives that Russia has peddled about precisely why it launched the expanded invasion in the first place. Pushing a sprawling, occasionally contradictory series of goals and rationales, and without a clear narrative push to consolidate either support or success, Moscow has flailed for years, lurching from one rationale to another—all while its troops continue dying en masse and its domestic population continues to feel escalating pain and stress as the war drags on.

Given all of the competing claims Moscow has put forth to defend its invasion of Ukraine, it is worth analyzing how the Kremlin has justified its expanded war and how Moscow has tried to sell the deadliest war Europe has seen since the days of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Such analysis can not only help Western allies of Ukraine figure out how best to back Kyiv’s efforts but can provide a roadmap for sounder Russia policy in the West overall. In sifting and sorting these narratives, we can identify precisely what is motivating the Kremlin—and, better yet, how to stop it.

Selling the war

The Kremlin’s public rationales for its war in Ukraine fall into two broad buckets.

The first rests directly on Russia’s relationship with Ukraine, focusing specifically on the links, both historic and contemporary, between Moscow and Kyiv. The narratives focused specifically on Ukraine, and on Russians’ relationships with Ukrainians, can be broken down further into three primary prongs.

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”
Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.
“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

However, the Kremlin’s rhetoric explaining its war in Ukraine has often expanded far beyond Ukraine itself. Indeed, while the fighting might take place largely on Ukrainian (and occasionally Russian) territory, the Kremlin has often claimed that the war is both global and epochal, linked directly to the second broad bucket of narratives and focused on the status of Russia’s global standing. Those narratives centering on Russia’s role in the broader international context, as well as the creation of a new geopolitical order, can also be broken down into three primary threads.

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”
This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.
This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

None of the narratives above are mutually exclusive. Indeed, one of the difficulties in assessing these narrative components is the multiple instances of reinforcing themes and topics. For example, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—or even the notion that Ukraine does not exist—can be directly tethered to the idea that NATO must never extend to Ukraine and that the war is necessarily defensive. The false claim that Ukraine’s 2014 revolution was in reality a coup is also often paired with the idea that the war is about rolling back Western influence and meddling in non-Western nations. These narratives can often work in conjunction—and are often included in the same speeches and writings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies.

Adding to the difficulty, many of these narratives are also in tension with one another. For example, Putin wrote at length about the supposed brotherly relationship between Ukraine and Russia, yet he has simultaneously claimed that Ukraine is a mere fabrication set to be annulled. Likewise, the idea that this is somehow an anti-colonial war grates against the claim that some countries are civilization-states destined to rule over smaller nations.

Still, each of these narratives is worth analyzing on its own. The remainder of this paper will be dedicated to just that: detailing the primary contours of each of these narratives, as well as offering analysis (and often corrections) therein. The paper will also offer a brief conclusion about what these competing and contradictory narratives reveal about Russia’s aims—and how best to combat Russian expansionism in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Russia’s relationship with Ukraine

The Ukraine war is primarily about “rescuing” Russians and Russian speakers, especially (but not exclusively) in eastern and southern Ukraine. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is overseen by “fascists” and “Nazis,” who have been in power since the 2014 Euromaidan “coup.”

Details

One of the primary narratives that Russia has relied on since its expanded invasion did not originate in February 2022, or even in the months beforehand. It instead traces back to at least early 2014, when Ukrainian protesters successfully ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych in the democratic Euromaidan Revolution—and when Putin launched Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

At its simplest, Russia’s post-Euromaidan narrative boiled down to the idea that the Ukrainian protesters were illegitimate usurpers, ousting a democratically elected leader and instituting a new regime dedicated not only to wresting Ukraine out of Moscow’s orbit but focused especially on the immiseration of Russians and Russian speakers. The “junta” responsible for this “coup” was secretly in hock to its “real masters in the West,” who were simply using Ukraine and its post-2014 government as a means of targeting Russia and Russian interests. In this view, these new Ukrainian leaders—including Volodymyr Zelenskyy—should be considered fascists and Nazis, simply because they were opposed to Russia writ large, whether that meant not recognizing Russia’s claims to Crimea or encouraging the use of the Ukrainian language throughout the country.

According to Russia, this supposed junta continued its persecution for years until things reached a breaking point in early 2022. That February, Moscow was supposedly forced to invade Ukraine for the express protection of Russians in regions like eastern Ukraine. As Putin claimed, Russia did not need to annex any further parts of Ukraine, but authorities in Kyiv needed to recognize the nominal independence of both the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic—building upon previous demands that these entities must also have a veto over Kyiv’s foreign policy decisions. According to Moscow, Ukraine also needed to renounce any fascist or Nazi leaders and sympathies forevermore.

As Putin said during his address announcing the expanded invasion, “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime.” As he added in 2025, the crisis did not begin with Russia’s invasion but was the “result of the coup d’etat in Ukraine, which was supported and provoked by the West.” More specifically, Putin said in 2022 that Russia’s expanded invasion was a direct response to the “tragedy” in the Donbas. As Tass reported, Putin told a twelve-year-old girl that Ukraine’s “bombardments, artillery strikes and combat operations” in Donetsk and Luhansk “compelled Russia to start this military operation.”

Putin’s rhetoric also built on this narrative to call for the notion of “denazifying” Ukraine. As he memorably claimed during his February 2022 address, Russia would “seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.” The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian ambassador to the United Nations echoed this language.

Analysis

The idea that Russia needed to invade Ukraine in order to rescue compatriots and remove Nazi elements from Ukraine’s leadership is, to outside observers, perhaps the most farcical of the narratives detailed here. The notion that Ukraine—whose president is Jewish—requires denazification was immediately met with ridicule and mockery. However, this argument also provided a sense of flexibility for Putin. After all, it remains unclear what denazification would actually entail—whether regime change, full lustration, the ending of any pro-Western trajectory policies, a mix of these options, or something else entirely. Likewise, the call has a clear domestic component, with Putin able to sell the war as a battle against a new generation of supposed fascists and a reprise of Moscow’s victory in World War II.

The calls that Moscow must rescue ethnic Russians suffering in Ukraine, especially in the Donbas, also have significant salience for domestic audiences in Russia. For many Russians, the Donbas remains a traditionally Russian land and Moscow maintains a unique role in protecting Russians in neighboring nations—including beyond Ukraine. Given its salience, this line of argument would likely be employed again should Russia launch another invasion of a neighboring nation in the future, with potential usage from Estonia to Kazakhstan.

Russia and Ukraine are actually “brotherly” nations, and Ukrainians are simply “confused” about their relationship as subalterns to Russia. This is primarily predicated on the idea that Ukraine is simply “Little Russia,” part of the “triune state” of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—and, naturally, not part of the West. The war is simply about restoring that Ukrainian status. It is also about restoring Russia’s colonial control of Ukraine and keeping Ukraine as an entity subservient to Russia.

Details

As with the narrative on Ukraine suffering a coup via fascists in 2014, the idea that Russia and Ukraine are brotherly nations—and that they are destined for embrace, with Russia lording as the “elder brother” over Little Russia—long predated Russia’s 2022 expanded invasion. Indeed, such a narrative stretches back to at least the middle of the nineteenth century, when young Russian aristocrats “discovered” Ukraine and began “to work intensely to uncover the region’s supposed original Russianness,” wrote Johns Hopkins University’s Eugene Finkel, whose 2024 book traced the origins of such efforts. No longer was Ukraine a separate polity with a distinct history; by the 1830s and 1840s, as Russian Slavophile writer Aleksei Khomiakov noted, Ukraine was “an organic and inseparable part of a single Russian nation.” Russia and Ukraine, alongside Belarus, formed a supposed triune state, in which all three nations were part of one greater Slavic nation headed by Russia.

It is an idea that, nearly two centuries later, remains largely unchanged—and which helped provide the outline for one of Moscow’s prime narratives about why it needed to launch its expanded invasion in 2022. This narrative formed much of the basis for Putin’s lengthy 2021 treatise on the topic, in which he detailed the supposed “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” As Putin wrote:

I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources, they have been hardened by common trials, achievements and victories. Our kinship has been transmitted from generation to generation. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood ties that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.

If anything, Putin’s beliefs in the historical unity binding Russia and Ukraine have only grown despite the military setbacks and massive casualty rates continuing to climb. In late 2022, Putin announced the supposed “annexation” of further Ukrainian territory, including territory Moscow had not yet even conquered. As a means of getting around this awkward fact, Putin pointed to the supposed unity already extant between Ukraine and Russia—found, naturally, in the land he was now claiming as Russia’s. As Putin said, those in Ukraine were “our compatriots, our brothers and sisters . . . the native part of our united people.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a pro-war concert at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russia. February 22, 2023. (Sputnik/Maksim Blinov/Kremlin via REUTERS)

Nor is it just Putin who has peddled such tropes. In a malicious, revelatory article originally posted on (and later removed from) RIA Novosti, one Russian writer laid out what Russian victory in Ukraine would look like. “Ukraine has returned to Russia,” the article begins. “It will be reorganized, re-established and returned to its natural state as part of the Russian world . . . [Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] will now act in geopolitical terms as a single whole.” Thanks to the invasion, “Russia is restoring its unity” via a “de facto civil war” waged by “brothers.” And thanks to Moscow’s victory, “Russia is restoring its historical completeness, gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together—in all its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [i.e., Ukrainians].”

Analysis

In this narrative, Ukraine and Ukrainians still exist in concept, but only as a nation and people subordinated to Russia and Russian sovereignty. It is, if anything, a vision that posits Ukraine as simply another Belarus: a state that retains nominal independence but is nonetheless tightly embraced by Moscow and subservient to the Kremlin’s demands. This, as Moscow sees it, is the natural state of things—and anything else would simply be a historical anomaly.

This narrative, of course, is chock-full of historic revisionism, outright fabrications, and warmed-over excuses for empire. As Finkel noted, Kyiv’s origins predate Moscow’s founding by centuries, and few if any Russian intellectuals ever considered Ukraine part of their history and identity until the middle of the nineteenth century. Moreover, this narrative grossly ignores what Ukrainians actually think—and blinded Moscow to just how fiercely Ukrainians would fight to preserve both their state and their nation moving forward.

“Ukraine” does not actually exist but is a Leninist fabrication. This is predicated on the idea that Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet leadership were mistaken to draw any internal, republican borders within the Soviet Union—and that the entire “near abroad” is rightfully Russian. The war is about rectifying this Leninist mistake.

Details

This narrative flips the notion of a supposed triune state on its head. Instead of Ukraine being a constituent part of a greater Russia, there is no Ukraine whatsoever—and any claims of a separate Ukrainian nation, language, or identity are simply slander against the one, true, and indivisible Russia. It is a narrative that tips into the genocidal, giving Russia cover to try eliminating Ukrainian identity entirely.

As with other narratives mentioned above, the idea that Ukraine is not a separate polity but is simply a “project” meant to target and undercut Russia has a lengthy lineage. In the 1860s, Russian officials shunted the idea of Ukraine entirely to the side, claiming that the Ukrainian language “never existed, does not exist and cannot exist,” culminating in a tsarist edict banning the teaching of Ukrainian and marking the first instance of Russian authorities trying to stamp out the idea of Ukraine entirely.

The key inflection point in this narrative—that Ukraine is a mere fabrication, rather than a fraternal nation that has lost its way—came in the early 1920s, when Lenin and other Soviet higher-ups began outlining the borders of the new Soviet republics. Given the levels of support in Ukraine for Ukrainian nationhood, Soviet leadership granted Ukraine (and a number of other polities) republican status, effectively placing it on par with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. For Putin and others, this decision was a “time bomb” that ultimately detonated in the Soviet Union’s dissolution and is a historic wrong that must be corrected.

We see elements of this narrative throughout Putin’s speeches and writings. In the same essay mentioned above about the supposed historical unity of Russia and Ukraine, Putin claims that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era,” created “on the lands of historical Russia.” As he added when announcing the expanded invasion, “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia or, to be more precise, by Bolshevik, Communist Russia. This process started practically right after the 1917 revolution, and Lenin and his associates did it in a way that was extremely harsh on Russia—by separating, severing what is historically Russian land . . . When it comes to the historical destiny of Russia and its peoples, Lenin’s principles of state development were not just a mistake; they were worse than a mistake.”

As such, the time had come to rectify that “mistake”—even to the point of destroying and subsuming Ukraine entirely.

Analysis

Putin might play-act as a historian, but his reading of history is saturated in grievance and mythmaking, cherry-picking facts and concocting details of his own. The idea that Ukraine is a fabrication or some facile project is, of course, belied by the fact that Ukraine and Ukrainians continue to exist and continue to fight back against Russian forces.

Moreover, Putin’s shoddy history is easily dismissed by those who have actually studied the region. As acclaimed historian Serhii Plokhy noted, the idea that Ukraine exists on historical Russian lands is nonsensical. “Even a cursory acquaintance with the history of the Russian Revolution and fall of the Russian Empire that accompanied it indicates that the modern Ukrainian state came into existence not thanks to Lenin but against his wishes and in direct reaction to the Bolshevik putsch in Petrograd in October . . . of 1917,” Plokhy wrote. “The Bolsheviks tried to take control of Kyiv as well but were defeated, jumpstarting the process of the modern Ukrainian state-building.”

Putin is hardly the only Russian nationalist who has learned the hard way the peril of dismissing Ukrainian identity. During the Russian Civil War, the pro-tsarist White forces refused to grant Ukraine (among other nations) any political freedoms or sovereignty. They instead claimed they were fighting for “Russia, one and indivisible”—a cry that rallied few non-Russians and eventually doomed the White forces to defeat.

Russia’s global standing

This war is primarily about beating back NATO and Western expansion. NATO “pledged” in 1990 that it would not expand its borders, and this war is simply about forcing NATO to uphold that pledge. This war is a “defensive” war, aimed at preventing Russian “encirclement.”

Details

Not all of the Russian narratives backing the expanded invasion center on Ukraine. In fact, a number claim that Ukraine is simply the latest flashpoint in a far broader struggle Russia is waging against a perfidious West, and the United States in particular. A case in point is the claim that the war in Ukraine is not just about toppling Kyiv’s “regime,” or even preventing Ukraine from joining NATO, but that it is about unwinding NATO’s post-1991 gains and preventing the wholesale encirclement of Russia by Western forces.

Such a narrative came to the fore in the weeks leading up to the expanded invasion in early 2022. In December 2021, the Kremlin moved from demanding that Ukraine simply acquiesce to Russian demands (especially foregoing NATO membership) to demanding that NATO deployments leave much of Eastern and Central Europe entirely. Moscow specifically called for the removal of NATO forces and weapons from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, and formally called for NATO to pull back to its 1997 borders, effectively abandoning Poland, Czechia, the Baltics, and others—and effectively restoring military parity between the United States and Russia in Europe.

The Kremlin has justified these demands by claiming that the United States pledged in the early 1990s not to expand NATO eastward. Putin has regurgitated these claims multiple times, including after Russia first launched its invasion in 2014, when the Russian leader stated that Western leaders “have lied to us many times . . . This happened with NATO’s expansion to the east, as well as the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders.” According to Putin, all NATO enlargement following the Soviet dissolution is invalid and must be rolled back. Preventing Ukraine from NATO membership is simply the first domino in a far broader effort to push NATO out of all of its newest member states.

Analysis

Putin’s claims that the United States pledged not to expand NATO are ahistorical and fabricated. The United States never pledged any such veto. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, then ruling as Soviet premier, attested to this, saying that the “topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not . . . brought up in those years.” Moreover, the key comment in question, in which Secretary of State James Baker floated the idea of NATO moving “not one inch east,” referred solely to NATO troops from West Germany moving into East Germany. The George H. W. Bush administration, however, never adopted this or any prohibition on NATO expansion as formal policy.

However, such a lie is a handy means of cultivating support among gullible audiences, both domestically and internationally, and helps present Russian aggression as being defensive in nature. Of course, this kind of framing—that invading a neighbor is not imperialism but is actually a defensive move—long predates Putin. It can be found in everything from the US decision to invade Mexico in the 1840s to Japan’s decision to invade much of Asia in the 1940s. This “defensiveness” was also the basis for much of the Soviet Union’s rationale for invading numerous neighbors, from Hungary in 1956 to Czechoslovakia in 1968 and beyond. Putin will almost certainly not be the last imperial leader to claim his country’s expansion is defensive in nature.

Thankfully, the Kremlin’s demands have been roundly dismissed by NATO and Western governments alike, and Ukraine remains dedicated to joining NATO. Yet the demands highlight how Russia has spun the war in Ukraine as a means not simply of thwarting NATO’s enlargement but of restoring a military parity between the United States and Russia on the European continent. It implies, in other words, an effective return to the Cold War military status quo within Europe and an unwinding of all the post-Cold War gains that have helped beat back malign Russian influence and military dominance in Europe, far beyond just Ukraine.

This war is about the non-Western world standing up to Western bullying, hypocrisy, and decadence. Russia is at the vanguard of the non-Western world’s fight against Western “colonialism,” trying to restore “traditional values” that the West is attempting to destroy around the world.

Details

While the war is taking place in Ukraine, this narrative posits that the war is about far more than simple NATO expansion or Ukrainian nationhood. Instead, it is about finally standing up to Western predation and perfidy, and to the West’s attempts to spread supposedly liberal values around the world—including all those elements opposing so-called traditional values.

Russia’s efforts to transform itself into a bastion of these supposed traditional values dates back at least a decade, when the Kremlin first began positioning itself as the primary bulwark for those opposed to liberal democracy. These include those opposed to LGBTQ rights, those opposed to so-called “gender ideology,” and even those opposed to democracy writ large. This effort has been largely successful, with Russia and Putin widely viewed as the lodestar for these anti-democratic forces.

The war in Ukraine, then, is simply a continuation on this theme. Announcing the expanded invasion in 2022, Putin claimed that the West “sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within.” Patriarch Kirill, one of the key spokesmen for Putin’s regime and the titular head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow Patriarchate, echoed Putin’s claims that the war was predicated on those in eastern Ukraine “refus[ing] to accept the so-called values that are being offered by” the West, including “the gay parade.” RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, one of the war’s biggest boosters, warned that Ukraine risked becoming “an LGBTQ capital or a venue for the Transgender Olympics.”

More broadly, the Kremlin has attempted to position the war as an effort to stand up to Western “neo-colonialism.” Ignoring centuries of Russian colonialism in Ukraine (and elsewhere), Putin has attempted to sell the war as a means of beating back Western colonial efforts. As he said when announcing the supposed annexations of multiple Ukrainian provinces in late 2022, “The West is ready to step over everything in order to preserve the neo-colonial system that allows it to parasitize, in fact, to plunder . . . Hence their aggression towards independent states, towards traditional values and original cultures[.]”

Analysis

It’s difficult to take seriously Russia’s claims that it is waging a war in Ukraine for traditional values, or that it has some kind of spiritual mission to beat back the encroachment of LGBTQ rights. After all, Russia is a country in which the rate of regular church attendance is in the single digits, while the country’s abortion rate remains higher than that of many other European nations. Moreover, the country routinely persecutes Christian denominations, even in Russia itself. The country is hardly a bastion of traditional values, despite Putin’s claims otherwise.

However, the claim that Russia is supposedly leading an anti-colonial war is perhaps the most farcical. Russia was a constituent part of the broader, ghastly story of European colonization, stealing lands and brutalizing populations from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to North Asia and Central Asia—and even joining Great Britain, France, and Spain in colonizing North America. Claiming it was spreading “civilization” and “Christianity” to “heathen” groups of “savages,” Russia’s colonialist claims were indistinguishable from those in European empires elsewhere. In other words, Moscow was as much a European colonizer as London, Lisbon, Brussels, or Paris.

This was true not just in Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Sakha, or Finland, but also in Ukraine, where Moscow—during tsarist, Soviet, and now Putin eras—routinely engaged in colonial behavior, from ethnic cleansing to cultural genocide to mass murder, all while claiming non-Russian lands as its own. The war in Ukraine is indeed colonial, but with Russia once more in the role of colonizer.

This war is about restoring Russia’s status as a “great power,” both in Europe and globally. It is primarily about ushering in a “multipolar” world, with other “civilization-states” such as China and India rising to parity with the United States.

Details

Arguably the broadest narrative propounded by Russian authorities is that the war in Ukraine is not about the status of certain Ukrainian provinces, or Ukrainian security arrangements, or even the size and status of NATO in Europe. It is instead about restoring Russia’s role as a supposed great power on par with a small number of other states that make up an exclusive club of nations dominating geopolitics. These nations include the United States, China, and potentially India, with Russia also seen as a natural member.

The Kremlin claims Russia’s rightful status as a great power has been dismissed by the West—and especially by the United States, which has preferred to oversee a unipolar world—but no more. In invading Ukraine, Russia has announced its permanent status as one of the supposed civilization-states in a new multipolar world. This is not to say that Russia is aspiring to global dominance, per se. Rather, Russia is aspiring to—and has already achieved—a role as one of the key geopolitical players internationally, regionally dominant and globally relevant. Ukraine remains firmly within Russia’s supposed sphere of influence and, as such, Russia should have the right to do whatever it wants within Ukraine with no outside interference.

This obsession with great-power status has long pervaded Putin’s rhetoric, infusing and inflaming Russia’s revanchism. In October 2022, when he announced Russia’s supposed annexation of four Ukrainian provinces, Putin claimed that Russia is “a great millennial power” and a “country-civilization” that will follow its own path. In March 2023, Putin signed a strategic blueprint outlining Russia’s “historically unique mission” as a “unique state-civilization.” As Uppsala University’s Igor Torbakov wrote, it was the first time that Russian leadership had “officially stated that Russia is a sui generis civilization.”

Much of this narrative has manifested in specific calls for a “new Yalta,” in which leaders in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington effectively carve up the world, Ukraine included. In such a scenario, Russia would be the modern equivalent of the United Kingdom: an empire that might not be quite as powerful or wealthy as the other two nations, but that nonetheless deserves a place at such a summit. “Putin has never hidden that his dream is a new Yalta . . . [to] establish a new world order,” writes journalist Mikhail Zygar. Russia’s Ukraine war—and its supposedly imminent victory—is merely the opening salvo in a far broader global reordering. As the much-maligned RIA Novosti article mentioned above claimed, the invasion of Ukraine meant that a “new world is being born before our eyes”—a world that Russia will help steer.

Analysis

This pretension to greatness hardly began with Putin. Years before Russia’s expanded invasion, the Kremlin and Russian intellectuals were long obsessed with “the pursuit of derzhavnost,” which scholar Seva Gunitsky translates as “both being a great power and being recognized as such by others.” Not only does this mean acting as a regional hegemon, but it also means being entitled to “an unquestioned sphere of influence.” This rhetoric—of Moscow’s “special mission” and its “historic destiny” as a “great power”—stretches back centuries and was evident in the Kremlin’s tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet history.

It is perhaps ironic, then, that little has done more to expose the hollowness of Putin’s claims than his invasion of Ukraine. Rather than restore Russia’s great-power status, the war has led not just to the degradation of the Russian economy and outright military disaster in Ukraine but to Russia’s weakening influence in the South Caucasus, the Middle East, Africa, and, of course, Europe more broadly. It has likewise forced Russia to rely on North Korea to shore up national security, and to lean on China to shore up Russia’s teetering economy.

The war has only accelerated Russian decline and undone, perhaps for good, the potential restoration of Russian greatness. Moscow might still maintain its status on things like the United Nations’ Security Council and might still be the only post-Soviet state with nuclear weapons. But the idea that Russia is, or will soon become, a great power is increasingly laughable—and a testament to what a disaster Putin’s rule has been for Russia.

Conclusion

Wars can often contain multiple narratives. The US invasion of Iraq, for example, was originally pegged to removing Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction program before it shifted to fostering “democracy” for Iraqis. The US Civil War was originally launched to restore the sovereignty of the federal government before it shifted to eliminating slavery within the United States entirely. A war with multiple narratives does not necessarily portend either success or failure.

Rare are those wars, however, that push as many competing narratives as Russia has peddled in Ukraine. Indeed, it’s difficult to think of another war that has seen so many different justifications from the invading party. And it’s difficult to identify another war that has seen such a massive difference in scale of what those narratives are proposing, from simple territorial shifts to the entire reordering of the state of global affairs.

But as we’ve seen above, this is precisely what Russia has attempted with its invasion of Ukraine. From protecting pockets of Russians in the Donbas to ushering in an entirely new geopolitical era, from restoring a supposed Slavic unity to eliminating liberal values, the Kremlin’s justifications for its war have been breathtaking in their breadth.

They have also been a confused, muddled mess and a testament to just what a fiasco Russia’s entire war has been for Moscow. Instead of a clear-cut series of goals and aims, Russia’s leadership has flailed for excuses for its invasion, tossing idea after idea into the ether to see what might succeed. Such narrative confusion has stemmed, in large part, from Russia’s overall failures in Ukraine, forcing the Kremlin to reach for more and more justifications as the war drags on. At the same time, the confusion has played a significant role in Russia’s overall strategic failures in Ukraine and elsewhere; without a clear set of strategic goals, there’s little reason to think that tactical or battlefield successes would follow. Of course, much of this is also predicated on the Kremlin’s historical myopia as it pertains to Ukrainian history and Ukrainian nationhood; rather than a constituent part of some kind of Greater Russia, Ukraine is a distinct polity with a unique, separate history—a reality that hundreds of thousands of Russians have now died to learn. While Russia might continue to occupy sections of Ukrainian territory, the Kremlin has all but assured that a heavily armed Kyiv remains Russia’s greatest geopolitical foe for decades to come, if not longer.

For those looking forward, all this narrative confusion highlights one thing: there’s little reason to think Putin will be satisfied with simple recognition of Russian sovereignty over places such as Donetsk or Kherson. As Russian authorities have claimed, this war is about far more than the status of certain sections of eastern Ukraine, or even about Ukrainian membership in NATO. The Kremlin has far broader, and far more destabilizing, goals than simply dominating Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, or even necessarily toppling Kyiv. Ukraine is but a stepping stone to Putin’s far more sweeping goals of rolling back US and allied interests, reaffirming Russian dominance over all of its neighbors (China and North Korea excepted), and creating a world in which the rights of smaller nations are subject to the whims of a handful of great powers. Given Putin’s ongoing obstinacy about winding down the war and finding a so-called “off-ramp,” it is clear that, for him, this war is about far more than simply the territorial status of parts of eastern or southern Ukraine.

It is, indeed, a reflection of the Kremlin’s obsession with derzhavnost—an obsession of which Ukrainians have done everything they can to disabuse Russia. And it reflects the fact that what can end this war is not the status of places like Crimea or Donetsk oblasts, but a full and outright defeat of Russia. Anything less would simply tempt the Kremlin to try again—with another effort to upend the global order and another war to try making Russia great again.

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About the authors

Casey Michel is an author and journalist who writes extensively on international corruption, kleptocracy, national security, and Russia policy. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and many other outlets. His 2021 book, American Kleptocracy, was named by the Economist as one of the “best books to read to understand financial crime,” and his 2024 book Foreign Agents was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the “biggest foreign-policy book releases of 2024.” His next book, United States of Oligarchy, will be released in summer 2026.

He is based in New York, and is currently sanctioned by the Russian regime for his work.

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The post Narrating the war: Analyzing Russia’s narratives for its invasion of Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russia’s insistence on a defenseless Ukraine betrays Putin’s true intentions

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 08:21:08 +0000

As American, Ukrainian, and European officials continue to debate potential peace plans among themselves, there remains very little to indicate that Russia is genuinely interested in ending the war. On the contrary, many of the Kremlin’s key demands during negotiations appear tailored to facilitate a continuation of the invasion on more favorable terms.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s territorial claims alone should be enough to set off alarm bells. He insists that in order to secure a ceasefire, Ukraine must first hand over the remaining 10 percent of the Donbas region that his troops have failed to seize since the invasion first began eleven years ago.

As the ruler of what is by far the largest country in the world, Putin has no pressing need for the approximately 6600 square kilometers of Donbas territory still under Ukrainian control. Nor does the region contain any particularly important natural resources or historic sites that could justify its present position at the very heart of the peace process.

Putin’s true motivation is not difficult to discern. The unoccupied portion of the Donbas that he now so openly covets may seem relatively inconspicuous on the map, but it plays host to some of Ukraine’s strongest fortifications. Developed over the past decade, this fortress belt represents a formidable obstacle to Moscow’s invasion.

Analysts estimate that it could take years for Russia to occupy the area by force, and would likely cost the Kremlin hundreds of thousands of additional casualties. Beyond the fortress belt, the way would be open for further sweeping Russian advances into central Ukraine and toward Kyiv itself. This vital role in Ukraine’s overall defense explains why Putin is prepared to reduce his demands elsewhere but remains so eager for Kyiv to hand over this particular territory without a fight.

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Among Moscow’s many demands, the biggest red flag of all is the Kremlin’s determination to demilitarize Ukraine and deprive the country of international allies. Ever since the first round of peace talks during the initial months of the war, Putin has consistently sought to impose restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military and the categories of weapons the country can possess. While recent drafts envision a Ukrainian army of 600,000 troops, the fact that Russia remains so keen on limiting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is an unambiguous signal of Putin’s bad intentions.

Likewise, the Kremlin’s bitter opposition to continued international support for Ukraine betrays the reality behind Moscow’s current peace posturing. This extends far beyond Russia’s well-documented objections to Ukrainian membership of NATO. Putin’s negotiators also seek to block future arms supplies to Kyiv and have completely ruled out the possibility of even a symbolic Western troop presence in postwar Ukraine, while demonstrating a deep reluctance to accept anything resembling credible security guarantees.

Attempts to defend Russian objections on security grounds are unconvincing. Putin has debunked his own claims of a NATO security threat to Russia by reacting with obvious indifference to neighboring Finland’s NATO accession in 2022, just months after using the issue as a convenient pretext for the invasion of Ukraine. According to this bizarre Kremlin logic, Ukraine’s slim hopes of joining NATO in the distant future were sufficient grounds to unleash the largest European war since World War II, but Finland’s almost immediate membership of the alliance was “no problem” for Moscow, despite the fact that both countries share long land borders with Russia.

Putin’s refusal to countenance purely defensive commitments from Kyiv’s allies that are clearly designed to safeguard Ukrainian sovereignty is even harder to justify. If the Russian ruler intended to coexist with an independent Ukraine, he would surely recognize the need for international involvement in efforts to reestablish stability in the region. Instead, he has adopted the opposite approach. While Ukraine appeals for security guarantees, Putin seeks to guarantee Ukraine’s insecurity.

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The insincerity of Russia’s current approach to the US-led peace process should come as no surprise. After all, while Putin may be willing to consider a pause in hostilities if it comes on Kremlin-friendly terms, he simply cannot risk a peace deal that secures the continued existence of an independent Ukrainian state. Any settlement based on the present front lines of the war would leave around 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to continue along the path toward greater European integration. That is exactly what Putin is fighting to prevent.

The Kremlin dictator has always viewed his war against Ukraine in the broadest of historical contexts as a crusade to reverse the verdict of 1991 and return Russia to its rightful place as a global superpower. Like many of his contemporaries, Putin remains embittered by the Soviet collapse and determined to avenge what he perceives as modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace. This has fuelled his obsession with independent Ukraine, which he has come to regard as the ultimate symbol of the historical injustice resulting from the breakup of the USSR.

Putin’s increasingly rabid opposition to Ukrainian independence reflects his Cold War experience as a KGB officer in East Germany, where he witnessed the disintegration of the Soviet Empire firsthand. This traumatic experience has helped to convince him that the Ukrainian state-building project now poses an existential threat to Russia itself. If Ukraine is able to consolidate its statehood and emerge as a recognizably European democracy, Putin fears this could serve as a catalyst for the next phase in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Over the past two decades, Putin’s determination to undermine Ukrainian statehood has come to dominate his entire reign and has led directly to a new Cold War. From the 2004 Orange Revolution to the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the full-scale invasion of 2022, Ukraine has been at the epicenter of each new milestone in the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West.

Time after time, Putin has demonstrated his readiness to sacrifice all other Russian national interests in his quest to subjugate Ukraine and force the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit. He has reversed decades of integration into Western economies, placed Russian society on a wartime footing, and sent hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers to their deaths. It is deeply delusional to think that he is now suddenly ready to abandon all of this and accept the reality of Ukrainian independence in exchange for the marginal gains of a compromise peace.

Putin’s own position during peace talks betrays his complete lack of interest in ending the war. His territorial demands would rob Ukraine of crucial fortifications and set the stage for further Russian advances, while his calls for restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Kyiv’s ability to maintain military ties with the West would leave postwar Ukraine disarmed and defenseless. In isolation, any of these demands would look deeply suspect. Taken together, they represent overwhelming evidence of Putin’s intention to continue the invasion.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

What is indisputable is that Russia’s mass deportations are now among the best-documented crimes of modern warfare. Among numerous other investigations, the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified at least 210 facilities inside Russia or Russian-occupied territory where deported Ukrainian children have been sent for “re-education,” forced assimilation, and in many places, military-style training.

The evidence is overwhelming and includes coerced relocations, illegal adoptions and naturalization under Russian citizenship, ideological indoctrination aimed at erasing Ukrainian identity, and numerous violations of international law. This is not incidental collateral damage. It is a deliberate state policy of population transfer and Ukrainian national identity destruction; a Russian program that mirrors the legal definitions of numerous atrocity crimes, including genocide.

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So far, it has only been possible to rescue a small fraction of abducted children. As of November 2025, 1,859 children have returned to Ukraine, while international experts estimate that 90 percent of the burden of rescue currently falls to Ukrainians themselves.

Moscow’s refusal to facilitate repatriation and its ongoing efforts to conceal identities and locations underscores the impossibility of any stable post-war order without addressing this crime. Humanitarian language alone obscures a critical truth: The forced transfer of children is not a peripheral human rights issue; it is a central obstacle to any credible security settlement in Europe.

For months, United States and European officials have been exploring frameworks for eventual peace talks with Russia and long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. But these conversations often treat Russian atrocities, including child deportations, as adjacent to the real business of hard security. This is a mistake.

Russia’s abduction of children is a window into its strategic intent. The Kremlin campaign to kidnap young Ukrainians and turn them into Russians reveals that Moscow’s war is not merely about territory but about imperial restoration. If Vladimir Putin only sought to adjust borders, the millions spent on relocating, indoctrinating, and militarizing thousands of Ukrainian children would make little sense.

Putin’s ominous intent becomes clearer when viewed alongside Russia’s broader atrocities. The Russian ruler clearly seeks to diminish the demographic future of an entire neighboring nation, while preparing the next generation for future Russian military aggression.

The issue of abducted Ukrainian children is especially relevant for Ukrainians as they debate painful political compromises, territorial concessions, and security guarantees premised on Western assurances. If world leaders cannot secure the return of the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aggression, how could Ukrainians trust that those same leaders can prevent Russia from reigniting the war or committing new atrocities?

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Western policymakers insist that any post-war settlement must include credible enforcement mechanisms. But credibility is not defined by rhetoric; it is a matter of capability and political will. Right now, both are in question.

If the United States, with its immense military, diplomatic, and economic power, cannot compel Russia to return thousands of abducted Ukrainian children, it becomes harder to argue that Washington can deter further aggression or prevent violations of a future peace agreement. Ukrainians understand this reality well.

Demonstrating US leverage over Russia is therefore not merely symbolic. It is a strategic prerequisite to any durable peace. The United States has untapped tools at its disposal. These include sanctioning individuals and institutions directly involved in the abduction of Ukrainian children, while supporting multilateral accountability efforts. It should be also possible to condition further diplomatic engagement on verifiable steps toward repatriation. Meanwhile, the United States could lead a coordinated information effort to identify children and counter Russian concealment tactics.

These measures are proportional responses to atrocity crimes recognized under international law. The forcible transfer of children is a premeditated crime designed to shatter Ukraine’s future. A successful effort to bring Ukrainian children home will demonstrate that the United States can influence Russian behavior. This is a critical condition for any effective peace initiative.

Securing the return of abducted children would also help to build the trust needed for Ukrainian society to accept Western-backed security frameworks. After many failed efforts to constrain Russian aggression, Ukrainian society needs to know that Western promises are not empty.

Ignoring the issue, or relegating it to the humanitarian margins, undermines the very negotiations that the Trump administration is seeking to advance. Ending the war requires Ukrainian faith in international guarantees.

Child abduction is among the clearest moral red lines in global conflict. Failure to uphold this red line in Ukraine will invite repetition elsewhere. If Russia can abduct tens of thousands of children with impunity during a major European war and face no real consequences, then no norms protecting children in conflict can hold anywhere.

This week’s hearing marks an opportunity for Congress, the Trump administration, and Ukraine’s other partners to clarify that returning abducted Ukrainian children is not optional, negotiable, or separate from security discussions. It is central.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

The decree, entitled “Russian National Policy Until 2036,” was published on November 25 and is set to come into force in January 2026, Reuters reports. It calls on the Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine to “adopt additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity.” The policy document also praises the invasion of Ukraine for “creating conditions for restoring the unity of the historical territories of the Russian state.”

This bureaucratic language is an attempt to sanitize the Kremlin’s ongoing campaign to erase Ukrainian national identity. Throughout Russian-occupied regions in the south and east of the country, Moscow has instituted a reign of terror against the civilian population while systematically targeting the symbols of Ukrainian statehood, language, heritage, and culture.

Wherever Russian troops advance, local populations are subjected to large-scale arrests, with anyone deemed a potential threat to the occupation authorities likely to disappear into a vast network of camps and prisons. Victims typically include elected officials, journalists, religious leaders, activists, and military veterans. A UN investigation published in spring 2025 found that these detentions constituted a crime against humanity.

Those who remain are pressured to accept Russian citizenship or face being deprived of access to essentials such as healthcare, pensions, and banking services. In line with Kremlin legislation adopted earlier this year, property owners who refuse Russian passports can be evicted from their homes and deported. Meanwhile, schoolchildren are being taught a heavily militarized Kremlin curriculum that demonizes Ukrainians while praising Russian imperialism and glorifying the invasion of their country. Any parents who resist these policies risk losing custody of their children.

The most notorious element of Moscow’s campaign to extinguish Ukrainian identity is the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Since the start of the full-scale invasion, around twenty thousand victims are believed to have been taken to Russia and subjected to ideological indoctrination designed to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian identity. In 2023, the International Criminal Court of The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over his personal involvement in these child abductions.

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Russian policies in occupied Ukraine serve as a chilling blueprint for Putin’s future actions if he is able to establish control over the entire country. Indeed, Russia is already actively seeking to depopulate large parts of Ukraine that remain beyond Moscow’s grasp. In front line areas throughout southern Ukraine, the Russian military has embarked on an unprecedented campaign of targeted drone strikes against the civilian population that has killed hundreds and been branded a “human safari.” A recent United Nations probe concluded that these attacks are war crimes with the goal of making whole towns and cities unlivable.

Likewise, during 2025 Russia has intensified the missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine’s civilian population and the country’s critical infrastructure in an apparent attempt to spark fresh waves of refugees. Due in part to these attacks, Ukrainian civilian casualties rose by 27 percent during the first ten months of the year, according to the United Nations Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

Putin’s posture during peace talks has raised further fundamental questions over his willingness to coexist with an independent and sovereign Ukraine. Ever since the initial round of negotiations in spring 2022, Russia has consistently demanded the comprehensive demilitarization of Ukraine. This has included calls for strict limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and the categories of weapons the country is allowed to possess, along with a ban on NATO membership or any other form of military cooperation with Western partners.

Russia’s insistence on an internationally isolated and disarmed Ukraine remains at the heart of the current negotiations. This should serve as a massive red flag for anyone who still believes that Putin is ready for peace. The Russian dictator obviously has no intention of abandoning the reconquest of Ukraine and aims to resume the invasion in more favorable circumstances once Ukraine has been stripped of allies and rendered defenseless.

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Putin’s determination to continue the invasion of Ukraine should come as no surprise. While Trump sees the current war as a geopolitical real estate deal, Putin believes he is on an historic mission to reverse the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. This explains his otherwise inexplicable obsession with ending Ukrainian independence, which Putin has come to view as the ultimate symbol of modern Russia’s humiliating fall from grace.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin called Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” But his desire to extinguish Ukrainian statehood goes far beyond any toxic feelings of shared kinship. For Putin, the consolidation of a democratic, European Ukraine poses an existential threat to authoritarian Russia that could serve as a catalyst for the next stage in an imperial retreat that begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Haunted by the people power uprisings that brought down the USSR, he will do almost anything to prevent a repeat.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began with the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin’s crusade to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit has come to dominate his reign. In pursuit of this goal, he has sacrificed Russia’s relationship with the democratic world, while also doing untold damage to the country’s economic prosperity and international standing. After everything that has happened, he can hardly now accept a peace deal that leaves 80 percent of Ukraine permanently hostile to Russia and firmly embedded in the West. Putin’s propaganda machine is perhaps the most powerful in the world, but even his most skilled media managers would struggle to spin such an outcome as anything other than a disastrous Russian defeat.

Putin’s latest presidential decree demanding further efforts to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians underlines the absurdity of attempts to find any meaningful middle ground between Moscow and Kyiv. With a compromise peace out of the question, Putin’s plan is to keep fighting while hoping to outlast the West and exhaust Ukraine. He will continue to engage in negotiations with the United States as a tactic to stall further sanctions and divide his enemies, but there is virtually zero chance of Russia voluntarily accepting any deal that guarantees the continued existence of a Ukrainian state.

This does not mean that Putin cannot be forced to end his invasion. But it does mean that current efforts to broker a negotiated settlement are doomed to fail. Putin is convinced that in order to correct the historical injustices of the past three decades and safeguard Russia’s place in the world, he must destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. It is delusional to think that a man committed to criminality on such a grand scale could be swayed by talk of sanctions relief and minor territorial concessions.

Instead, the objective should be to increase the economic and military pressure on Putin until he begins to fear a new Russian collapse in the tradition of 1917 and 1991. This will require the kind of political courage from Ukraine’s partners that has been in short supply since 2022, but it is the only way to secure a sustainable peace in Europe. Putin dreams of taking his place in Russian history alongside Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Joseph Stalin, but he most definitely does not want to share the ignominious fate of Czar Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Every city the Russian military bombs, every child it kidnaps, every Ukrainian life it destroys today can only be understood within the long genealogy of Russia’s imperialistic state ideology. For centuries, this violent brand of expansionism has been directed at Ukraine.

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The present full-scale invasion of Ukraine will soon pass the four-year mark, but the war did not begin in 2022. It was preceded by eight years of warfare in eastern Ukraine following Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea. This has been recognized by the European Court of Human Rights, which has ruled that Russia has been conducting sustained military operations in Ukraine since at least 2014. But even this is only the most recent chapter in a far older story.

During the eras of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the authorities consistently pursued policies aimed at dismantling Ukrainian identity. Tactics included banning the Ukrainian language, repressing cultural and religious leaders, and imprisoning advocates of Ukrainian independence.

Most devastatingly, Stalin and his regime engineered an artificial famine in the 1930s that killed at least four million Ukrainians in less than two years. Today, this deliberate mass starvation of Ukrainians is known as the Holodomor (“killing by hunger”). No outlier, the Holodomor was central to a broader Soviet campaign aimed at breaking Ukrainian resistance and other assertions of political autonomy. The lawyer who coined the term “genocide,” Raphael Lemkin, identified this attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation as the “classic example” of Soviet genocide.

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What unites these episodes is not only the violence itself but the ideology behind it. Moscow’s long history of crimes in Ukraine reflects an imperial worldview that treats human beings as resources to be harnessed for the state and as obstacles to be eliminated in the pursuit of total domination.

This ideology has evolved over time, but its core logic has remained remarkably consistent. Crucially, it has never faced sustained, meaningful repudiation by the international community. Because it was never confronted, Russia’s imperial ideology has been allowed to regenerate. A clear line of impunity links Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainian society in the 1930s to today’s Kremlin rhetoric insisting Ukraine is not a real nation at all.

This continuity is not abstract; it directly shapes present-day atrocities. When a state views humans as raw material for empire, the kidnapping and forced Russification of thousands of Ukrainian children becomes an acceptable instrument of policy rather than an aberration. This logic also applies to other aspects of the current invasion including filtration camps, torture chambers, rape and sexual violence, and mass deportations, along with the systematic destruction of Ukrainian cultural and religious life throughout every area under Russian control.

Ukraine’s top prosecutor notes that the number of open war crimes investigations has reached 178,391 documented cases. Indicating deliberate Kremlin policy, the former US ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice recently stated that Russian atrocities in Ukraine are “systematic” and have been identified “literally everywhere that Russia’s troops have been deployed.”

The current actions of Putin’s occupation forces in Ukraine are the same state practices that have long defined Russian imperial rule: Absorb what can be absorbed, erase what cannot, and turn the conquered into fuel for the next stage of expansion.

Russia’s genocidal intent is not limited to eliminating Ukrainian identity. Putin’s extreme ideology drives him to pursue the incorporation of Ukrainians into Russia’s war machine against the West. The danger is not only the destruction of Ukraine as a nation, but the possibility that Russia will assimilate as much of Ukraine’s territory, cutting-edge technology, and population as it can before continuing further.

Contemporary Russian rhetoric makes this explicit. Strikingly, the Putin era has witnessed the resurgence of the slogan “We can do it again.” Originally graffiti scrawled on the Reichstag by Red Army soldiers in 1945, the popularity of this phrase surged after Russia’s 2014 occupation of Crimea to become a menacing mantra of modern Russian nationalism that signals a society intent on conquest and domination.

The atrocities we are witnessing today in Ukraine reflect centuries of Russian impunity. Impunity not only allows perpetrators to continue; it invites them to escalate. Russia’s imperial ideology has never been confronted with the kind of accountability needed to dismantle it. As long as this ideology persists unchallenged, the threat will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.

The international community now finds itself confronted with the consequences of a genocidal worldview that has been left intact for generations. The urgent question is not only how to halt Russia’s genocidal actions against Ukrainians today, but how to ensure that the world finally repudiates the extremist ideology that made this war possible. Without that repudiation, millions of Russians will remain convinced that they can, in fact, “do it again.”

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

The transformation in Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation is being mirrored by changes taking place domestically as the country’s center of gravity shifts decisively from east to west. For the first decade or so of independence, Ukraine was politically and economically dominated by the industrial east, with major cities including Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia serving as power bases for billionaire oligarch clans who shaped the Ukrainian national narrative and helped maintain high levels of Russian influence across the country. At the time, the comparatively quaint cities of central and western Ukraine lacked the wealth and general wherewithal to compete.

The first indication of a significant change in this dynamic was the 2004 Orange Revolution, which saw an unprecedented nationwide protest movement erupt over an attempt to falsify the country’s presidential election orchestrated by Kremlin-backed political forces rooted firmly in eastern Ukraine. This popular uprising represented a clear and unambiguous rejection of the idea that Ukraine was inextricably bound to Russia. A decade later, the onset of Russian military aggression would turbo-charge modern Ukraine’s historic turn toward the west.

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Since 2014, traditional east Ukrainian bastions of Russian influence such as Donetsk and Luhansk have been occupied by Kremlin forces and effectively cut off from the rest of Ukraine. More recently, the full-scale invasion has left the broader Donbas region devastated and depopulated, while the formerly preeminent metropolises of the east face an uncertain future as fortified front line cities under relentless Russian bombardment.

The situation in western Ukraine is strikingly different. Cities throughout the region are experiencing rapid growth thanks to an influx of families and businesses seeking to relocate away from the war zone. The experience of Lviv since 2022 illustrates this trend. The largest city in western Ukraine, Lviv’s population has expanded by around a quarter since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to reach approximately one million. The Lviv real estate market has comfortably surpassed the regional capitals of eastern Ukraine and now rivals Kyiv itself. Likewise, Lviv is also second only to the Ukrainian capital in terms of new companies and investments.

Politically and diplomatically, Lviv is clearly in the ascendancy. Many Kyiv embassies partially relocated to the city in 2022 and continue to maintain a presence. Over the past three years, Lviv has hosted a number of high-level international events including presidential summits and gatherings of EU ministers. The rise of Lviv has been so striking that it has sparked rumors of jealousy among the establishment in Kyiv, with some suggesting that the potential reopening of Lviv International Airport has been deliberately sidelined in order to prevent the further eclipse of the Ukrainian capital.

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Whatever happens in the war, the shift in Ukraine’s national center of gravity toward the west of the country is unlikely to be reversed. In addition to the urgent impetus provided by Russia’s ongoing invasion, the emergence of western Ukraine is also being driven by the pull factor of EU integration. Over the past decade, Ukraine has secured visa-free EU travel and been granted official EU candidate status. This is transforming the investment climate in western Ukraine, which shares borders with four EU member states.

Large-scale infrastructure projects are already helping to cement western Ukraine’s status as the country’s most attractive region and gateway to the EU. Work on a 22km European-gauge railway line from the EU border to Uzhhorod was completed earlier this year, while construction of a far more ambitious Euro-gauge line connecting Lviv to the Polish border is scheduled to begin in 2026. As the EU accession process continues to gain momentum, these logistical links will only strengthen.

It remains unclear exactly when Ukraine will become a fully fledged EU member state, but there is a growing sense of confidence throughout the country that the once distant dream of EU membership is now finally within reach. For western Ukraine in particular, joining the European Union will complete the region’s historic journey from imperial outpost on the fringes of the Soviet Empire to economic engine nestled in the heart of the world’s largest single market.

All this is very bad news for Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin dictator’s Ukraine obsession reflects his fear that the consolidation of a democratic, European, and genuinely independent Ukraine could serve as a catalyst for the next phase in the long Russian retreat from empire that began almost four decades ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall. As Putin’s reign has progressed, his determination to prevent Ukraine’s geopolitical defection has only intensified, as has his readiness to sacrifice Russia’s more immediate national interests in pursuit of his anti-Ukrainian crusade. It is now increasingly obvious that his decision to invade Ukraine has backfired spectacularly, eroding centuries of Russian influence while accelerating the European integration he so bitterly opposes.

Unless Putin succeeds in dismantling Ukrainian statehood entirely and erasing the very idea of the Ukrainian nation, he must surely realize that the Ukraine of the postwar period is now destined to establish itself within the wider Western world while remaining implacably hostile to Russia. Rather than acknowledging this disastrous outcome, he will seek to continue the war indefinitely. If he stops now and accepts a compromise peace, Putin knows he will be doomed to enter Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Trump is far from alone in failing to grasp why Putin went to war. Even now, more than three and a half years since the outbreak of hostilities, many in the West still struggle to appreciate the dominant role played by historical grievances and unadulterated imperialism. In order to understand Moscow’s true motivations, it is vital to detach oneself from the Western perspective and view the invasion through the prism of modern Russian history.

For Putin and millions of his fellow Russians, today’s war is inextricably linked to the humiliations of the Soviet collapse. This fact is often lost on Western audiences, who are inclined to assume that most Russians welcomed the demise of the totalitarian USSR. In reality, the breakup of the Soviet Union was a immensely traumatic experience for the vast majority of the Russian population, who saw their country reduced almost overnight from global superpower to banana republic. Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, the Russian Empire in its Soviet form lost around one-third of its territory and almost two-thirds of its population, with the remainder plunged into desperate poverty. Rarely in history has an empire imploded so suddenly or completely.

As a KGB officer in East Germany, Putin had a front row seat for the early stages of this collapse. He was in Dresden when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and would bitterly recall the imperial paralysis he encountered as Soviet power began to unravel. “Moscow is silent,” the young Putin was told as he sought instruction during those tumultuous days. This disaster has haunted the Russian ruler ever since, shaping his worldview and making him determined to ensure that Moscow would never be silent again.

The trauma of the Soviet collapse helps to explain Putin’s Ukraine obsession. Like many of his compatriots, Putin has always regarded Ukraine as part of Russia’s historical heartlands and has never truly accepted Ukrainian independence. This did not present any real problems during the early years of the post-Soviet era, as the newly independent Ukraine remained firmly locked within the Kremlin orbit. However, once Ukraine’s own nation-building journey began to gain momentum in the 2000s, the country’s efforts to embrace a democratic European identity placed it on a direct collision course with Putin’s own rapidly evolving imperial agenda.

The watershed moment came in 2004, when a Russian-backed plot to rig Ukraine’s presidential election and install a Kremlin-friendly candidate backfired and provoked massive street protests that came to be known as the Orange Revolution. With millions of Ukrainians rallying in defense of democracy, the authorities backed down and ordered a rerun of the vote, which was duly won by the pro-Western opposition candidate.

Among international audiences, Ukraine’s democratic breakthrough was viewed as a continuation of the freedom wave that had swept through Eastern Europe following the fall of the Berlin Wall and transformed the region. Russia’s leaders were also painfully aware of the parallels between Ukraine’s revolution and the people power uprisings that had sparked the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Orange Revolution had a particularly profound impact on Putin himself. He took the revolution personally, having inadvertently helped provoke the protests by traveling to Kyiv on the eve of the election to lecture the Ukrainian public on how to vote. Putin now became increasingly paranoid about the prospect of a similar people power uprising in Moscow and began accusing the West of attempting to foment “color revolutions” against him. Three months after the Orange Revolution, he made his new political position clear by delivering a landmark speech describing the fall of the USSR as a “geopolitical catastrophe.”

From this point on, Putin’s hostility to Ukraine would only grow. He saw the country’s democratic transformation as a direct threat to his own authoritarian regime. If left unchecked, Ukraine’s fledgling democracy could prove contagious and serve as a catalyst for the breakup of the Russian Federation itself. Having already witnessed the power of grassroots democratic uprisings in the late 1980s, Putin had no intention of risking a repeat. Instead, he became fixated with the idea of subverting Ukrainian democracy and reasserting Russian control over the country.

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Throughout the decade following the Orange Revolution, Putin sought to undermine Ukrainian independence via massive campaigns of political and economic interference. When Ukrainians defied the Kremlin and took to the streets once more in the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Putin responded by seizing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Much to his frustration, this limited military intervention failed to derail Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration. On the contrary, it united Ukraine and dramatically strengthened Ukrainian national identity. Faced with the prospect of losing Ukraine altogether, Putin then took the fateful decision to launch the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

Since 2022, Putin has provided ample evidence of his intention to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. In the 20 percent of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, all traces of Ukrainian identity are being ruthlessly erased amid a reign of terror involving mass arrests and deportations. A United Nations probe has concluded that Russia is guilty of committing crimes against humanity throughout the occupied regions of Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s eliminationist agenda in occupied Ukraine mirrors the rabidly anti-Ukrainian rhetoric that dominates contemporary Russian political discourse and shapes the country’s information space. Putin himself routinely insists that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), while many of his Kremlin colleagues openly question Ukraine’s right to exist.

Moscow’s uncompromising position during recent peace negotiations in Istanbul has further underlined Putin’s maximalist war aims and confirmed his refusal to coexist with a separate and sovereign Ukrainian state. Russia insists that postwar Ukraine must agree to be partitioned, demilitarized, and internationally isolated before a ceasefire can be implemented. It does not take much imagination to predict what Putin intends to do once rump Ukraine has been rendered defenseless in this manner.

Having positioned Ukraine as an intolerable “anti-Russia,” it is difficult to see how Putin can now settle for anything less than the end of Ukrainian statehood. Any negotiated settlement that safeguarded the survival of an independent Ukraine would be regarded in Moscow as a major defeat. This makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace. After all, there can be no meaningful compromise between Russia’s genocidal objectives and Ukraine’s national survival.

On the eve of the Alaska summit, both Washington and Moscow appeared to be actively downplaying expectations. This is probably wise. The first bilateral meeting between the US and Russian leaders during the full-scale invasion Ukraine is clearly a significant event, but at this early stage in the negotiating process, Putin’s undiminished imperial aspirations leave little room for Trump’s fabled dealmaking skills.

Ultimately, if Trump wants to end the bloodshed in Ukraine, he must speak to Putin in the language of strength. The US leader undoubtedly has the tools to do so, but he has so far sought to avoid a direct confrontation with the Russian dictator. Unless that changes, the war will continue. Putin currently has no intention of abandoning an invasion that he views in sacred terms as an historic mission, and will not be persuaded by the promise of minor territorial concessions, even if what’s on offer happens to be “prime real estate.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Russia stands accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of Ukrainian children since the onset of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Victims have typically been taken from orphanages in occupied regions of Ukraine or removed from the care of relatives. In some instances, Ukrainian children were enticed by the promise of free vacations at summer camps before disappearing.

Once they have been taken to Russia, many abducted Ukrainian children have recounted their experience of ideological indoctrination at “reeducation camps” as part of a process designed to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian identity. Thousands are also reportedly being forced to join Russian paramilitary youth organizations with the aim of turning them into future soldiers for Putin’s war against Ukraine and the wider Western world.

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The mass abduction of Ukrainian children is recognized internationally as one of the gravest Russian war crimes committed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some analysts believe it may qualify as genocide in line with the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, which identifies “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as one of five recognized acts of genocide.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal role in the mass abductions. While there is little chance of Putin being prosecuted for war crimes in The Hague, the arrest warrant has proved hugely embarrassing for Russia and has made it difficult for the Kremlin dictator to travel internationally, as ICC member countries are now technically obliged to arrest him. This has prevented Putin from attending annual BRICS summits in South Africa and Brazil in recent years.

Putin’s fears of possible arrest for his involvement in the mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children may have influenced the choice of Alaska as the location for this week’s summit. The United States has not signed up to the ICC and is therefore under no obligation to detain the Russian leader. Alaska borders Russia itself and can be reached without crossing the airspace of ICC member states, making it a particularly suitable venue from Putin’s perspective. It is crucial that the issue of child abductions now remains on the agenda when the two leaders sit down for talks on Friday.

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The international community has been outspoken in its condemnation of the Kremlin’s kidnapping campaign. In early August, representatives from a coalition of 38 countries issued a joint statement calling for the immediate return of abducted Ukrainian children while demanding that the Russian authorities “cease to alter the identity of children, including changes to their citizenship, placement in Russian families or institutions, ideological indoctrination, and exposure to militarization.”

In the United States, Senator Richard Durbin introduced a Senate resolution in spring 2025 condemning Russia’s illegal abduction of Ukrainian children. Meanwhile, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar have recently cosponsored the Abducted Ukrainian Children Recovery and Accountability Act to potentially provide enhanced US support for Ukraine as it seeks to identify and rescue kidnapped children.

President Trump has indicated that he will work to support the return of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and has said he believes he can influence Putin on the issue. However, the Trump Administration has also cut funding to a key initiative tracking young Ukrainian victims of Russia’s deportations. Friday’s summit now presents Trump with the ideal opportunity to show that he remains committed to ending the abduction of Ukrainian children.

Rescuing Ukraine’s kidnapped kids would be a meaningful step toward a lasting settlement to end Europe’s largest war since World War II. It is also a relatively realistic objective at a time when there appears to be very little prospect of Putin or any other Russians facing justice for war crimes committed in Ukraine. By pressing Putin to return the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted since 2022, Trump can demonstrate that Russia will face a degree of accountability for the crimes of the invasion. Until Ukraine’s stolen children come home, Russia’s sense of impunity will only grow.

Mercedes Sapuppo is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

This campaign of classroom indoctrination is only one aspect of the Kremlin’s comprehensive Russification policies in occupied Ukraine. Since February 2022, the Russian authorities have conducted mass arrests of anyone deemed a potential threat to the occupation, with thousands of Ukrainian officials, activists, community leaders, veterans, and patriots disappearing into a vast network of prisons. A recent UN probe has classified these large-scale detentions as a crime against humanity.

Ukrainian civilians still living in occupied Ukraine are being forced to accept Russian citizenship or lose access to essential services such as pensions and healthcare, along with the ability to run a business or hold a bank account. Beginning in September, new legislation will make it possible for the authorities to expel anyone without Russian citizenship from their own homes and deport them.

Meanwhile, public symbols of Ukrainian statehood, heritage, and culture are being methodically removed and replaced by the trappings of an imported Russian imperial identity. Likewise, the demographic makeup of the occupied Ukrainian regions is being systematically transformed by Kremlin programs that aim to attract migrants from across the Russian Federation.

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The hard line Russification policies currently being implemented in the 20 percent of Ukraine under Russian occupation offer a chilling blueprint for the rest of the country if the invasion succeeds. Indeed, it is now be abundantly clear that Putin’s ultimate objective is a Ukraine without Ukrainians.

This should come as no surprise. For years, Putin has insisted Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and has accused Ukraine of being an illegitimate state occupying historically Russian lands. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, he began referring ominously to Ukraine as an “anti-Russia,” while describing the country as an “inalienable” part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space. More recently, he underlined his contempt for Ukrainian independence by declaring: “All of Ukraine is ours.”

Putin’s Ukraine obsession has been one of the dominant themes of his entire reign. This reflects the Kremlin dictator’s desire to reverse the 1991 Soviet collapse and his fear that the consolidation of Ukrainian statehood could spark the next stage in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For Putin and millions of his fellow Russians, the emergence of an independent Ukraine is a bitterly resented reminder of their own country’s post-Soviet humiliation, while Ukrainian society’s efforts to embrace a democratic European identity offer alarming echoes of the pro-democracy movements that led to the fall of the USSR. For the past two decades, Putin’s top priority has been making sure Ukraine’s turn away from authoritarianism does not serve as a catalyst for similar democratization demands inside Russia itself.

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During the early years of his reign, Putin attempted to return Ukraine to Moscow’s orbit via a combination of political interference, economic leverage, and soft power tools including the Kremlin-controlled Russian media and the Russian Orthodox Church. When this strategy failed, he opted to launch the limited military intervention of 2014, which began with the seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

Once it became apparent that even the partial occupation of Ukraine would not derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration, Putin appears to have concluded that he could no longer take the risk of allowing an independent Ukraine to exist at all. This set the stage for the full-scale invasion of 2022 and laid the ideological foundations for the Kremlin’s current efforts to extinguish Ukrainian national identity entirely.

Unless Putin is stopped, there can be no serious doubt that millions more Ukrainians will be robbed of their identity and subjected to Putin’s ruthless brand of Russian imperial indoctrination. During recent bilateral peace talks in Istanbul, Kremlin officials underlined their determination to secure Kyiv’s complete capitulation. Moscow’s terms include the revival of Russian dominance over every aspect of Ukrainian public life and the dramatic reduction of the Ukrainian military. It does not take much imagination to anticipate exactly what kind of treatment Russia has in mind for the civilian population if Ukraine compiles with these demands and is left defenseless.

Putin’s calculated campaign to erase the identity of the largest country situated wholly in Europe makes a complete mockery of efforts to portray the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a conventional armed conflict with limited goals. This is no mere border dispute or rational response to legitimate Russian security concerns; it is a classic war of colonial conquest with the explicit intention of destroying Ukraine as a state and as a nation.

If it is allowed to continue, the magnitude of this crime will dwarf anything seen in Europe since World War II. This will fuel Putin’s sense of impunity and whet his imperial appetite, creating the conditions for further previously unthinkable acts of international aggression. It will then only be a matter of time before other “historically Russian” nations are subjected to the horrors currently being inflicted on Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Any settlement based on Trump’s proposals would have been easy to sell as a Russian success story. Indeed, many would have regarded it as an unprecedented triumph for the Kremlin. Despite these positive optics, Putin has remained unmoved. While the Russian ruler has consistently voiced his theoretical support for America’s efforts to end the war, he has in practice derailed any hope of meaningful progress toward peace by engaging in endless stalling tactics and insisting on maximalist demands that would mean the effective end of Ukrainian statehood.

This uncompromising Russian stance has placed Trump in an increasingly awkward position. After months of talking up the prospects of peace, he has now been forced to acknowledge that Putin has no intention of ending the war. This has set the stage for the recent change of tone from the White House, which has led to the renewal of US arms deliveries to Ukraine along with this week’s fresh ultimatum.

There is now much speculation over what Trump will do if, as expected, Putin ignores the latest US deadline and continues his invasion. There is also considerable debate over the potential implications of the US decision to provide Ukraine with weapons via Europe, with many questioning whether this military support will be on a sufficient scale to impact the future course of the war.

The real question, however, is why Putin chose to reject America’s generous peace terms. After all, Trump was offering his Kremlin counterpart an honorable exit from an enormously costly war that has undermined Russia’s global standing and has often threatened to spiral completely out of control. Why did Putin refuse to accept victory in Ukraine?

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Putin’s most immediate reason for refusing to end the war in Ukraine is because he thinks he is winning. The Russian army is advancing at various points along the front lines, while Ukraine’s military is being methodically worn down. Although progress is proving exceptionally slow, there is no question that Putin currently holds the battlefield initiative and can reasonably expect to prevail in a war of attrition against a far smaller opponent.

Putin has also been encouraged by the limitations of international support for Ukraine. While Kyiv’s partners have provided substantial military and financial backing, this aid has consistently been subject to delays or restrictions due to domestic political considerations and widespread Western fears of possible Russian escalation. With his army seizing more territory and his opponents so easily intimidated, it not difficult to understand why the Russian leader might prefer to continue his invasion while awaiting what he sees as the inevitable Ukrainian collapse.

On the domestic front, Putin has a number of further practical reasons for preferring the harsh realities of war to the unpredictability of peace. Since 2022, he has succeeded in moving the Russian economy onto a war footing, with massive hikes in military spending and payouts to soldiers helping to offset the damage caused by international sanctions. Russian factories now work around the clock and are pumping out more armaments that all NATO member countries combined.

As a result of this shift to a wartime economy, millions of ordinary Russian families are far wealthier today than in 2022. At the same time, the results are highly uneven: Flooding the Russian economy with state subsidies has spiked inflation and forced the Kremlin to sharply raise interest rates, hurting many of the non-military companies that make up much of the real Russian economy.

Beyond the defense sector, Russian oil and gas exports have been redirected to new markets across the Global South. Meanwhile, Western companies that exited Russia in response to the war have been replaced by local alternatives, creating extensive enrichment opportunities for many within Putin’s inner circle. A ceasefire would place this entire economic model in jeopardy, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the country as a whole.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has produced similar dividends for the Putin regime politically. Since 2022, the Kremlin has exploited wartime conditions to complete Russia’s long post-Soviet journey from flawed democracy to dictatorship. Virtually all potential opponents of the regime are now exiled, jailed, or dead. The last vestiges of an independent media have been extinguished, while civil liberties have been further curtailed. There is no meaningful anti-war movement in today’s Russia. Nor is there any serious doubt that Putin will remain in power until the end of his current term in 2036, if he lives that long.

In the event of a peace deal, the Kremlin would also face the challenge of dealing with hundreds of thousands of demobilized Russian soldiers brutalized by the savagery of the war in Ukraine. Crucially, these men have grown accustomed to exceptionally large salaries and bonus payments that dwarf anything they can expect to receive if they head back to their provincial homes across Russia. The return of so many military veterans to civilian life would have potentially explosive consequences for Russian society, with significant numbers likely to engage in violent crime or other forms of destructive behavior. Putin is acutely aware that Red Army soldiers returning from the Soviet war in Afghanistan played a key role in the spiraling banditry of the 1990s. He will be in no hurry to risk a repeat.

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Putin’s refusal to accept Trump’s favorable peace terms is in part explained by his heightened expectations of victory and his sense of trepidation over the unpredictable implications of any negotiated deal to end hostilities. The decisive factor fueling Putin’s determination to continue the war, however, is his conviction that Ukrainian statehood poses an existential threat to Russia and must be extinguished altogether. This has always been the primary motive behind the invasion and reflects deep-rooted fears shared by Putin and other Kremlin leaders over the potential breakup of the Russian Federation.

Putin views Ukraine as an indivisible part of Russia’s historical heartlands and regards the modern Ukrainian state’s separation from Russia as a “geopolitical catastrophe” that symbolizes the injustice of the Soviet collapse. Like many from his generation, Putin is haunted by the grassroots pro-democracy campaigns and independence movements that fueled the fall of the USSR. This has helped to convince him that the consolidation of an independent and democratic Ukraine could spark the next stage in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.

Putin’s obsession with Ukraine as a potential catalyst for Russian imperial collapse has been increasingly evident throughout his reign. For much of the past two decades, he has insisted that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). In more recent years, he began attacking Ukraine more explicitly as an artificial “anti-Russia” that could no longer be tolerated. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Putin took the highly unusual step of publishing an entire 5000-word essay detailing his rejection of Ukraine’s right to exist.

The actions of the Russian army in Ukraine have mirrored this genocidal rhetoric. In Ukrainian regions currently under Russian occupation, thousands of community leaders and patriots have been detained and dispatched into a vast network of prison camps. Those who remain are being forced to accept Russian passports and subjected to ruthless Russification, with all traces of Ukrainian statehood, culture, and history systematically erased.

The Kremlin’s carefully coordinated campaign to eradicate Ukrainian national identity reveals the central truth behind Russia’s invasion. The war that Putin first unleashed in 2014 and escalated in 2022 aims to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. This helps to explain why Putin has shown such little interest in the terms offered by Trump. While the US proposal may have appeared attractive to outsiders, Putin knows he cannot risk a settlement that stops short of Ukraine’s complete capitulation. He is painfully aware that any peace deal guaranteeing Ukraine’s continued existence as an independent state would represent an historic Russian defeat. In other words, if Ukraine survives, Russia loses.

If Trump and other leaders wish to change the calculus in the Kremlin and convince Putin to end the war, they must learn the lessons of the past six months. Clearly, it is essential to transform the military realities on the ground and force Putin to question his current confidence in Russian victory. This means providing Ukraine with the weapons to defend its cities from bombardment, regain the initiative on the battlefield, and bring the war home to Russia. The West has the tools to do so. All that is missing is the requisite political will. Anything less will prolong the war and embolden Putin to escalate further.

Additional sanctions are also evidently required in order to upset Russia’s robust wartime economy and persuade Putin that continuing the invasion will eventually bankrupt his country. This will require far tougher measures against Russia’s energy exports, along with secondary sanctions targeting countries involved in helping Moscow bypass present measures. In parallel, the numerous European nations that continue to trade with the Kremlin should be unambiguously informed that this will no longer be tolerated.

Most of all, Western leaders must force Putin to abandon his imperial ambitions and finally accept the irreversible historical reality of an independent Ukraine. This will require far greater resolve than anything the West has demonstrated since 2022, but it is the only way to secure a sustainable peace.

Putin’s anti-Ukrainian crusade has come to define his entire reign, reflecting his burning ambition to reverse the verdict of 1991 and revive the Russian Empire. He has gambled everything on his ability to extinguish Ukrainian independence, and is prepared to go to almost any lengths in pursuit of this criminal goal. From Putin’s perspective, therefore, the stakes could hardly be higher and the benefits of continuing the war currently far outweigh the costs. This will only change if he finds himself confronted with the threat of military defeat in Ukraine and the very real prospect of a new Russian national collapse.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Election outcomes

Following elections earlier this year in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the mixed results reveal that the contest between liberal democracy and populism remains far from settled.

Some of the populist right’s successes can be ascribed to anti-incumbent sentiment. In Romania, for example, centrist opposition candidate Nicușor Dan defeated George Simion, a right-wing opposition candidate and Euroskeptic who opposes military aid to Ukraine. But the narrow presidential contest between these two “outsiders” exposes a deeper vulnerability. Simion’s party has emerged as Romania’s second-largest political force, commanding significant influence in a parliament in which far-right legislators occupy a third of the seats. Even more worryingly, the electoral process itself proved chaotic. Simion reached the runoff only after the original first round was annulled amid allegations of Russian interference. Though he conceded defeat, Simion simultaneously contested the results, claiming improper French and Moldovan meddling—charges Romania’s Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed. Dan’s triumph preserves Romania’s westward orientation and is an important reaffirmation of the rule of law and its Euro-Atlantic alignment. Even so, the thin margin of his victory and the turmoil surrounding the election demonstrate that Romania’s democratic institutions remain vulnerable to outside threats.

In Poland, right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki’s narrow win over centrist Rafał Trzaskowski shows right-wing populism’s staying power and may prove consequential for European stability. Trzaskowski, who was backed by the centrist Civic Coalition, led the first round with 31.4 percent but ultimately fell short, dealing a severe blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU government and to Warsaw’s unified voice on European and transatlantic affairs. While Polish presidents have a mostly ceremonial function, they can veto legislation. This power could affect the governing coalition’s hopes to reverse years of what it and its supporters see as institutional capture, court politicization, and the damage from PiS’s systematic assault on democratic norms—efforts that triggered multiple EU rule-of-law proceedings. Many Poles are now concerned that Nawrocki’s presidency could derail that restoration project, with implications that might extend far beyond Poland’s borders to the heart of European governance itself.

Turning westward, recent political developments provide little solace. Portugal’s early general election in May delivered another minority government, as well as unprecedented support for the populist party Chega (Enough) that added to both the preexisting political instability and Europe’s far-right drift. Chega ran on a populist platform of antiestablishment rhetoric and anxieties over immigration, garnering 22.6 percent of the vote and placing it alongside the historically dominant center-left Socialist Party.

Earlier this year in Germany, the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came in second in federal elections, doubling its vote share from four years prior. It was the strongest showing for a far-right German party since World War II. Despite being battered by scandals and intelligence scrutiny, the AfD has continued to poll strongly on the back of anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic messaging, particularly in the former East Germany, where the party has found a foothold among young, disillusioned voters.

The strategic stakes

This pattern of populist advances may soon extend to Prague. Czechia, which has anchored Central Europe’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine coalition in recent years, appears headed for a populist shift in October’s general elections. Former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party leads polling, alongside the right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy, which has built its platform on Euroskepticism, anti-immigration sentiment, and explicit opposition to military aid for Ukraine.

The rightward drift in Poland and Czechia carries outsized significance because Warsaw and Prague have punched above their weight in EU politics, bridging Western capitals with the more politically fluid EU eastern flank. Both countries have been vocal, generous supporters of Ukraine and have advocated closer European defense cooperation. A populist turn in Prague—alongside familiar foot-dragging on sanctions and dialed-down commitments from Bratislava and Budapest—could unravel that posture. It could feed broader regional and continental ambivalence toward Kyiv at a vulnerable moment, when the burden of sustaining Ukraine’s defense is falling more squarely on Brussels.

Also at stake are the EU’s nascent ambitions for a credible defense capability, since proposals for common rearmament programs and joint procurement depend on the very cohesion that Europe’s populists seek to undermine. The foreign policy challenge is nuanced: Polish and Romanian nationalists support robust defense spending at home but remain skeptical about pooled sovereignty within the EU. Yet without alignment on planning, procurement, and command structures, rising national defense budgets do little to strengthen Europe’s collective readiness. Meanwhile, Germany’s AfD opposes both domestic and EU military buildups. If every major defense initiative must first survive such centrifugal forces of domestic politics among the bloc’s twenty-seven members—some actively sympathetic to Moscow—the promises of united European defense look increasingly hollow. As with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, populists sometimes govern more pragmatically than they campaign. But whether these leaders would uphold Europe’s commitments to Ukraine and collective defense remains to be seen.

Institutional defenses: More than just elections

There are many factors that account for the recent success of populist parties, but these trends run deeper than electoral outcomes. They reflect domestic narratives that exploit grievance and mistrust, as much as a failure to counter foreign efforts to manipulate European electorates. Europe’s centrists must work to take back the language of sovereignty and security from those who wield it to divide voters, and they should do so before these messages harden into conventional wisdom under the combined weight of internal discontent and external interference.

In practice, this means connecting European cooperation to kitchen-table concerns and leaning into language an ordinary citizen can understand and appreciate. This entails stressing how coordinated defense procurement delivers better equipment at lower cost to national armies and how energy partnerships reduce household bills. It also requires emphasizing how European frameworks amplify—rather than diminish—national power by enabling small EU countries to negotiate with large ones as equals, allows states to secure better trade and investment deals that create jobs, and help deter Russian aggression through collective strength that no single nation could muster alone.

To better defend against foreign information interference, the EU should double down on auditing social media platforms and how their algorithms prioritize and distribute political content under the Digital Services Act. The EU should also enforce penalties and suspend service when platforms are shown to facilitate hostile influence operations.

Even then, the information landscape in an open Europe remains porous, and the institutional responses will lag multiple steps behind malicious campaigns. But such measures could meaningfully reduce their scale and effectiveness while signaling the EU’s resolve to tackle them as a continent-wide security imperative requiring a sustained response that could eventually tip the balance decisively in favor of democratic discourse. Given the stakes, both for the state of the EU’s democracies and the need for Europe to unite on rearmament to deter Russia, Brussels must act now to defend its institutions.

Soňa Muzikárová is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

The post Populist gains are threatening Europe’s strategic coherence. Here’s how the EU can fight back. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Russia’s persecution of the Crimean Tatars must not be forgotten

Mercedes Sapuppo — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 20:23:51 +0000

Events will take place across Ukraine this week to mark Crimean Tatar Flag Day. However, there will be no celebrations in Crimea itself. The Ukrainian peninsula has been under Russian occupation since the spring of 2014, with the indigenous Crimean Tatar population subjected to more than a decade of oppressive policies by the occupying authorities.

Since the beginning of 2025, US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace deal have focused primarily on talk of territorial concessions and geopolitical alignments. However, the plight of the Crimean Tatars is a reminder that steps to safeguard human rights must play a key role in any future settlement.

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Since the Russian takeover of Crimea, the peninsula’s sizable Crimean Tatar population has been collectively and systematically persecuted for their perceived opposition to the occupation. For the Crimean Tatars, this mirrors the pain of past experiences with Russian imperialism. Following the Russian conquest of Crimea in the late eighteenth century, the native Crimean Tatar population was subjected to decades of harsh policies by the Russian imperial authorities, leading to a mass exodus.

Worse was to follow. In February 1944, the Soviet authorities carried out the deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar population to Central Asia. More than 200,000 people were forced to abandon their ancestral homeland overnight, with tens of thousands dying in a brutal deportation process and during the initial years of exile.

The deportation of the Crimean Tatars is one of the Soviet Union’s most notorious crimes against humanity. Ukrainian parliamentarians recently appealed to the international community to recognize the deportation as an act of genocide.

In the twilight years of the Soviet era, the Crimean Tatars were finally allowed to begin returning to their homeland. This process gained momentum following Ukrainian independence, with Crimean Tatars accounting for around 15 percent of the peninsula’s more than two million population on the eve of the 2014 Russian invasion.

The current wave of persecution targeting the Crimean Tatar population of Crimea began during the early days of the Russian occupation, with reports soon emerging of Crimean Tatars being threatened, kidnapped, and killed. The body of Crimean Tatar activist Reshat Ametov was discovered on March 15, 2014. He is widely seen as the first victim of the Russian occupation.

Since 2014, hundreds of Crimean Tatars have been arrested on what human rights activists say are falsified charges. Members of the community are currently thought to represent more than half of Crimea’s political prisoners. In 2016, the self-governing body of the Crimean Tatar community, the Mejlis, was officially outlawed and branded an “extremist organization.” Russian raids and detentions in Crimean Tatar districts have become a grim feature of everyday life during more than a decade of occupation.

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In addition to facing restrictions on their human rights and political freedoms, Crimean Tatars living under Russian occupation are also currently limited in their ability to honor their culture or express their identity. Indeed, they are not even permitted to stage public memorial events commemorating the victims of the Soviet era deportation. Meanwhile, Crimean Tatar heritage is being erased across the peninsula.

Crimean Mufti Ayder Rustemov is one of many from the Crimean Tatar community who view the current policies of the Putin regime as a continuation of earlier attempts to suppress the indigenous population and russify Crimea. “The goal of Russia has not changed, only the form has changed,” he commented in May 2025.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has dominated the international headlines in recent years and drawn attention away from the ongoing human rights abuses being committed by the Russian authorities in occupied Crimea. However, the situation remains dire. In Freedom House’s 2025 Freedom in the World report, political rights and civil liberties in Crimea received a score of just one out of a possible 100.

As discussion continues over possible deals to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Crimean Tatars have been alarmed by reports that the United States may be prepared to recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea in order to secure peace. US recognition of Russia’s claim to Crimea would represent a major blow to the inviolability of borders, which has served as a core principle of international law for decades. It would also legitimize the further persecution of the Crimean Tatar population.

Any lasting peace must guarantee the security and human rights of Ukraine’s Crimean Tatar population and allow them to live freely in their own homeland. This should include the release of all political prisoners, an end to infringements on political and religious freedoms, and full legal protections for Crimean Tatar heritage and identity.

Russia’s war against Ukraine began in February 2014 with the seizure of Crimea. The persecution of the Crimean Tatars is a constant reminder of this crime and must be addressed before the war can be brought to an end.

Mercedes Sapuppo is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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Kyiv was quick to condemn the Russian leader’s statements. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Putin’s “performance” was confirmation of his expansionist imperial ambitions, and warned that the threat posed by resurgent Russian imperialism extended to “Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, the Caucasus, countries like Kazakhstan, and every place on Earth that Russian killers can reach.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Putin of demonstrating “complete disdain” for ongoing peace efforts initiated by US President Donald Trump. “While the United States and the rest of the world have called for an immediate end to the killing, Russia’s top war criminal discusses plans to seize more Ukrainian territory and kill more Ukrainians,” commented Sybiha.

Others were considerably less diplomatic, with many Ukrainians taking to social media to vent their anger over this very public embrace of Russian imperialism. “Putin says Russians and Ukrainians are one people while Russians are bombing, raping, and killing us,” commented Ukrainian security analyst Maria Avdeeva. “We’re not your brothers. We’re your survivors.”

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None of this is entirely new, of course. The contempt for Ukrainian statehood and national identity that was on display at the St. Petersburg forum is deeply rooted in Russian imperial tradition and has become an increasingly prominent feature of Putin’s reign over the past twenty five years. As Putin himself acknowledged last week, he has consistently claimed that Ukrainians are in fact Russians (“one people”). As long ago as 2008, he was already telling US President George W. Bush that in his opinion Ukraine was “not even a country.”

Ever since Russia’s war against Ukraine began in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, Putin has been weaponizing history to undermine Ukraine’s legitimacy and justify his own escalating campaign of imperial aggression. On the eve of the February 2022 full-scale invasion, he took the unusual step of publishing an entire 5000-word history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. Once the attack was underway, he likened his invasion of Ukraine to the imperial conquests of eighteenth century Russian Czar Peter the Great, while arguing that he was “returning historically Russian lands.”

Many of Putin’s historical distortions border on the absurd. He makes no mention of the entire centuries-long struggle for Ukrainian statehood, while conveniently ignoring countless examples of Russian imperial policies designed to silence Ukrainians and erase Ukrainian identity. Instead, he argues that Ukraine is an artificial entity created by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks in the early twentieth century. Putin is clearly not a fan of Voltaire, who observed almost three hundred years ago in 1731 that “Ukraine has always aspired to be free.”

Putin’s obsessive Ukraine denial has set the tone for the whole Russian establishment and given rise to similarly eliminationist language from numerous other Kremlin officials. In early 2024, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev stated that “the existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians.” More recently, close Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev announced that Ukraine may soon “cease to exist.” Vicious anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has become so commonplace in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media that UN officials believe it may constitute “incitement to genocide.”

The actions of the Russian army in Ukraine closely mirror this genocidal rhetoric. In areas of Ukraine seized by the Kremlin, thousands of people have been arrested based on their pro-Ukrainian stance and have since disappeared into a vast network of prisons. A UN probe has determined that these mass detentions are a crime against humanity. Remaining residents in occupied regions of Ukraine are forced to accept Russian citizenship and subjected to relentless russification in every sphere of public life, with all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity systematically removed or suppressed.

Meanwhile, Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal have proved fruitless in large part due to Putin’s uncompromising position. While Ukraine has backed a US proposal for an unconditional ceasefire, Russia has refused to do likewise. Instead, Moscow has sought to derail ceasefire talks while making maximalist demands that would leave Ukraine internationally isolated, partitioned, disarmed, and forced to reject an independent identity in favor of an imperial Russian ideology. Such terms would be fatal for Ukrainian statehood.

The widespread Russian belief that Ukraine has no right to exist helps to explain the brutality of the current invasion and makes a complete mockery of US-led efforts to broker a compromise peace. Putin’s latest comments now provide further proof that he has no real interest in a negotiated settlement and is determined to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. This extreme brand of Russian imperialism is the root cause of the invasion.

Until Russia is forced to abandon its imperial ambitions and accept the inevitability of an independent Ukraine, the war will continue. This long overdue shift in Russian perceptions can be achieved by dramatically increasing Western military aid to Ukraine, strengthening support for Ukraine’s domestic defense industry, and making the kind of long-term commitments that remove any doubt over the West’s collective resolve to safeguard Ukrainian security. A lasting peace is possible, but it will only come once Russia recognizes that Ukraine is too strong to be subjugated.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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The demands unveiled by the Russian delegation this week in Istanbul came as no surprise and closely mirrored the conditions outlined on numerous prior occasions by Putin and other Kremlin leaders. Nevertheless, at a time when US President Donald Trump is publicly pressing for progress toward peace, the Russian decision to deliver such a maximalist memorandum sent a clear message of defiance to Washington DC.

As expected, Moscow reiterated its call for Ukraine to withdraw completely from four Ukrainian provinces that Russia currently claims as its own but has been unable to fully occupy. This would oblige the Ukrainian authorities to hand over a number of major cities and condemn millions of their compatriots to indefinite Russian occupation. Kyiv would also be expected to officially cede these regions together with Crimea, paving the way for international recognition of Russia’s conquests.

This crushing territorial settlement is only one aspect of Russia’s vision for the comprehensive dismantling of Ukrainian statehood. In line with Putin’s peace terms, Ukraine would be forced to accept limitations on the size of its army and on the categories of weapons it is allowed to possess. The country would be also be barred from joining any military blocs or concluding alliances with foreign nations. It does not take much imagination to guess what Putin has in mind for Ukraine once it has been successfully disarmed and internationally isolated.

Nor is that all. The Kremlin’s conditions actually go much further and aim to transform Ukraine from within in ways that would erase Ukrainian identity along with the country’s political independence. Moscow’s memorandum called on Ukraine to grant Russian the status of official state language, reinstate the privileges of the Russian Orthodox Church, and adopt a Kremlin-friendly version of Ukrainian history. Meanwhile, all so-called “nationalist” Ukrainian political parties would be banned, paving the way for the installation of a puppet regime in Kyiv.

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On the morning after this week’s bilateral meeting, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev confirmed the true objective of Russia’s participation in peace talks. “The Istanbul talks are not for striking a compromise peace on someone else’s delusional terms,” commented Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s powerful National Security Council. Instead, Medvedev stated that Russia’s goal was to secure victory and ensure “the complete destruction of the neo-Nazi regime,” which is widely recognized as Kremlin code for the Ukrainian state. “That’s what the Russian memorandum published yesterday is about,” he noted.

Medvedev’s frank appraisal of the Russian position won him sarcastic praise from US Senator Lindsey Graham. “Congratulations to Mr. Medvedev for a rare moment of honesty coming from the Russian propaganda machine,” commented Trump ally Graham. “I appreciate you making it clear to the world that Putin and Russia are not remotely interested in peace.”

It is hard to argue with Graham’s assessment. For the past few months, Putin has gone out of his way to demonstrate that he has absolutely no intention of ending the war. While Ukraine has accepted a US proposal for an unconditional ceasefire, Putin has repeatedly refused to do so. Instead, he has engaged in transparent stalling tactics that make a mockery of the entire peace process.

Away from the negotiating table, Putin has dramatically increased drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, killing and wounding hundreds of civilians. On the battlefield, his armies are currently engaged in the early stages what is shaping up to be one of the biggest Russian offensives of the entire war. These are not the actions of a man who seeks peace.

After this week’s fresh confirmation of Moscow’s undiminished imperial ambitions in Ukraine, it is now surely time to abandon any lingering delusions and accept that the Russian dictator will not stop until he is stopped. Putin believes he is on a messianic mission to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and revive the Russian Empire. He currently thinks he is winning this historic struggle and will not be swayed by Trump’s comparatively trivial talk of tariffs and trade deals.

The only thing that can change Putin’s mind is Western strength. As long as Putin is confident of eventual victory, he will continue. But if the alternative to a peace deal is a potentially crushing defeat, he may reconsider. To achieve this change, Western leaders must demonstrate a degree of collective resolve that has often been absent over the past three years. They must sanction Russia to the max and arm Ukraine to the teeth. This will require considerable political will and good old-fashioned courage in Western capitals. Ukraine will do the rest.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

In addition to daily drone strikes, Russia has sought to maximize the psychological pressure on residents of the Kherson region via social media channels. UN investigators reported that video footage of drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians is regularly disseminated on Russian Telegram channels, some of which have thousands of subscribers. This video footage shows drone strikes along with the resulting deaths and destruction in the style of video games, often accompanied by background music. Meanwhile, menacing messages posted on Telegram call on Ukrainians to flee the region. “Get out of the city before the leaves fall, you who are destined to die,” read one message quoted in the UN report.

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This is not the first time UN investigators have accused Russia of committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine. A March 2025 UN report reached a similar conclusion regarding the Kremlin’s large-scale program of detentions and deportations targeting Ukrainians living under Russian occupation. “The evidence gathered led the Commission to conclude that the enforced disappearances against civilians were perpetrated pursuant to a coordinated state policy and amount to crimes against humanity,” the report stated.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued a number of arrest warrants for senior Russian officials in relation to alleged war crimes committed in Ukraine including the targeted bombing of civilians and critical civilian infrastructure. The most high-profile ICC arrest warrant is for Vladimir Putin himself, who is wanted for his alleged involvement in the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

At least 20,000 Ukrainian children are believed to have been kidnapped since the start of the full-scale invasion and taken to Russia, where they are subjected to indoctrination to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian national identity. The nature and scale of these mass abductions may qualify as an act of genocide according to the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention.

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Russia’s deadly “human safari” drone campaign against the civilian population in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region is part of the Kremlin’s strategy to make the area unlivable. The city of Kherson was occupied by the advancing Russian army during the first days of the full-scale invasion and was officially annexed by Russia in September 2022. However, Kherson and the surrounding area were liberated by the Ukrainian military soon after. The scenes of joy that accompanied the liberation of Kherson were deeply humiliating for Putin, who had personally proclaimed the city to be “forever” Russian just weeks earlier.

This setback forced Putin’s invading army to retreat across the Dnipro River, creating a major physical obstacle for the Russian invasion and limiting the occupied zone of Ukraine to the eastern half of the country. Nevertheless, Moscow continues to insist that Kherson and the surrounding region are now part of the Russian Federation and must be handed over within the framework of a future peace deal.

Ukraine has completely ruled out any such concessions. This is hardly surprising. While some temporary territorial compromises may prove possible during peace negotiations, Ukraine’s stance on Kherson is unlikely to change. After all, allowing the renewed Russian occupation of Kherson would be suicidal for Kyiv. It would present Russia with a priceless foothold across the Dnipro River that could be used as a gateway to seize Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and complete the conquest of the country.

For now, Russia appears to have little chance of seizing Kherson militarily or of acquiring the city at the negotiating table. Instead, Moscow seems to be intent on terrorizing local residents and forcing them to flee. Putin claims that the population of the Kherson region are Russians, but he has no qualms about his soldiers using drones to hunt and kill them mercilessly. This tells you all you need to know about Putin’s cynical posturing as the protector of the Russian people in Ukraine.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Ukrainian detainees are being systematically subjected to torture and other human rights abuses, according to an international investigation led by the French group Forbidden Stories together with thirteen media outlets including Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the Washington Post, and Le Monde. While it is not possible to calculate exactly how many Ukrainian civilians have been abducted in the occupied regions, UN officials have concluded that the large scale and systematic nature of the disappearances qualifies as a crime against humanity.

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Those who remain in areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control face a regime of forced russification encompassing everything from language and the media to education and religion. Place names have been changed to reflect the new Russian realities, with the curriculum in local schools transformed in line with the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian imperial dogmas. Parents who attempt to shield their children from classroom indoctrination are being threatened with loss of custody.

Ukrainian residents in the occupied regions of the country have also come under increasing pressure from the Kremlin to accept Russian citizenship. Anyone who refuses to take a Russian passport risks losing access to a range of essential services including healthcare. They also face restrictions on property rights along with the ability to run a business and use banking services.

This passport campaign has intensified significantly in recent months, with Russian President Vladimir Putin issuing a decree announcing that Ukrainians living under Russian occupation have until September 2025 to accept Russian citizenship or face possible deportation from their own homes. Understandably, Moscow’s ruthless tactics are proving difficult to resist. Kremlin officials claim that by March 2025, Russian passports had been issued to approximately 3.5 million people in occupied Ukraine.

Moscow is accused of engaging in religious persecution throughout the occupied regions, with all Christian denominations other that the Kremlin-linked Russian Orthodox Church facing various degrees of restrictive measures and oppression. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry officials stated in spring 2025 that the Russian occupation authorities have killed dozens of clergy members over the past three years while damaging or destroying hundreds of churches.

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Russia has been careful to prevent information about conditions in occupied Ukraine from reaching the outside world. All independent media sources have been shut down throughout the occupied regions, and have been replaced by new Kremlin-controlled outlets. Individual journalists have frequently been among those targeted for oppressive measures including physical abuse and imprisonment.

One of the few reporters to shed light on the horrors unfolding in Russian-occupied Ukraine was Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who visited areas under occupation on multiple occasions before being captured by the Russian authorities in summer 2023. Roshchyna died after a year in Russian captivity. When her body was returned to Ukraine in early 2025, it showed signs of torture.

From a military standpoint, it may not currently be feasible to liberate all of the Ukrainian regions held by Moscow. Nevertheless, the crimes being committed by the Kremlin in occupied Ukraine are unprecedented in modern European history and cannot be ignored.

It is vital that the human rights of Ukrainians living under Russian occupation feature prominently in any peace process. This includes the rights of those currently being held in Russian jails. Ukraine’s Western partners must maintain or increase sanctions pressure, while also expanding support for Ukrainian civil society and raising awareness about Russia’s actions among international audiences.

Looking ahead, longer term investments are also needed to help document war crimes and support Ukrainian victims of the Russian occupation. Ultimately, the most meaningful response to Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian identity is to make sure Ukraine is in a position to not only survive but thrive as an independent European nation.

Kateryna Odarchenko is a partner at SIC Group Ukraine.

It is no surprise to see mounting unease in Western capitals over the US push to end the Russia-Ukraine War. Since Trump first initiated peace talks in February, Ukraine has agreed to an unconditional ceasefire and signaled its readiness to make major territorial concessions. In contrast, Russia has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire while proposing new conditions of its own and creating various obstacles to any meaningful progress. At one point, Putin even claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lacked the legitimacy to sign off on a peace deal and suggested placing Ukraine under United Nations administration.

Recent diplomatic developments have further underlined Russia’s reluctance to end the war. When the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and Poland delivered a ceasefire ultimatum to Putin in early May, the Russian ruler responded by calling for the first bilateral talks with Ukraine since spring 2022. However, Putin then chose not to attend the bilateral meeting in Istanbul that he himself had proposed, preferring instead to send a low-level delegation. This was widely interpreted as a “slap in the face” for Ukraine and the collective West.

Putin’s representatives during last week’s negotiations in Istanbul sought to emphasize Moscow’s unwillingness to compromise, calling on Kyiv to officially cede four entire provinces to Russia including a number of major Ukrainian cities that the Kremlin has so far been unable to seize militarily. If Ukraine refuses to do so, they warned, Russia will increase its demands to include six Ukrainian provinces. “We fought Sweden for twenty-one years. How long are you ready to fight?” the head of the Russian delegation reportedly commented, in reference to the eighteenth century Great Northern War. “Maybe some of those sitting here at this table will lose more of their loved ones. Russia is prepared to fight forever.”

While Putin rarely makes such thinly veiled threats, he continues to insist that any settlement must focus on eliminating what he refers to as the “root causes” of the war. This is generally understood to mean Ukraine’s international neutrality and disarmament, along with the reestablishment of Russia’s former imperial dominance in every sphere of Ukrainian public life, from language and education to national memory and religion. Any Ukrainian leader who agreed to such terms would be signing their country’s death sentence.

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Trump’s efforts to talk up the prospects of a negotiated peace and his attempts to entice Putin with commercial incentives suggest a fundamentally flawed understanding of Russia’s war aims in Ukraine. The US leader seems to sincerely believe that Putin can be persuaded to end his invasion by the promise of limited territorial gains and future economic prosperity. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Putin is not fighting for Ukrainian land; he is fighting for Ukraine itself. He views the current war in the broadest of possible historical terms and sees the destruction of the Ukrainian state as a sacred mission that will define his entire reign and shape Russia’s future for decades to come. It is ludicrous to suggest that he could be swayed from this messianic vision by mundane talk of trade deals and sanctions relief.

Putin’s thirst for historical revenge can be traced back to his traumatic experience during the collapse of the Soviet Union. While Putin did not personally face the grinding poverty that millions of his compatriots endured in the 1990s, Russia’s national fall from grace nevertheless made a profound impression on him. Ever since, he has been haunted by fears of a further imperial collapse and driven by a determination to reverse the verdict of 1991. This has fueled his revanchist brand of Russian nationalism, and helps to explain his otherwise inexplicable obsession with Ukraine.

Throughout his reign, Putin has made no secret of his bitter resentment over the breakup of the USSR, which he has called “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century” and “the disintegration of historical Russia.” Crucially, he views Ukraine as a central and indivisible part of this fabled “historical Russia.” Indeed, the Ukrainian capital Kyiv occupies pride of place in his imperial mythology as “the mother of all Russian cities.”

To Putin, the emergence of an independent Ukraine is a symbol of Russia’s post-Soviet humiliation and a potential catalyst for the next stage in his country’s retreat from empire. According to this twisted imperial logic, if a province as quintessentially Russian as Ukraine is allowed to break away and establish itself as a modern European democracy, the entire Russian Federation will be in danger of disintegrating. Likewise, Putin is convinced that if Ukraine can be returned to its rightful place within Greater Russia, the injustice of 1991 will be undone and Russia will resume its position among the world’s Great Powers.

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Putin has been attempting to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit ever since the 2004 Orange Revolution, which he personally helped spark by clumsily intervening in Ukraine’s presidential election. The violence of these efforts has escalated in direct proportion to the strengthening of modern Ukraine’s own national identity. At first, Putin pursued his imperial goals in Ukraine through control of the country’s political, business, cultural, and religious elites. When this failed, he ordered the 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Once it became apparent that even this partial occupation of the country would not derail Ukraine’s national consolidation, Putin made the fateful decision to launch the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

The rising tide of Russian aggression against Ukraine has been accompanied by ever more extreme anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. For years, Putin has publicly insisted that Ukrainians are Russians (“one people”). On the eve of the current invasion, he published an entire essay denying Ukraine’s right to exist. Putin and other senior Kremlin officials have repeatedly labeled Ukraine as an artificial country built on stolen Russian land, a Nazi invention, and an intolerable “anti-Russia” created for the purpose of undermining Russia itself. Ukrainians who insist on their own national identity are typically portrayed as traitors undeserving of sympathy or mercy.

This dehumanizing propaganda has laid the ideological foundations for the crimes that are currently being committed by the occupying Russian army in Ukraine. Wherever the Kremlin is able to establish control, Ukrainian patriots and community leaders are routinely detained and incarcerated in a vast network of prisons and camps. While the number of victims remains unknown, UN officials have concluded that the large scale and systematic nature of the disappearances qualifies as a crime against humanity. Those who remain are subjected to a reign of terror and forced to accept Russian citizenship while submitting their children to indoctrination. Meanwhile, all traces of Ukrainian national identity, culture, and statehood are being ruthlessly erased. Many experts believe these actions qualify as genocide.

Putin is understandably happy to exploit the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for peace talks. This allows him to buy time, divide the West, and reduce the flow of weapons to Ukraine. But it is already abundantly clear that he has no real interest in ending his invasion. Indeed, he dare not stop. Any peace deal that secures Ukraine’s survival as an independent state would be viewed in Moscow as a major defeat. Rather than taking his place alongside Stalin, Peter the Great, and Ivan the Terrible as one of Russia’s greatest rulers, Putin would be remembered in Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine. He would rather fight on indefinitely than accept such a fate.

Trump deserves considerable credit for seizing the initiative and attempting to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, his current approach is obviously not working. The time has now come to stop seeking compromises with the Kremlin and start speaking to Putin in the language of strength. This means tightening sanctions on Russia and targeting the many countries that continue to fuel Putin’s war machine. Above all, it means significantly increasing military aid to Kyiv and boosting Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Putin has staked his entire reign on the destruction of Ukraine. He will not back down unless forced to do so. Peace will only come when Ukraine is too strong to be subjugated.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

The link to today’s war will be hammered home by the participation of numerous Russian military units accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Putin may also choose to surround himself with alleged war criminals from the ranks of his invading army, as he did last year. In his official address, it will be genuinely shocking if Putin does not attempt to draw direct parallels between the struggle against Nazi Germany and his own ongoing war in neighboring Ukraine.

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Even without the involvement of Russian troops fresh from the front lines of the current war, it would be virtually impossible to separate Putin’s parade from the Kremlin propaganda justifying the invasion of Ukraine. Ever since Russia first set out to subjugate Ukraine more than ten years ago, the Kremlin has portrayed its escalating invasion as a continuation of the World War II fight against Germany, with Ukrainians cast in the role of modern-day successors to the Nazis. Despite an almost complete lack of evidence to support these absurd and obscene claims, the “Nazi Ukraine” narrative continues to resonate among a Russia population that has been utterly saturated in an extreme form of World War II mythology that often borders on religious fanaticism.

From the very first years of his reign, Putin has sought to place the Soviet Union’s World War II experience at the very heart of modern Russia’s national identity. For the Kremlin, this emphasis on the immense suffering and ultimate triumph of the Soviet war effort has served as the ideal ideological antidote to the horrors of Stalinism and the humiliations of the Soviet collapse. It has proved a highly effective strategy, helping to rebuild Russia’s battered national pride and giving new meaning to the country’s twentieth century totalitarian trauma.

Putin’s war cult has centered around Victory Day, which has emerged over the past 25 years as by far the most important holiday on the Russian calendar. Many outside observers assume Victory Day always enjoyed similar prominence, but that is not the case. In fact, Stalin himself discouraged commemorations and made May 9 a working day in 1947. It remained so until the mid-1960s, when Victory Day was declared a public holiday. Nevertheless, there was none of the pomp and fanfare currently associated with the anniversary of the Nazi surrender. In the 46 years between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow hosted a grand total of just four Victory Day parades.

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Putin’s cynical exploitation of World War II has also shaped Russian rhetoric on the international stage. This has been most immediately apparent in relation to Ukraine, which Kremlin propaganda has consistently portrayed as a Nazi state. Russia’s lurid claims have proved remarkably resistant to reality, with even the 2019 election of Jewish candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president of Ukraine failing to force a change in tactics. Instead, Putin and other leading Kremlin officials have resorted to ever more ridiculous mental gymnastics as they have struggled to explain how a supposedly Nazi country could elect a Jewish leader. In one particularly notorious incident during the first months of the invasion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed Zelenskyy’s Jewish roots by declaring that Adolf Hitler also had “Jewish blood.”

When Putin announced the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on the fateful morning of February 24, 2022, it came as no surprise that he identified “denazification” as one his two key war aims. The true meaning of this chilling phrase has since become abundantly clear; “denazification” is actually Kremlin code for “de-Ukrainianization,” and reflects Putin’s end goal of a Ukraine without Ukrainians.

In areas of Ukraine that have fallen under Kremlin control since the start of the invasion, the occupation authorities are systematically wiping out all traces of Ukrainian history, culture, and national identity. Thousands of children have been abducted and subjected to indoctrination in a bid to rob them of their Ukrainian nationality, while anyone seen as potentially loyal to Ukraine has been detained and dispatched to a vast network of prisons where torture is reportedly routine. Europe has not witnessed atrocities on this scale since World War II.

For decades, most European countries have marked the end of World War II with solemn memorial services while collectively vowing “never again.” Under Putin, Russians have come to embrace an altogether more menacing form of militant remembrance accompanied by the unofficial slogan “we can repeat it.”

Putin has already succeeded in weaponizing the memory of World War II to consolidate his grip on power, garner domestic support for his expansionist foreign policy, and dehumanize his enemies. He is now poised to use this week’s Victory Day parade in Moscow to legitimize the criminal invasion of Ukraine among his foreign guests and place it in the same context as the fight against Hitler. This is staggeringly disrespectful. It is also historically illiterate. If anyone today is guilty of echoing the crimes of the Nazis, it is Putin himself.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Putin’s demands include the comprehensive disarmament of the Ukrainian military and the reestablishment of Russian dominance in all spheres of Ukrainian public life (euphemistically called “denazification” by the Kremlin), along with official international recognition for Russia’s territorial gains and an end to all military support for Kyiv. If implemented, Putin’s terms would leave Ukraine partitioned, isolated, and defenseless. This is not a negotiating position; it is a call for Kyiv’s capitulation.

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While Russia’s ultimate objectives remain unchanged, there is a very real danger that Putin may seek to exploit Trump’s evident ambition to settle the Ukraine issue as soon as possible. He could do so by agreeing to a temporary ceasefire that would lead to a pause in hostilities, while creating the conditions to complete the conquest of Ukraine following the end of Trump’s presidency. This would allow Putin to lift sanctions, rebuild the Russian army, and destabilize Ukraine from within.

In order to secure Kremlin backing, a ceasefire deal would need to hand Putin the semblance of victory while denying Ukraine any genuine and reliable security guarantees. Alarmingly, reports indicate that current US peace proposals go a long way toward meeting these conditions.

Crucially, the United States is reportedly prepared to officially recognize the Russian seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. This has led to inevitable comparisons with the 1938 Munich Agreement, which saw Britain and France hand Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland over to Nazi Germany in the hope that this would satisfy Adolf Hitler. Instead, the shameful deal struck in Munich encouraged the Nazi dictator to escalate his territorial demands. Less than a year later, World War II began.

The appeasement policies of the 1930s have long been condemned for enabling the rise of Hitler. Attempts to appease Putin have produced strikingly similar results. After Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, Western efforts to downplay the war and resume “business as usual” only served to embolden the Kremlin. When Russia’s 2014 invasions of Crimea and eastern Ukraine again failed to produce a resolute Western response, Putin interpreted this as a tactic green light to go further. This paved the way for the full-scale invasion of 2022.

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It should now be obvious to any objective observer that the continued appeasement of Putin will further fuel his imperial ambitions. This would be potentially fatal for Ukraine itself. It would also be disastrous for the future of international security.

Putin’s revisionist agenda is not limited to Ukraine. He openly speaks of establishing a new world order and frequently laments the fall of the Russian Empire, which at its peak included more than a dozen currently independent nations beyond Ukraine, from Finland and Poland in the west to the Southern Caucasus and Central Asia. If Putin is allowed to succeed in Ukraine, it is delusional to think he will simply stop. On the contrary, abandoning Ukraine to Russia would dramatically increase the chances of a far larger conflict in the coming years.

In order to prevent this nightmare scenario from materializing, the West must demonstrate maximum unity and an uncompromising commitment to Ukraine’s survival as an independent state. Putin interprets any talk of compromise as a sign of weakness. The only language he truly understands is the language of strength.

The most effective deterrent remains Ukrainian membership of NATO. Unsurprisingly, Putin has worked hard to prevent this from happening. He has employed nuclear blackmail to intimidate the West, and has spent years spreading false narratives about an alleged NATO security threat to Russia itself.

Putin’s objections to Ukrainian NATO membership do not stand up to scrutiny. Notably, he has been unable to explain why he went to war over Ukraine’s distant hopes of joining NATO but did nothing to oppose Finland’s recent NATO accession, despite the fact that Finnish membership of the alliance more than doubled Russia’s NATO borders overnight. Indeed, Russia already shares borders with six NATO member states and leaves these frontiers largely unguarded. Putin’s real problem is evidently with Ukrainian independence and not NATO enlargement.

Bringing Ukraine into NATO would serve as a powerful barrier to future Russian invasions and would dramatically reduce the likelihood of a major European war without undermining Russian national security. However, this would require a degree of political will on the part of the United States and major European powers including Britain, France, and Germany that is currently absent. Unless that changes, Western leaders must come up with a credible alternative to NATO membership that will guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security.

Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainian people. But Ukrainians also recognize that well-meaning efforts to compromise with the Putin regime will only encourage further Russian aggression. Similar policies aiming to accommodate and appease Hitler led directly to World War II. If Western leaders wish to prevent a repeat of this catastrophic outcome, they must stop offering the Kremlin concessions and demonstrate the kind of resolve that Russia respects.

Oleksandr Merezhko is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament for the Servant of the People Party and Chair of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

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The war crimes accusations leveled against the Russian authorities in occupied Ukraine extend far beyond the detentions highlighted by UN investigators. The most widely publicized charges relate to the mass abduction and ideological indoctrination of vulnerable Ukrainian children. Russia is believed to have kidnapped tens of thousands of young Ukrainians and placed them in camps or foster homes, where they are often subjected to brainwashing programs designed to rob them of their Ukrainian identity and transform them into Russians. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his role in these mass abductions.

Throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine, the authorities are working methodically to remove all symbols of Ukrainian statehood and erase any traces of Ukrainian national identity. The Ukrainian language has been suppressed along with Ukrainian literature, history, and cultural heritage. Schools now teach a Kremlin-approved curriculum that glorifies Russian imperialism while demonizing Ukraine. Any parents who attempt to resist the indoctrination of their children risk losing custody.

Ukrainians living under Russian occupation are being pressured into accepting Russian citizenship. Those who refuse to take Russian passports are denied access to basic services such as healthcare and pensions, and are unable to register their property with the occupation authorities. This so-called passportization campaign recently entered a new phase, with the Kremlin announcing that anyone who fails to acquire Russian citizenship within the next six months will be subject to potential deportation from their own homes.

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Fears over the future fate of Ukrainians in occupied regions of the country were heightened recently by US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s apparent endorsement of sham referendums staged by the Kremlin in 2022 to justify the seizure of Ukrainian lands. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” he told Tucker Carlson in an interview that set off alarm bells across Europe.

The furor over Witkoff’s comments was hardly surprising. Russia’s fig leaf referendums in occupied Ukraine had been roundly rejected at the time by the vast majority of the international community, including many of Russia’s traditional supporters. “The United States will never recognize these illegal attempts to seize territory that does not belong to Russia,” the US State Department declared.

The September 2022 ballots lacked even a basic semblance of legitimacy, with voting taking place at gunpoint. Indeed, in many instances, the captive population were visited in their homes by election officials accompanied by armed soldiers. Such Kafkaesque scenes are nothing new for the Kremlin, which has been staging similarly farcical “referendums” to justify acts of international aggression since the Stalin era. Prior to Witkoff, however, no senior Western official had attempted to offer their stamp of approval.

The new UN report detailing Russian crimes against humanity in occupied Ukraine is particularly timely. Peace talks initiated by US President Donald Trump in recent weeks have focused largely on the possible partition of Ukraine, with negotiating teams working to determine potential boundaries. But while Trump talks of “dividing up the lands,” millions of lives are also at stake. It is therefore crucial to highlight the horrors unfolding in Russian-occupied Ukraine and the crimes being committed by the Kremlin. While it may not be militarily feasible to liberate these regions at present, safeguarding the basic human rights of Ukrainian residents living under Russian occupation should be an important aspect of any negotiated settlement.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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The enforced adoption of Russian citizenship is just one of the many tools being employed by the Kremlin to systematically erase all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. Wherever Russian troops advance, local populations are subjected to mass arrests designed to root out any potential dissenters. Those targeted typically include elected officials, military veterans, religious leaders, civil society activists, teachers, journalists, and patriots. Thousands have been abducted in this manner since 2022 and remain unaccounted for, with many thought to be languishing in a network of prisons in Russian-occupied Ukraine and Russia itself.

Those who remain are subjected to terror tactics in conditions that Britain’s The Economist has described as a “totalitarian hell.” All public symbols of Ukrainian statehood and cultural identity are being systematically dismantled. The Ukrainian language is suppressed, while any Christian denominations other than the Russian Orthodox Church face persecution or worse.

Moscow’s efforts to erase Ukrainian identity begin in the classroom. In schools throughout the occupied regions, Ukrainian children are being taught a new Kremlin-approved curriculum that praises Russian imperialism and glorifies the ongoing invasion of Ukraine while demonizing the entire concept of a separate and independent Ukrainian state. Any parents who dare to resist risk losing custody of their children.

The Kremlin is also accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of Ukrainian children from occupied regions and deporting them to Russia, where they are subjected to ideological indoctrination to rob them of their Ukrainian roots and impose an imperial Russian identity. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Putin due his personal involvement in these mass abductions of Ukrainian children.

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The actions of the Russian occupation authorities are entirely in line with the vicious anti-Ukrainian rhetoric coming from Putin himself and other officials in Moscow. Putin has long insisted that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). Six months prior to the full-scale invasion, he took the highly unusual step of publishing a lengthy history essay that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood.

As Russian troops prepared to invade in February 2022, Putin sought to justify this act of international aggression by describing Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” He has since compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great, and has declared occupied Ukrainian territory to be “Russian forever.”

The Russian establishment has enthusiastically followed Putin’s lead. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has stated that “the existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians,” while top Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev recently suggested Ukraine may soon “cease to exist.” Meanwhile, poisonous anti-Ukrainian language has become so commonplace in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media that UN investigators believe it may constitute “incitement to genocide.”

This week’s presidential decree threatening to deport Ukrainians from their own homes is the latest reminder that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no mere border dispute or attempt to address legitimate security concerns. It is a colonial war of the most brutal kind that aims to destroy Ukraine as a state and as a nation. In the heart of Europe and before the watching world, Putin is openly pursuing policies that almost certainly meet the definition of ethnic cleansing and may qualify as genocide.

The grim reality of Russia’s invasion should weigh heavily on the US officials who are currently charged with drawing lines on maps and attempting to create a realistic framework for a possible ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine. While diplomatic compromises and temporary territorial concessions are now clearly inevitable, any future peace deal must also take into account the fate of the millions of Ukrainians who are likely to be left under Russian occupation.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Vladimir Putin does not want peace. He wants to subjugate Ukraine.

Mykola Bielieskov — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 20:54:16 +0000

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered an evasive initial response to US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire proposal, backing the idea in principle while listing a series of additional demands that make any meaningful progress unlikely. Officials in Kyiv will be hoping Putin’s reluctance to embrace the US-led ceasefire initiative will help convince their American colleagues that the Kremlin dictator is not genuinely interested in ending the war.

Many in Ukraine have been dismayed by recent US suggestions that Russia is ready for serious peace talks, and have pointed to the Kremlin’s consistently hardline negotiating position as proof of Putin’s determination to fight on. They argue that the current debate over possible compromises and territorial concessions reflects a fundamentally flawed understanding of the maximalist motives behind Russia’s invasion.

Ukrainians feel they have a far more realistic view of Russia’s true intentions. They are convinced Putin will never be satisfied with limited territorial gains because he is not actually fighting for land in Ukraine. Instead, he is waging a war against the very existence of a separate Ukrainian state and nation. This chilling objective undermines the entire concept of a compromise peace. Put simply, there can be no meaningful middle ground between Russian genocide and Ukrainian national survival.

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The Trump White House is not the first to misjudge the extent of Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine. On multiple occasions, the preceding Biden administration declared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “strategic failure” while pointing to the extremely high cost paid by the Kremlin in terms of military casualties and economic damage. This practical assessment of the invasion assumes that Putin is guided and constrained by the same logic as his Western contemporaries. In reality, however, he is not.

While democratic leaders must worry about approval ratings and economic indicators, Putin has removed virtually all possible sources of domestic opposition and is free to focus on securing his place in Russian history. Since the early years of his reign, he has made no secret of the fact that he views the collapse of the USSR as a tragedy, and regards the post-Cold War world order as an injustice. Crucially, Ukraine has come to embody both of these grievances. Putin firmly believes he cannot hope to achieve his historic mission of reversing the verdict of 1991 and reviving the Russian Empire without first extinguishing Ukrainian independence.

Putin’s obsession with Ukraine has become increasingly apparent over the past two decades as his campaign to subjugate the country has escalated from political interference to military intervention. In 2004, his efforts to rig Ukraine’s presidential election and install a Kremlin-friendly candidate backfired disastrously and helped spark the Orange Revolution. Ten years later, he responded to another Ukrainian pro-democracy revolution by seizing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine.

In the years following the onset of Russia’s military aggression, it gradually became more and more obvious that the limited invasion of 2014 was not delivering the desired outcome of a pro-Russian Ukraine. On the contrary, Russia’s attack was only strengthening Ukraine’s commitment to turn westward and pursue a Euro-Atlantic future. Rather than acknowledging the counter-productive consequences of his military campaign, Putin chose to raise the stakes even further by launching the largest European invasion since World War II.

Over the past three years, Putin has become increasingly open about his intention to erase Ukraine altogether. He has declared occupied Ukrainian regions to be “Russian forever,” and has compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian ruler Peter the Great. Vicious anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has become so normalized in the Russian state media that UN officials believe it may constitute “incitement to genocide.” Meanwhile, throughout areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, Russia is systematically suppressing all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity.

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Despite the horror and trauma of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians have so far refused to back down. This defiance is a personal humiliation for Putin. It directly undermines his carefully crafted strongman persona, and makes a complete mockery of his insistence that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” Rather than securing his place among the most celebrated rulers in Russian history, Putin is now at risk of being remembered as the man who lost Ukraine.

Losing Ukraine is Putin’s worst nightmare. Ever since witnessing the collapse of Soviet power while serving as a young KGB officer in East Germany, he has been haunted by visions of people power movements overthrowing empires. This helps explain his increasingly violent opposition to the robust and often unruly democratic culture that has taken root in post-Soviet Ukraine. Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, he has viewed the consolidation of Ukrainian democracy as an existential threat to his own authoritarian regime and a potential catalyst for the next stage in Russia’s retreat from empire.

Putin knows that the invasion of Ukraine will define his entire reign and decide the future fate of the Russian Federation. While he may be prepared to discuss a strategic pause in hostilities if ceasefire terms can be made to favor Moscow, he will never accept the existence of a separate and genuinely independent Ukrainian state on Russia’s border. This does not mean that current US-led peace efforts are entirely futile, but it is vital to recognize that freezing the conflict along the current front lines will not be enough to end the war.

For decades, Western leaders have made the mistake of viewing Putin through the prism of their own political pragmatism, while underestimating the importance of his revisionist imperial ideology. After three years of total war in the heart of Europe, there is no longer any excuse for such wishful thinking. Putin has bet everything on the destruction of Ukraine and is confident he will be judged favorably by the tribunal of history. Unless he is deterred by the overwhelming might of the collective West, he will continue to wage war against Ukraine until he achieves his chilling goal.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

The Kremlin’s illegal deportations have also sparked strong bipartisan condemnation in the US political arena. Less than a year ago, a resolution slamming Russia’s “illegal abductions” as a violation of the United Nations Genocide Convention was passed in the US House of Representatives by an overwhelming margin, with support coming from leading Republicans including Speaker Mike Johnson.

Meanwhile, research backed by the US Department of State has provided grim details of Russia’s deportation operations and linked them directly to Putin. According to a report by Yale’s School of Public Health released in December 2024, Russian presidential aircraft and funds were used in a program to take children from occupied Ukrainian territories, strip them of Ukrainian identity, and place them with Russian families.

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Russia stands accused of instigating a large-scale, coordinated, and systematic policy designed to remove thousands of Ukrainian children from their homes and rob them of their Ukrainian roots via a network of camps and foster homes, where they are subjected to indoctrination and in many cases assigned new Russian names. Kremlin officials have attempted to justify the deportations by claiming to be motivated by wartime safety concerns, yet their actions still constitute violations of international law. Nor has there been any attempt to explain why children are subsequently brainwashed and forced to adopt Russian identities.

The abductions are causing profound harm to the victims, their families, and wider communities. The relatively few children who have so far returned to Ukraine have provided harrowing testimonies of their experience in Russia. Many have recounted being physically and mentally abused for their Ukrainian identity, or told that their family and country had abandoned them.

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Presently, no international legal mechanism exists to facilitate the safe return of abducted Ukrainian children. However, the United States has many cards it can play in order to achieve this goal. US sanctions against Russia are not primarily linked to individual aspects of the invasion. Instead, they are focused on the illegal act of the invasion itself, which is in violation of the United Nations Charter. US negotiators can make it clear to their Kremlin counterparts that without the safe return of all abducted Ukrainian children, the Russian invasion cannot be considered over and sanctions cannot be lifted.

Sanctions could also be used to undermine the Kremlin’s ability to continue the abductions. The United States could follow the example of the British, who imposed targeted sanctions in late 2024 against individuals identified as “perpetrators of Russia’s forced deportation and brainwashing of Ukrainian children.” UK officials described the abductions as “a systematic attempt to erase Ukrainian cultural and national identity.”

By focusing on the distressing plight of the abducted Ukrainian children, Trump could generate much-needed international confidence in his peacemaking efforts. Meanwhile, given his close personal association with the mass abductions, Putin has the ability to stop this policy and order the return of Ukrainian children. With few public signs that Russia is committed to long-term peace, initiatives aimed at identifying victims and ensuring their return to Ukraine could serve as a key US demand to test this willingness.

Before sanctions are even partially lifted, the United States should insist on concrete steps from the Russian side to end the abductions and enable Ukraine to bring all the victims home. It should be made clear that this must be verified by independent monitoring mechanisms. If progress proves possible, this could serve as a first step toward addressing other grave human rights concerns such as the widespread torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians in Russian captivity.

Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Iuliia Hoban, Ph.D. is an expert on children and childhoods in peace and security studies and the implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War for vulnerable populations.

No serious military analyst would argue that Ukraine poses a credible security threat to Russia itself. Likewise, no Ukrainian politician or public figure has ever harbored any territorial ambitions against their country’s far larger and wealthier neighbor. On the contrary, the sole purpose of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is to defend the country against Russian attack. The Kremlin’s emphasis on disarming Ukraine should therefore be seen as a massive red flag for the Trump White House and the wider international community that signals Putin’s determination to complete his conquest and extinguish Ukrainian statehood altogether.

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There are worrying signs that this is not yet fully understood in Western capitals. Instead, US President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration have recently begun shifting responsibility for the war away from Russia and echoing the Kremlin’s own longstanding efforts to blame the invasion on NATO expansion. Predictably, Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have welcomed this dramatic change in the US position regarding the causes of the war. However, Russia’s whole NATO narrative suffers from a number of obvious flaws that should spark skepticism among even the most credulous consumers of Kremlin propaganda.

According to Putin, Ukraine’s deepening ties with NATO forced him to launch the full-scale invasion of February 2022. In reality, Ukraine’s prospects of joining the alliance were virtually nonexistent at the time, and had not significantly improved since Kyiv was first fobbed off with platitudes at a landmark NATO summit way back in 2008. Even the Russian seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 failed to produce any change of heart among alliance members, with key NATO countries including the United States and Germany openly expressing their opposition to Ukrainian accession. Indeed, on the eve of the full-scale invasion, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz assured Putin that Ukrainian NATO membership was out of the question for at least the next 30 years. This makes it difficult to accept Moscow’s claims that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations represented some kind of immediate danger to Russia.

There are also good reasons to question whether the Kremlin genuinely views NATO as a threat to Russian national security. Thanks to founding member Norway, the alliance has shared a border with Russia ever since its establishment in 1949. More recently, the accession of Poland and the Baltic states at the turn of the millennium dramatically expanded Russia’s shared border with NATO and placed the alliance a few hundred kilometers away from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. This close proximity to Russia’s two biggest cities did not lead to any discernible rise in border tensions.

The most revealing evidence of Russia’s true attitude toward NATO came in 2022 when Finland and Sweden reacted to the invasion of Ukraine by ending decades of neutrality and announcing plans to join the alliance. Putin responded to this landmark decision by declaring that Russia had “no problem” with the accession of the two Nordic nations, despite the fact that Finnish membership would more than double Russia’s border with NATO, while Swedish membership would turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Putin has since underlined his indifference to this expanded NATO presence on his doorstep by withdrawing most Russian troops from the Finnish frontier and leaving this supposedly vulnerable border zone largely undefended.

So far, nobody has been able to adequately explain the glaring inconsistency in Putin’s logic. He appears to be unfazed by the presence of NATO troops along the Russian border in Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. And yet at the same time, he expects us to believe that the faint prospect of Ukraine joining the alliance at some point in the distant future is sufficiently alarming to justify the largest European invasion since World War II. Militarily, this makes no sense. The only reasonable conclusion is that Putin’s objections relate specifically to Ukraine and not to NATO in general. He knows perfectly well that the alliance poses no security threat to Russia itself, but does not want to risk a growing NATO presence that might prevent him from achieving his expansionist objective of subjugating Ukraine.

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While Putin moans to foreign leaders about the inequities of NATO expansion, when speaking to domestic audiences he is typically far more candid about the imperial ambitions that shaped his decision to invade Ukraine. For much of his reign, Putin has insisted that Ukrainians are really Russians (“one people”), and has repeatedly accused modern Ukraine of being a invented nation occupying historically Russian lands. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, he published a rambling 5,000-word history essay that many likened to a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. During the first summer of the war, he compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great.

Putin’s frequent denials of Ukraine’s right to exist have set the tone throughout Russian society. Poisonous anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has become so commonplace in the Kremlin-controlled Russian media that UN investigators believe it may constitute “incitement to genocide.” Meanwhile, senior Kremlin officials have sought to demonstrate their loyalty to Putin by echoing his vicious attacks on Ukraine. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has declared that “the existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians,” while top Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev recently suggested Ukraine may soon “cease to exist.” These are not the words of rational politicians addressing legitimate national security concerns.

This genocidal rhetoric is being more than matched by the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine. Wherever the Kremlin has been able to establish control, Russian troops have systematically detained local officials, military veterans, journalists, religious leaders, civic activists, Ukrainian patriots, and anyone else deemed to be a potential threat. Thousands have disappeared into a vast network of prisons amid a climate of fear that has been described by Britain’s The Economist as a “totalitarian hell.” Many more, including thousands of children, have been subjected to forced deportation and sent to Russia. Those who remain are being pressured to accept Russian citizenship, while all reminders of Ukrainian statehood, culture, and national identity are being methodically removed. Needless to say, anyone who dares speak the Ukrainian language risks severe punishment.

These horrors make a complete mockery of attempts to appease the Russians with limited territorial concessions. US negotiators need to recognize that Putin is not fighting for land. He views the current invasion in far broader terms as an historic mission to erase Ukraine from the map of Europe. In Putin’s chilling worldview, extinguishing Ukrainian statehood is a vital step toward the reversal of the Soviet collapse and the revival of the Russian Empire. He has pursued this messianic vision with increasing violence ever since Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, and is now closer than ever to realizing his goal.

This is why peace negotiations with Russia must focus primarily on establishing long-term security guarantees that are sufficiently credible to convince the Kremlin. Anything less will be viewed in Moscow as yet more proof of Western weakness and interpreted as a tacit invitation to go further. After all, that has been the pattern ever since the Russian invasion first began in 2014. Putin’s campaign to destroy Ukraine has been gradually unfolding in plain sight for over a decade and already ranks among the worst crimes of the twenty-first century. If Western leaders choose to ignore this and push ahead with a bad peace while leaving Ukraine without the support and security it needs to survive, they will be complicit in all that follows.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Russian foreign minister compares Trump’s ‘America First’ to Nazi propaganda

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 13:59:42 +0000

In a move likely to cause considerable offense in the White House, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has compared US President Donald Trump’s “America First” concept to Nazi propaganda. This provocative statement from Russia’s top diplomat offers an indication of the mood in Moscow as the United States and Russia engage in preliminary talks over a possible deal to end the invasion of Ukraine.

In an article published on February 4 by the Russia in Global Affairs journal, Lavrov accused the US of undermining the international order with “cowboy attacks,” and claimed that the rhetoric of the Trump administration was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. “The ‘America First’ concept has disturbing similarities to the ‘Germany Above All’ slogan of the Hitler period,” he wrote.

Such attacks are nothing new, of course. The Kremlin has a long history of branding critics and adversaries as Nazis that can be traced all the way back to the height of the Cold War. When the Hungarians rebelled against Soviet occupation in 1956, Moscow condemned the uprising as a “fascist rebellion” before sending in the tanks. It was a similar story during the Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring of 1968. Communist officials even referred to the Berlin Wall itself as “the Anti-Fascist Protective Wall.”

This trend survived the Soviet collapse and has been enthusiastically embraced by the Putin regime. Labeling opponents as Nazis is regarded as a particularly effective tactic in modern Russia as it strikes an emotive chord among audiences raised to revere the staggering Soviet sacrifices in the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

Throughout Putin’s reign, domestic political opponents including Alexei Navalny have been routinely demonized as Nazis. The same strategy is frequently employed in the international arena. When Estonia sought to remove a Soviet World War II monument from Tallinn city center in 2007, the Kremlin media went into a frenzy about “Fascist Estonia,” sparking riots among Estonia’s sizable ethnic Russian population. A long list of other international critics and adversaries have faced the same Nazi slurs.

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The most notorious Russian accusations of Nazism have been leveled at Ukraine. Ever since Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, Russian state propaganda has sought to portray Ukrainian national identity as a modern form of fascism that is virtually indistinguishable from Nazism. This propaganda campaign is rooted in Soviet era attempts to discredit Ukraine’s independence movement via association with World War II collaboration. It reached new lows in 2014 as Putin attempted to legitimize the occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Donbas region.

Moscow’s efforts to portray Ukraine as a Nazi state escalated further following the onset of the full-scale invasion three years ago, with a massive spike in references to “Nazi Ukraine” throughout the Kremlin-controlled Russian media. In this increasingly unhinged environment, few were surprised when Putin announced that one of his two principle war aims was the “denazification” of Ukraine.

It has since become abundantly clear that Putin’s frequent talk of “denazification” is actually Kremlin code for “deukrainianization.” In other words, the ultimate goal of Russia’s current invasion is to create a Ukraine without Ukrainians, with false accusations of Nazism serving as a convenient excuse to justify the destruction of the Ukrainian state and nation.

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The history of nationalist politics in independent Ukraine is far removed from the Kremlin’s fascist fantasies. In reality, Ukrainian far-right parties have never come close to holding political power and typically receive far fewer votes than nationalist candidates in most other European countries.

When Ukraine’s frustrated and marginalized nationalists banded together into a single bloc for the country’s last prewar parliamentary election in 2019, they managed to secure a meager 2.16 percent of the vote. Meanwhile, Russian-speaking Jewish comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s landslide victory in Ukraine’s presidential election of the same year served to further highlight the absurdity of Russia’s entire “Nazi Ukraine” narrative.

Ever since Zelenskyy’s election, Russian officials have been tying themselves in knots attempting to explain how a supposedly Nazi state could elect a Jewish leader. In one particularly infamous incident during a spring 2022 interview with Italian TV show Zona Bianca, foreign minister Lavrov responded to questioning about Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage by claiming that Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.”

Lavrov’s latest comments do not signal a significant shift in the Kremlin position toward the United States and should not be blown out of proportion. Nevertheless, it is always worth paying attention when Russia plays the Nazi card. In this instance, the decision to target Trump personally with Nazi slurs by comparing one of his core political messages to Hitler’s propaganda suggests a degree of unease in Moscow over what the Kremlin can expect from the new US administration.

If Trump follows through on his threats to pressure Putin into peace talks, this unease may soon give way to outright hostility. At that point, we can expect to see yet more lurid Russian accusations of Nazism, this time aimed at the United States. That, after all, is how the Kremlin propaganda machine works. Putin claims to venerate the memory of World War II, but he has done more than anyone to distort the legacy of the conflict for his own political gain.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Schwarzman’s comments serve as a timely reminder of Russia’s extreme objectives in Ukraine. In recent months, there has been mounting international speculation over the potential territorial concessions Ukraine may be obliged to make in order to end the invasion of their country. In reality, however, the war unleashed by Putin in February 2022 was never about limited territorial gains. From the very beginning, it has been a war to extinguish Ukrainian independence entirely.

Putin’s Ukraine obsession has dominated his reign and can be traced all the way back to Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. He has always viewed the emergence of an independent Ukraine as an historical injustice and a bitterly resented symbol of the Soviet collapse, which he has described as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” and “the disintegration of historical Russia.” The Kremlin dictator’s desire to reverse this breakup of “historical Russia” has long focused on Ukraine, and has been given additional impetus by his fears that Ukraine’s fledgling democracy could serve as a catalyst for similar change within his own authoritarian state and spark a new phase in Russia’s retreat from empire.

Putin made his intentions obvious during the buildup to the invasion when he published a rambling 5,000-word history essay arguing against Ukraine’s right to exist and insisting that Ukrainians were in fact Russians (“one people”). As Russian troops massed along the Ukrainian border in February 2022, he described Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” He has since compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian ruler Peter the Great, and has declared occupied regions of Ukraine to be “Russian forever.”

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Putin’s contempt for Ukrainian statehood has set the tone throughout wartime Russian society. Vicious anti-Ukrainian rhetoric has become a daily feature of the Kremlin-controlled Russian media space, with Ukrainians routinely demonized and dehumanized. This has led United Nations investigators to note that some content “may constitute incitement to genocide.”

Following Putin’s lead, numerous senior Kremlin officials have also indicated that Russia’s ultimate goal is the complete disappearance of the Ukrainian state. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in particular has become notorious for his unhinged rants. “The existence of Ukraine is mortally dangerous for Ukrainians,” he declared on one occasion in early 2024. More recently, close Putin aide Nikolai Patrushev has predicted that Ukraine “may cease to exist” in 2025.

This genocidal language has been matched by the actions of the invading Russian army. In areas of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, Russia has systematically targeted anyone deemed a potential threat to the regime. Thousands have been detained and imprisoned, with victims including elected local officials, journalists, civil society activists, army veterans, cultural figures, and anyone regarded as a potential Ukrainian patriot. Those who remain are subjected to ruthless russification including the forced adoption of Russian citizenship. Meanwhile, all traces of Ukrainian national identity, statehood, and culture are being methodically erased.

Russia’s determination to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation is unprecedented in modern European history and makes a complete mockery of calls for a compromise peace. In words and deeds, Putin has made it abundantly clear that he will not tolerate the continued existence of an independent Ukraine, and regards the country’s destruction as an historic mission that will define his reign. Any efforts to broker a sustainable settlement must take this chilling vision into account.

Nobody wants the current war to end more than the Ukrainians themselves, but they are also painfully aware that the survival of their nation is at stake. Unless measures are put in place to prevent the resumption of Russian aggression once Putin has had an opportunity to rearm and regroup, a bad peace deal will merely set the stage for genocide in the heart of Europe.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Many commentators have noted the similarity between Putin’s recent attack on people “with no roots” and Stalin’s earlier Soviet era persecution of Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans.” The Kremlin leader’s comments also offered alarming echoes of Russia’s most notorious antisemitic fake, the early twentieth century Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world by infiltrating and destroying Western institutions.

Putin and his Kremlin colleagues have faced multiple accusations of antisemitism since 2022 as they have sought to defend Moscow’s claims to be “denazifying” Ukraine despite the country’s popularly-elected Jewish president and its role as a prominent destination for Jewish pilgrimages. This toxic trend has included frequent attacks on Zelenskyy’s Jewish heritage. “I have a lot of Jewish friends,” Putin stated in June 2023. “They say that Zelenskyy is not Jewish, that he is a disgrace to the Jewish people. I’m not joking.”

Following these comments, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum accused the Russian leader of repeatedly employing “antisemitic lies” to justify the invasion of Ukraine. US officials have been similarly critical. “President Zelenskyy’s Jewishness has nothing to do with the situation in Ukraine and Putin’s continued focus on this topic and “denazification” narrative is clearly intended to distract from Russia’s war of aggression against the Ukrainian people,” commented US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt in 2023.

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Similar slurs feature regularly in the Kremlin-controlled Russian state media, with leading propagandists such as Vladimir Solovyov known for questioning the authenticity of Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity. Meanwhile, during the initial months of the invasion in spring 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to a question about the absurdity of “denazifying” a country with a Jewish leader by claiming that Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.” Lavrov’s remarks sparked outrage and were branded “unforgivable” by Israeli officials.

Many within the Jewish community see Putin’s most recent inflammatory comments as part of a broader trend that is legitimizing antisemitic tropes and raising serious safety concerns. “This is just one example of his regime’s explicit and virulent antisemitism, which has intensified following his 2022 invasion of Ukraine,” commented Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis and former Chief Rabbi of Moscow, who fled Russia following the attack on Ukraine after coming under pressure to publicly endorse the invasion. In December 2022, Goldschmidt warned of rising antisemitism in Putin’s Russia and advised Jews to leave the country.

Goldschmidt is now appealing to the international community to address the antisemitic rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin. “As a representative of Jewish communities across Europe, and someone who was forced to flee my home and community in Moscow, I call on Europe and the free world to unequivocally condemn President Putin’s dangerous propaganda before it spreads further,” he stated.

Joshua Stein is a researcher with a PhD from the University of Calgary.

Similar gestures were made towards the Druze community in Idlib Governate’s Jabal al-Summaq area, where HTS leadership engaged with representatives to rebuild trust and ensure that their communities were not targeted. Additionally, on December 17, leaders held dialogues with prominent figures from the Druze community in Suwayda and Jabal al-Arab, sending assurances of safety and future inclusion. For the Ismailis of Salamiyah, the transition of power was remarkably smooth, as the town surrendered without violence. This cooperative handover reflects longstanding tensions between the Ismaili community and the Assad regime, which had marginalized them over the years.

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However, the situation remains more nuanced with the Alawite community. The new government refrained from delivering targeted reassurances to the Alawites, instead embedding its messages of justice and reconciliation within broader declarations. The new authorities emphasized that no one would face retribution without due process and clear evidence of wrongdoing. The deployment of rebel forces in Latakia and its surrounding mountains occurred without notable violence, with explicit orders to safeguard public property and prevent retaliatory attacks. Such actions suggest an effort to mitigate fears of collective punishment among Alawites—a community burdened with its historical association with the Assad regime.

Still, there are lingering anxieties within minority communities. The Alawites, in particular, remain wary of the new leaders’ promises, balancing a cautious optimism with deep-seated concerns about potential reprisals. In response, some within the community have distanced themselves publicly from Assad, framing the current transition as an opportunity for a fresh start and a shared national future. Whether the new authorities can translate these gestures into meaningful inclusion will depend on their willingness to integrate minority representatives into future governance structures and decision-making processes.

For women, between pragmatism and policy gaps

The evolving role of women in Syria is shaped by societal necessity and practical realities. Syria’s protracted conflict has led to significant demographic shifts: countless men have been killed, displaced, or forced into exile due to military conscription, economic hardship, or combat involvement. As a result, women now bear much responsibility for sustaining households, working in various sectors, and managing day-to-day economic activities.

In urban centers and rural areas alike, women have maintained an active presence in the public sphere. Notably, no widespread attempts have been made to impose restrictive dress codes or curtail women’s mobility, in stark contrast to the fears many harbored when HTS first rose to prominence. Women freely participated in public celebrations across towns and villages, underscoring the relative ease with which they navigated public spaces under the new leadership.

However, women need to achieve meaningful political inclusion. While women are visible in mid-level administrative roles in the transitional government, there has yet to be any effort to appoint them to senior leadership positions or ministries. This mirrors a broader trend in conservative governance structures where women’s participation is often limited to symbolic roles. The new government’s failure to include women in decision-making risks alienating a critical population segment and undermining its claims of inclusivity.

Moving forward, the new leadership must recognize that empowering women is not merely a concession to international pressure but a practical necessity for rebuilding Syria. Women’s inclusion in governance, education, and economic development will be critical for addressing Syria’s demographic and financial challenges. The government can indicate its commitment to inclusivity with concrete steps, such as appointing women to leadership roles, supporting women-led initiatives, and ensuring equal access to education and employment.

Drafting a constitution

Despite the positive gestures made toward minorities and women, Syria’s new government under HTS leader Ahmed al-Shara faces structural and institutional challenges that threaten to undermine these early gains. Effective governance is not simply a matter of security or symbolic inclusivity; it requires building functioning institutions that deliver services, mediate disputes, and foster participation from all segments of society.

The need to integrate the experiences and expertise of Syria’s technocratic and bureaucratic workforce is at the heart of this challenge. The structure of Syria’s public administration going back decades included representation from various sects and backgrounds and significant contributions from women. Often overlooked in political narratives, this workforce remains vital to the country’s reconstruction and future success. The new government’s ability to retain and mobilize these experienced individuals within its evolving institutions will determine the effectiveness of its governance.

However, there are signs of tension between ideological considerations and practical governance. While Shara has shown a degree of pragmatism, particularly in dealing with local communities, the transitional government’s structures remain centralized and hierarchical, with power concentrated in a small leadership circle. This limits opportunities for inclusive decision-making and reinforces perceptions of exclusion among minorities and women.

To foster genuine participation, the new government must decentralize aspects of its governance, empower local councils, and integrate representatives from underrepresented groups. Decentralization has been a demand in many post-conflict contexts, allowing communities to manage their affairs while preserving national cohesion. In Syria, where local dynamics vary significantly across regions, such an approach would not only address the concerns of minorities and women but also strengthen the new authorities’ legitimacy.

The drafting of a new constitution presents both an opportunity and a challenge. On one hand, it offers a chance to codify the principles of inclusivity, justice, and representation essential for Syria’s long-term stability. On the other hand, the process is fraught with risks, particularly in a polarized environment where trust remains fragile. Minority communities and women must sit at the table during this process, ensuring their voices are heard and their rights are protected.

A constitution that explicitly guarantees the rights of minorities and women will strengthen the new government’s domestic legitimacy and address longstanding grievances that have fueled instability. It will provide a legal foundation for Syria’s governance, creating a framework that transcends political factions and ensures continuity in protecting vulnerable communities.

The test ahead

Syria is at a crossroads. The departure of the Assad regime has created a unique opportunity to redefine the relationship between the state and its people. The actions taken by Shara thus far—reaching out to minorities, refraining from imposing restrictive norms on women, and prioritizing internal legitimacy—reflect a pragmatic shift in HTS’s governance approach. However, these actions remain tentative and incomplete.

The true test lies in the new authorities’ ability to institutionalize these early gestures through concrete policies and legal frameworks. A new constitution that guarantees the rights of minorities and women will serve as a foundation for Syria’s future, ensuring that these rights are not contingent on political or ideological changes. Similarly, meaningful political inclusion—by appointing women and minority representatives to leadership roles—will signal a genuine commitment to shared governance.

For the Syrian people, the stakes are clear. After years of conflict and division, there is an opportunity to build a more inclusive and just future that reflects the resilience, diversity, and aspirations of all Syrians. The leaders of the new government face a critical choice: they can either embrace this opportunity and chart a path toward stability and legitimacy or retreat into exclusionary practices that risk perpetuating the very divisions they seek to overcome.

Sinan Hatahet is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and the vice president for investment and social impact at the Syrian Forum.

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Vladimir Putin does not want a peace deal. He wants to destroy Ukraine.

Yuliya Kazdobina — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 22:08:38 +0000

Donald Trump’s recent election victory is fueling international speculation over a possible deal to end the war in Ukraine. For now, much of the debate remains centered on what kinds of concessions Ukraine may be willing to make in order to secure a negotiated peace. However, the real question is whether Russian President Vladimir Putin has any interest at all in ending his invasion. The available evidence suggests that he does not. On the contrary, Putin appears to be as committed as ever to his goal of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood entirely.

For many years, Putin has publicly questioned the Ukrainian nation’s right to exist. He has repeatedly stated that he sees today’s independent Ukraine as an artificial state, and regards all those who disagree with this verdict as anti-Russian forces or outright Nazis. For more than a decade, he has sought to turn this toxic vision into reality via an escalating campaign of military aggression.

When Putin embarked on the latest stage of his campaign to destroy Ukraine in February 2022, he declared that the goals of his full-scale invasion were the “demilitarization” and denazification” of the country. During abortive spring 2022 peace negotiations in Istanbul, it became apparent that Russia’s interpretation of demilitarization would have left Ukraine disarmed and defenseless.

Putin’s representatives during the Istanbul talks called for the Ukrainian army to be drastically reduced to a minimal force of just 50,000 troops, with strict limits also placed on the amount of armor and types of missiles Ukraine could possess. Meanwhile, Russia would face no such restrictions. Crucially, the Kremlin demanded complete Ukrainian neutrality and insisted on retaining a veto over any international military aid to Kyiv in the event of renewed hostilities. These punishing terms leave little room for doubt that Putin’s intention was to place Ukraine completely at his mercy and in no position to resist the next stage of Russian aggression.

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The implications of “denazification” are even more ominous. Putin has long accused Ukraine of being a “Nazi state,” despite the fact that the country has a popularly elected Jewish president and no far-right politicians in government. In reality, “denazification” is Kremlin code for the complete eradication of a separate Ukrainian national identity. In other words, Putin pretends to be fighting fascism order to legitimize his criminal goal of a Ukraine without Ukrainians.

The grim consequences of Putin’s “denazification” policies are already evident throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. In regions of the country currently under Kremlin control, all traces of Ukrainian statehood and national identity are being ruthlessly purged. Ukrainian children are forced to study a Kremlin curriculum that demonizes Ukraine while glorifying the invasion of their country. Adults must accept Russian citizenship if they wish to access basic services such as pensions and healthcare.

Anyone regarded as a potential threat to the Russian occupation authorities is at risk of deportation, abduction, torture, or execution. While it is impossible to determine exact figures, it is estimated that thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been detained since February 2022. In most cases, relatives of detainees have no way of knowing if they are still alive. Britain’s The Economist recently described conditions in Russian-occupied Ukraine as a “totalitarian hell.” It is a very specific vision of hell that has been designed to remove all traces of Ukraine and impose an imperial Russian identity.

The most obvious indication of Russia’s genocidal intent in Ukraine has been the mass deportation of Ukrainian children, with thousands abducted and transferred to a system of camps where they are subjected to indoctrination in order to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and turn them into loyal Kremlin subjects. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in relation to these abductions. The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention recognizes “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as an act of genocide.

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Russia’s own actions since February 2022 have made a mockery of the arguments used by the Kremlin to justify the war. At the start of the full-scale invasion, Putin claimed to be defending the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country. However, the Russian army has since killed tens of thousands of predominantly Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, while reducing dozens of towns and cities across the region to rubble.

Likewise, Russia’s attempts to justify the attack on Ukraine by painting it as a response to NATO enlargement have been largely debunked by Putin himself. When neighboring Finland and Sweden responded to Russia’s invasion by announcing plans in spring 2022 to abandon decades of neutrality and join NATO, Putin was quick to declare that Russia had “no problem” with the move. This indifference was particularly striking as Finnish accession more than doubled Russia’s NATO border, while Swedish membership transformed the strategically vital Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

Putin has since gone even further, withdrawing the bulk of Russian troops from the Finnish border and leaving it largely undefended. Based on Putin’s remarkably relaxed response to NATO’s recent Nordic enlargement, it seems safe to conclude that he does not in fact view the NATO alliance as a security threat to Russia itself, and has merely exploited the issue as a smokescreen for his own imperial ambitions in Ukraine.

As Donald Trump attempts to implement his campaign promise and end the war in Ukraine, he is likely to discover that his famed deal-making skills are no match for Putin’s single-minded obsession with the destruction of Ukraine. In words and deeds, Putin has repeatedly demonstrated his commitment to wiping Ukraine off the map. In such circumstances, any talk of a compromise settlement is dangerously delusional. Until Putin is forced to recognize Ukraine’s right to exist, any peace deals will be temporary and the threat of further Russian aggression will remain.

Yuliya Kazdobina is a senior fellow at the “Ukrainian Prism” Foreign Policy Council. This text is adapted from the “Pragmatic Dialogue with the West: Why it is Worth Supporting Ukraine” project undertaken with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It represents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.

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The entire notion that Putin could be satisfied by simply freezing the war along the current front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the imperialistic motives behind Russia’s invasion. Putin already rules over what is by far the largest nation on the planet. He has little interest in seizing a handful of Ukrainian regions or adding new land to Russia’s staggering vastness. Instead, Putin’s decisions are shaped by an almost mystical belief in his own historic mission that is beyond the comprehension of many if not most observers in the West.

Putin’s whole political career has been defined by his burning resentment at the perceived injustices of the Soviet collapse. Since the very early years of his reign, it has been apparent that Putin regards the emergence of an independent Ukraine as a particularly painful symbol of Russia’s post-Soviet humiliation. Back in 2005, he had Ukraine very much in mind when he famously described the disintegration of the Soviet Union as the “biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.” Over the subsequent two decades, Putin has frequently elaborated on his view that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”) who have no legitimate right to a state of their own.

Putin’s Ukraine obsession is not only a product of his determination to reverse the verdict of 1991. Crucially, he regards modern Ukraine’s efforts to secure a democratic European future as a potential catalyst for the further breakup of the Russian Federation. Like most of his current Kremlin colleagues, Putin’s formative political experience came during the twilight years of the USSR. As a young KGB officer in East Germany, he was on hand to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall and watched in horror as the entire Soviet Empire in Central and Eastern Europe evaporated almost overnight.

This has left Putin with a lifelong dread of people power movements and a profound sense of Russia’s imperial fragility. In light of this backstory, it is hardly surprising that he was so violently triggered by Ukraine’s two post-Soviet revolutions, and so obviously alarmed by the slow but steady consolidation of Kyiv’s democratic credentials. Given the patchwork nature of the Russian Federation, Putin has long been acutely aware that if left unchecked, Ukraine’s strengthening grassroots democracy and successful embrace of self-determination could eventually inspire secession movements and imperial collapse within his own authoritarian realm.

For Putin, therefore, Ukrainian independence represents an existential threat to Russia itself. This explains why he has been prepared to risk everything in order to erase Ukraine from the map. It also makes a mockery of suggestions that he could be bought off by the offer of the Ukrainian regions currently under Russian occupation. Clearly, Putin cannot risk the continued existence of a genuinely independent Ukraine. He must either reassert Russian control over Kyiv, or extinguish Ukrainian statehood altogether.

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Putin’s imperial ambitions are not limited to Ukraine, of course. He routinely describes the current invasion as a quest to return “historically Russian lands,” leaving the door open for further wars of aggression against other former vassals of the Russian Empire including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the whole of Central Asia.

Evidence of this expanding imperial appetite is already visible. When Putin first announced the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he denied having any territorial ambitions beyond the two eastern Ukrainian provinces the make up the Donbas region. Six months later, he announced the annexation of a further two provinces. In summer 2024, Putin confirmed that his claims now extended to the administrative borders of all four provinces, despite the fact that the Russian military had yet to establish complete control over any of them.

None of this is to say that temporary territorial concessions are out of the question. On the contrary, there is growing recognition in Western capitals and in Kyiv that the complete liberation of Ukraine is not militarily feasible in the present circumstances. Nevertheless, it is vital for Ukraine’s partners to understand that any agreement to cease hostilities would not bring an end to the danger. Instead, it would mark the beginning of a new phase in the struggle against Putin’s resurgent Russian Empire. This struggle will require eternal vigilance along with dramatic increases in defense spending throughout the West. Above all, Western leaders must commit to the kind of watertight security guarantees for Ukraine that will make Putin think twice before resuming his criminal crusade for a place in Russian history.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Since the very first weeks of the invasion, it has been clear that one of Russia’s key war aims is the destruction of Ukrainian national identity. For those currently living under Russian occupation, this means everything from large-scale abductions and mass deportations to ideological indoctrination and blanket Russification.

With occupied areas of Ukraine largely cut off from the outside world, accurate information regarding the scale of the human rights abuses currently taking place remains limited. However, the available evidence indicates that a systematic campaign is underway to silence any potential dissent and impose a reign of terror on the Ukrainian civilian population. “Kremlin-occupied Ukraine is now a totalitarian hell,” Britain’s The Economist reported in early November.

Large numbers of Ukrainians in occupied regions of the country have been subjected to forced deportation or have simply disappeared. An Associated Press investigation in summer 2023 concluded that thousands of Ukrainian civilians are being detained in a network of formal and informal prisons across Russia and the territories it occupies, where they endure torture, psychological abuse, and are even forced to engage in slave labor. “Russia plans to build dozens more prisons,” the report claimed.

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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In occupied regions, the Kremlin is working to erase all traces of Ukrainian statehood and seeking to Russify every aspect of daily life. These efforts include renaming streets, turning the clocks back to Moscow time, and pressuring residents to accept Russian citizenship in order to access basic public services such as healthcare and state pensions. Ukrainian schools under Russian occupation now teach a Kremlin-friendly curriculum that demonizes Ukraine while forcing students to celebrate the soldiers invading their country. Parents who resist risk losing custody of their children.

Russian attempts to indoctrinate young Ukrainians are not restricted to the classroom. At least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted from occupied regions since the start of the full-scale invasion, with many sent to a network of camps where they are subjected to indoctrination aimed at depriving them of their Ukrainian nationality and turning them into Russians.

Ukrainian civil society activist Mykola Kuleba, who is at the forefront of efforts to secure the return of young Ukrainians from Russia, has accused the Russian authorities of attempting to brainwash Ukrainian children and erase their identity. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his alleged role in these mass abductions.

For those detained in Russian-occupied Ukraine, the outlook is particularly grim. In September 2024, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine reported that the Russian authorities were employing “common patterns of torture” against Ukrainian prisoners in occupied regions of Ukraine as well as in Russia. “Torture has been used as a common and acceptable practice with a sense of impunity,” the report stated.

Western leaders need to recognize that trading land for peace in Ukraine would mean abandoning millions of Ukrainian civilians to the chilling realities of life under Russian occupation. The Kremlin has already provided ample evidence of its intentions in occupied Ukraine and its plans for the local population. The fate of these Ukrainians must not be forgotten as the international debate over a possible negotiated settlement evolves in the coming months.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

The most detailed and revealing segment of the draft peace treaty dealt with Ukraine’s demilitarization. Russia called for the Ukrainian army to be drastically reduced to a skeleton force of just fifty thousand personnel. This was approximately one-fifth of the prewar total and a tiny fraction of Ukraine’s current military, which is believed to number around one million soldiers. Meanwhile, tight restrictions were to be imposed on the quantity of armor Ukraine could possess, the types of missiles the country could develop, and the size of the Ukrainian Air Force.

The Kremlin’s peace plan also obliged Ukraine to renounce its NATO membership ambitions and agree not to enter into bilateral alliances or seek military aid from Western countries. In later drafts dating from the final stages of the abortive peace process in April 2022, Russia also somewhat absurdly insisted on a veto over any international response to future attacks on Ukraine. If Ukraine’s leaders had accepted Moscow’s thinly veiled ultimatum, the country would have been disarmed and defenseless.

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While Russia’s demands were obviously unacceptable, this has not stopped Putin from repeatedly pointing to the failed negotiations of spring 2022 as proof that he seeks a peaceful settlement to the war. Furthermore, he has suggested on numerous occasions that the terms outlined in Belarus and Istanbul during the initial phase of Russia’s invasion should remain the basis for any negotiated peace agreement.

Far from representing a viable vision for a sustainable peace, Putin’s 2022 proposal actually underlines his commitment to extinguishing Ukrainian statehood and erasing Ukraine from the map entirely. Cut off from Western military aid and without an army of its own, an emasculated and demoralized rump Ukraine would be in no position to offer any serious resistance if Russia chose to renew the invasion.

There can be little doubt that this was Putin’s plan. Whether his end goal was the complete conquest of the country or the installation of a puppet government, it is virtually impossible to imagine an independent Ukrainian state surviving very long in such desperate circumstances. Instead, much of Ukraine would likely be annexed outright, with the remaining territory entrusted to Kremlin loyalists.

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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The peace terms proposed by Russia in 2022 and subsequently reiterated by Putin himself make a mockery of suggestions that Ukraine could end the invasion by entering into some kind of land-for-peace compromise with the Kremlin. Putin’s war aims clearly extend far beyond the approximately twenty percent of Ukraine that is now under Russian occupation, and involve the takeover of the entire country along with the systematic suppression of Ukrainian identity.

This raises difficult questions for the growing chorus of voices calling for a negotiated settlement based on the current front lines of the war. Crucially, anyone who believes Putin would be satisfied with his present gains must explain why he remains so insistent on Ukraine’s disarmament. After all, this cannot possibly be justified on the grounds of Russian national security. Indeed, no serious analyst would argue that Ukraine poses a credible military threat to the far larger and infinitely mightier Russian Federation.

The only plausible reason to disarm Ukraine is to render the whole country defenseless and leave it at Putin’s mercy. This should tell you all you need to know about his true intentions and the scale of his imperial ambitions. From the very beginning, Putin has viewed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as an historic mission that will define his personal place in Russian history and Russia’s place in the modern world. Attempting to appease him with limited territorial concessions would be both dishonorable and delusional, and would set the stage for further Russian aggression in Ukraine and beyond.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Others noted that while the Derzhprom building had managed to emerge relatively unscathed from the carnage of World War II when Kharkiv repeatedly witnessed intense battles between Nazi and Soviet forces, it had now joined the long list of Ukrainian landmarks and sites of cultural significance to be damaged or destroyed by Russia’s invasion. “If we look back at World War II, even Hitler couldn’t do what the Russians have done,” commented Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov.

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Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has included hundreds of targeted attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites across the country. By the middle of October 2024, UNESCO officials had verified damage to 457 sites including churches, museums, monuments, and libraries. This figure may only represent a fraction of the real total, however. Crucially, it does not include the systematic destruction of Ukrainian heritage sites throughout regions of Ukraine currently under Russian occupation.

Attacks on Ukraine’s heritage sites are one element of the Kremlin’s broader efforts to erase Ukrainian national identity. Russian President Vladimir Putin has set the tone with his regular denials of Ukraine’s right to exist and insistence that Ukrainians are in fact Russians (“one people”). Since the invasion of Ukraine began in 2014, areas that have fallen under Kremlin control have been declared “historically Russian” and subjected to ruthless policies of russification. This has included the exclusion of the Ukrainian language, the suppression of Ukrainian history, and the methodical removal of all symbols of Ukrainian statehood.

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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Russia’s war on Ukrainian identity has included the abduction and indoctrination of large numbers of Ukrainian children. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, thousands of Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia and sent to camps where they are subjected to Soviet-style “re-education” to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage and impose a Russian imperial identity. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges related to these mass abductions.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, the international community has become increasingly aware of Russia’s intention to eradicate Ukrainian identity. The goals of Russia’s invasion go far beyond capturing Ukrainian territory and extend to the “gradual destruction of a whole cultural life,” United Nations special rapporteur for cultural rights Alexandra Xanthaki told the New York Times in December 2022. “One of the justifications of the war is that Ukrainians don’t have a distinct cultural identity,” she noted.

By targeting Ukrainian heritage sites, Moscow is underlining its determination to not only reestablish political control over Ukraine, but to erase the very markers of a separate Ukrainian identity that challenge the Kremlin’s imperialistic vision of the country as a core part of Russia itself. Throughout his reign, Putin has championed the “historical unity” of Russia and Ukraine, and has described today’s Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” Continued attacks on prominent Ukrainian landmarks are a reminder that the Kremlin dictator remains committed to realizing his chilling goal of a Ukraine without Ukrainians.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Ever since the onset of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2014, Moscow’s ambitions have extended far beyond conventional territorial gains. Over the past decade, Ukrainian classrooms in regions under Kremlin control have become an important battleground, with Russia intent on reshaping not only international borders but also national identities.

Vladimir Putin recently highlighted the importance of Russia’s efforts to indoctrinate the current generation of Ukrainian schoolchildren. Speaking at an educational event in early October, he singled out teachers working in occupied Ukraine for special praise. “You are demonstrating exceptional commitment and true courage, ensuring children can continue their education under challenging conditions,” he commented.

Moscow’s strategy has involved importing Russian teachers to schools in occupied Ukraine, while also pressuring Ukrainian educators to accept the new Kremlin-friendly curriculum via a combination of bribes, threats, and violence. “Ukrainian teachers in Russian-occupied Ukraine are now faced with a stark choice: Leave everything behind and flee, or become part of a system that indoctrinates children to justify Russia’s war of aggression,” commented Amnesty International General Secretary Agnès Callamard in October 2024.

Human Rights Watch has documented cases of arbitrary detention, torture, and intimidation targeting Ukrainian teachers and school administrators who refuse to comply with the Russian occupation authorities. One school director from the Kherson region in southern Ukraine reported being detained for a total of forty days and beaten before eventually escaping to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

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Wherever the Kremlin has established control in Ukraine, the Ukrainian education system has been systematically dismantled. Instead, children in Russian-occupied regions of the country are now being taught a curriculum that glorifies the actions of the Russian military in Ukraine and justifies the current invasion.

New Russian school textbooks produced since the start of the full-scale invasion reframe the war in heroic terms and present Russia’s attack on Ukraine as a liberation mission rather than an act of international aggression. Meanwhile, children are encouraged to dismiss the entire notion of Ukrainian nationality and embrace a Russian imperial identity.

The Kremlin’s indoctrination campaign against the next generation of young Ukrainians goes far beyond historical distortions. The Russian occupation authorities are actively militarizing Ukrainian schoolchildren and encouraging teenagers to join the Russian army. Ukrainian children are also forced to attend special propaganda classes that seek to instill loyalty to Russia along with hostility toward Ukraine.

Ukrainian parents are being targeted by the Kremlin to make sure they agree to subject their children to Russian indoctrination. In occupied regions of Ukraine, parents have been threatened with a range of severe consequences for non-compliance including fines, loss of custody, or imprisonment. Despite the risks involved, tens of thousands of Ukrainian children in occupied regions continue to study online with Ukrainian teachers.

While international attention remains firmly focused on the military dimension of the war in Ukraine, it is crucial to recognize that Russia’s invasion is not merely an attempt to acquire new territory or redraw the map of Europe by force. The Kremlin also clearly aims to extinguish Ukrainian national identity, and sees the transformation of young Ukrainians into loyal Russians as a key element of this criminal endeavor.

Tetiana Kotelnykova is a graduate student at Yale University specializing in European and Russian Studies, and a research assistant at the Wilson Center. She is the co-founder and executive director of Brave Generation, a New York-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting young Ukrainians affected by war and cultivating future Ukrainian leaders.

Russia’s assault on Ukrainian cultural identity has attracted considerable international concern, with numerous governments voicing their alarm and offering support to Ukraine. For example, the United States has recently unveiled plans to impose tough restrictions on the illicit trade in Ukraine’s cultural artifacts.

Since the full-scale invasion began, a large number of international initiatives have also emerged as part of efforts to document Russia’s war on Ukrainian cultural identity and preserve as much of Ukraine’s heritage as possible. These include monitoring work led by the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and a number of joint initiatives together with Ukraine’s museums.

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One of the most ambitious projects aimed at the preservation of Ukrainian heritage is the Ukraine is Here platform led by Google Arts and Culture. In early September, Google officials presented the latest updates to this project, with more than one thousand new images added along with ninety new stories and several virtual galleries.

Produced through partnerships with a number of civil society groups, cultural organizations, and state agencies, this Google initiative aims to serve as a digital database of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. It includes hundreds of 3D models of churches, theaters, castles, and other historically significant buildings, along with individual items ranging from kitchen utensils to ancient armor.

Efforts to preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage are a crucial element of the broader international response to Russia’s invasion. While the front lines of the war have not witnessed any dramatic changes in almost two years, Russia continues to bombard towns and cities across Ukraine on a virtually daily basis, frequently causing irreparable damage to the country’s cultural sites.

Russia’s relentless air war makes it all the more important to keep a detailed digital record of Ukrainian national heritage assets. During a recent forum in Ukrainian Black Sea port city Odesa, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Anastasia Bondar said utilizing modern technologies such as digitization was a “key factor” in the struggle to safeguard Ukrainian culture for future generations.

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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In addition to destroying the sites, monuments, and buildings that make up Ukraine’s cultural inheritance, the Russian invasion has also killed significant numbers of the country’s contemporary cultural community. As The Guardian’s chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins noted in a moving tribute to Ukrainian author and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina following her death in a Russian air strike, “Stalin erased one generation of Ukraine’s artists. Now Putin is killing another.”

More than one hundred Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, according to data published by worldwide literary association PEN International. One of the youngest victims was eighteen year old Ukrainian artist Veronika Kozhushko, who was killed by a Russian glide bomb in Kharkiv in August 2024.

The destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage is entirely consistent with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s longstanding efforts to deny Ukraine’s right to exist and his insistence that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). Putin frequently claims that occupied Ukrainian regions are “historically Russian lands,” and has ordered the ruthless suppression of Ukrainian national identity in all areas currently under Kremlin control.

Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian identity even extends to the abduction and indoctrination of children on an industrial scale. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued an arrest warrant for the Kremlin dictator on war crimes charges related to Russia’s mass deportation of Ukrainian children. Many of these children have reportedly been indoctrinated in camps designed to rob them of their Ukrainian identity.

With no end in sight to Russia’s invasion, international efforts to help preserve Ukraine’s cultural heritage are more necessary than ever. While the Russian army is struggling to achieve its goals on the battlefield, the actions of the occupation authorities in areas under Moscow’s control provide clear evidence that the Kremlin remains committed to erasing Ukrainian identity and extinguishing Ukrainian statehood. Unless this is prevented, a terrible precedent will be set that will shape the global security climate for many years to come.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Olesya Khromeychuk — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 20:59:58 +0000

“There are only so many books on Ukraine we can review each month,” an editor from a major British newspaper tells me at one of the country’s largest literary festivals. He looks a bit uncomfortable, almost apologetic. He wants me to understand that if it were up to him, he’d review a book on Ukraine every day, but that’s just not how the industry works.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I’ve had a glimpse into how several industries work: Publishing, journalism, and the broader world of culture, including galleries and museums. Even before the big war, I knew more than I wanted to about how academia works (or rather doesn’t) when it comes to Ukraine. A common thread among all these fields is the limited attention they allocate to countries that do not occupy a place among the traditional big players of imperial politics.

Cultural imperialism lives on, even if its carriers often proclaim anti-colonial slogans. It thrives in gate-keeping, with editors and academics mistrusting voices that don’t sound like those higher up the ladder, while platforming those who have habitually been accepted as authoritative. “We’ve done Ukraine already” is a frequent response whenever you pitch an idea, text, or public event centering the country.

The editor who can’t keep publishing reviews of Ukraine-related books walks away, and I pick up a copy of one of the UK’s most prominent literary magazines to see their book recommendations. Out of a handful of reviews, three are on recent books about Russia. It seems like the space afforded to Russia remains unlimited. I close the publication to keep my blood pressure down.

Keeping my blood pressure down, however, is challenging. When my social media feeds aren’t advertising another production of Uncle Vanya, they’re urging me to splash out on opera tickets for Eugene Onegin. What happened to the dreaded “cancelling” of Russian culture? The Russia section in most bookshops I visit in the UK is growing daily with everything from yet another translation of Dostoevsky to accounts of opposition figures killed or imprisoned by the Kremlin.

The international media focus on the August 2024 release of Russian political prisoners was yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. While these released prisoners were provided with a global media platform to call for an end to “unfair” sanctions on “ordinary Russians,” there was no mention of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who continue to languish in Russian jails.

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The ongoing international emphasis on all things Russian goes hand in hand with a reluctance to transform growing interest in Ukraine into meaningful structural changes in how the country is perceived, reported on, and understood. Although there has been some improvement in knowledge about Ukraine since 2022, the move is essentially from having no understanding to having a superficial grasp.

Each time I read a piece on Ukraine by someone not well-versed in the country’s history and politics, my heart sinks. The chances are it will recycle historical cliches, repeat Kremlin propaganda about Russophone Ukrainians, or generalize about regional differences. And to add insult to injury, such articles also often misspell at least one family or place name, using outdated Russian transliterations. A quick Google search or a message to an actual Ukrainian could prevent these errors and save the author from looking foolish. Yet aiding this kind of colonial complacency seems to bother neither the authors nor the editors involved.

I often wonder what would happen if I wrote a piece on British or US politics and misspelt the names of historical figures, towns, and cities. How likely would I be to get it published? And yet the same standards do not apply when it comes to writing about countries that have not been granted priority status in our mental hierarchies of the world. We can misspell them all we like; no one will notice anyway. Apart from the people from those countries, of course. And when an exasperated Ukrainian writes to complain, I can almost see the editors rolling their eyes and thinking, “What does this perpetually frustrated nation want now? We’ve done Ukraine. Why are they never satisfied?”

It is not enough to simply “do Ukraine” by reviewing one book on the war, especially if it’s by a Western journalist rather than a Ukraine-based author. It’s not enough to host one exhibition, particularly if it is by an artist or photographer who only spent a few weeks in the country. Quickly putting together a panel on Russia’s war in response to a major development at the front and adding a sole Ukrainian voice at the last minute doesn’t cut it either. This box-ticking approach is unhelpful and insulting.

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It is important to acknowledge that some Western media outlets have significantly enhanced their coverage of Ukraine over the past two and a half years. They have typically done so by dedicating time and resources to having in-house experts who have either reported from Ukraine for many years, or who are committed to deepening their knowledge enough to produce high-quality analysis. However, many of these outlets still seem compelled to provide platforms for individuals entirely unqualified to analyse the region. Surely this isn’t what balance means?

Since February 2022, more than 100 Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in the war. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, by May 2024, over 2,000 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed. This includes 711 libraries, 116 museums and galleries, and 37 theatres, cinemas, and concert halls. In May 2024, Russia bombed Factor Druk, the country’s biggest printing house.

When I attended this year’s Kyiv Book Arsenal, Ukraine’s largest literary festival, each panel began with a minute of silence to honor the memory of colleagues killed in the war. All this is in addition to mounting military losses, many of whom are yesterday’s civilians, including journalists and creatives who have either volunteered or been drafted into the army. This is the current state of the Ukrainian creative industry.

To save time for Western editors, publishers, and curators, let me clarify what all of us perpetually frustrated Ukrainians want. We would appreciate it if they turned to actual Ukraine specialists when working on Ukraine-related themes. Not those who suddenly pivoted from specializing in Russia, or who feel entitled to speak authoritatively because they discovered a distant Ukrainian ancestor, or those who have only recently shown interest in Ukraine due to business opportunities in the country’s reconstruction. We would be grateful if they took the time to seek out experts who have been studying Ukraine long before it became fashionable, who understand the country in all its complexity, and who care enough to offer Ukrainians the basic dignity of having their names spelt correctly.

I like to fantasise about a time when editors of top Western periodicals will choose to review books on Ukraine not simply because the country is at war and they feel obliged to cover it now and again, but because these books offer vital insights into democracy, the fight for freedom, or the importance of maintaining unity and a sense of humor in times of crisis. I hope for a day when galleries will host exhibitions of Ukrainian art, not just because it was rescued from a war zone, but because the artists involved provide fresh perspectives on the world.

I also dream that we, the perpetually frustrated Ukraine specialists, will eventually be able to focus on our own scholarship and creativity rather than correcting the mistakes and misleading takes of others. This will happen when cultural institutions, publishing houses, universities, and newspapers acquire in-house experts whose knowledge of Ukraine and the wider region extends beyond Russia.

Dr Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. She is the author of The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (2022). Khromeychuk has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Prospect, and The New Statesman, and has delivered a TED talk on What the World Can Learn From Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities and is currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London.

Atlantic Council — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 13:37:40 +0000

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Russia is destroying monuments as part of war on Ukrainian identity

Yevhenii Monastyrskyi, John Vsetecka — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 20:14:30 +0000

Throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine, efforts continue to systematically erase all traces of Ukrainian national memory. This campaign against monuments and memorials is chilling proof that Russia’s invasion goes far beyond mere border revisions and ultimately aims to wipe Ukraine off the map entirely.

The modern history of a single park in east Ukrainian city Luhansk offers insights into the memory war currently being waged by the Kremlin. In 1972, the Communist authorities in Soviet Luhansk decided to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the USSR by transforming a local cemetery into a Friendship of Peoples Park. Once construction got underway, workers soon began uncovering mass graves of people murdered during the Stalin era. This news was suppressed until 1989, when it was belatedly reported in the local newspaper. One year later, a memorial to the victims of Stalinist mass killings was erected at the site.

This initial monument was part of a broader movement for historical justice that emerged in the twilight years of the USSR as local historians, journalists, and officials sought to document the crimes of the Communist authorities in the Luhansk region. Following Ukrainian independence, the opening of national archives made it possible to identify and honor victims of the Communist regime and end decades of censorship that had suppressed knowledge of Soviet crimes against humanity including the Holodomor, an artificially engineered famine in 1930s Ukraine that killed millions of Ukrainians.

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During the early years of Ukrainian independence, Luhansk’s Friendship of Peoples Park remained a space of contested memory. While retaining its old Soviet era name, it gradually acquired a range of new memorials including a monument to Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, a cross marking the grave of the city’s former mayor, and a memorial to the victims of the Holodomor.

In 2009, following decades of public pressure, the park was renamed as the Garden of Remembrance. At this point, it seemed as though the long task of restoring historical memory in Luhansk was finally complete. However, the onset of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 transformed the memory politics of the region once again and revived many of the darkest chapters of the Soviet years.

When Kremlin forces occupied Luhansk in the spring of 2014, they soon began attempting to transform remembrance of the Soviet era. While monuments to Lenin were being dismantled elsewhere in Ukraine, the Russian authorities in Luhansk were erecting new monuments glorifying the Soviet past and celebrating the “liberation” of the city from Ukrainian rule. This mirrored similar processes that were underway in other Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including nearby Donetsk and the Crimean peninsula.

Curiously, many memorials in Luhansk honoring the victims of the Soviet era initially remained untouched. This changed with the full-scale invasion of February 2022, which led to a more aggressive approach to the eradication of Ukrainian historical memory. In the second half of 2022, the Holodomor memorial in Mariupol was demolished. By summer 2024, the Russian occupation authorities had also dismantled monuments in Luhansk honoring the victims of the Holodomor and the Stalinist Terror.

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The occupation authorities in Luhansk have attempted to justify these measures by framing the Holodomor as a Ukrainian propaganda myth and positioning memorials to the victims of Soviet crimes as “pilgrimage sites for Ukrainian nationalists.” They have also argued that the dismantling of monuments is in response to grassroots demands from the local population.

Russia’s selective monument removals are part of a deliberate strategy to rehabilitate favorable aspects of the Soviet past while whitewashing the crimes of the Communist era. A similarly partisan approach has been adopted toward the historical role of Tsarist Russia. Throughout occupied regions of Ukraine, the Kremlin seeks to craft a narrative glorifying Russian imperialism that legitimizes Moscow’s land grab while suppressing any traces of a separate Ukrainian national identity. In this manner, Putin is weaponizing the past to serve his own present-day geopolitical ambitions.

The demolition of memorials is only one aspect of Russia’s war on Ukrainian national identity. In areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, anyone deemed pro-Ukrainian is at risk of being detained or simply disappearing. Speaking Ukrainian is considered a serious offense. Ukrainians are pressured into accepting Russian citizenship, while thousands of Ukrainian children have been abducted and sent to Russia, where they are subjected to indoctrination in camps designed to rob them of their Ukrainian heritage.

Unlike earlier attempts to erase entire nations, today’s Kremlin campaign to extinguish Ukrainian identity is taking place in full view of international audiences in the heart of twenty-first century Europe. This poses fundamental challenges to the entire notion of a rules-based international order and represents a major obstacle to any future peace process. As long as Russia remains committed to the destruction of Ukraine, a truly sustainable settlement to today’s war will remain elusive.

Yevhenii Monastyrskyi is a PhD student of history at Harvard University and a lecturer at Kyiv School of Economics. John Vsetecka is an assistant professor of history at Nova Southeastern University.

Steven Moore — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 19:50:38 +0000

On June 29, more than eight hundred participants from fifteen countries representing a dozen different religious denominations gathered in the historic heart of Kyiv for Ukraine’s annual National Prayer Breakfast. The day before the breakfast, two Ukrainian Greek Catholic priests, Father Ivan Levytsky and Father Bohdan Geleta, had been released from Russian captivity in a prisoner exchange brokered by the Vatican Diplomatic Corps. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the priests back to Ukraine in a speech that drew tears.

I was honored to be seated close to the two freed holy men. Their features were tight and drawn from months of captivity and starvation, but this only served to accentuate the smiles on their faces from being able to once again worship without threat of Russian violence. Their strength and courage permeated the room like incense.

The Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast, organized by Ukrainian evangelical Christian leader Pavlo Unguryan, first emerged from the regional prayer breakfast movement in Ukraine almost twenty years ago. The late June event was Ukraine’s tenth national prayer breakfast and notably, the first held under the auspices of the Office of the President. This presidential backing reflects the importance attached to religious freedom in Ukraine’s fight for national survival.

A former member of the Ukrainian Parliament from Black Sea port city Odesa, Ukrainian Prayer Breakfast organizer Unguryan has been building bridges between the American and Ukrainian evangelical communities for more than a decade. His relationships with key members of the US Congress reportedly helped provide the spiritual and emotional connection that convinced many Republicans to vote for a major new Ukraine aid package in April 2024. US officials were among the participants at this year’s breakfast in Kyiv, with a series of video addresses from members of Congress including Speaker Mike Johnson along with senators Richard Blumenthal and James Lankford.

The event was held in Kyiv’s Mystetskyi Arsenal, a cavernous former munitions plant located across the street from the one thousand year old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, one of the holiest sites in Orthodox Christianity. The list of attendees reflected the diversity of religious belief in today’s Ukraine. At one table close to mine, a Japanese Buddhist monk broke bread with Crimean Tatar Muslims during a service led by an evangelical Protestant, with prayers offered in Hebrew by Ukraine’s chief rabbi.

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Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast represents an important reality check to Russian propaganda, which seeks to accuse the Ukrainian authorities of engaging in religious persecution. In fact, it is the Russian Orthodox Church itself that has declared a “Holy War” against Ukraine and the West. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, has offered spiritual justification for the current invasion, and has said that Russians who die while fighting in Ukraine will have all their sins washed away.

Kirill has allies in today’s Ukraine. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) is historically the local Ukrainian branch of the Russian Orthodox Church and remains the second largest Orthodox denomination in the country in terms of parishioners. Despite some effort to distance itself from the Kremlin following the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UOC remains closely associated with the Russian Orthodox Church and is staffed with clergy who have spent their entire careers reporting to Moscow. Around one hundred members of the UOC clergy are currently in prison or awaiting trial for a range of national security-related offenses including actively aiding the Russian military.

Recent research and polling data indicates that large numbers of former adherents are now leaving the UOC, while as many as eight-five percent of Ukrainians want their government to take action against the Russian-linked Church. However, while the Ukrainian authorities attempt to address this complex national security challenge, Kremlin-friendly public figures in the US such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owen, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have accused Ukraine of persecuting Christians. A team of lobbyists, allegedly funded by a prominent pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarch, is currently canvassing Capitol Hill giving this message to members of Congress.

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Claims of religious persecution by the Ukrainian authorities are not only deliberately misleading; they also serve to obscure the very real crimes being committed against Ukraine’s Christian communities by Russian occupation forces. In areas of Ukraine that are currently under Kremlin control, virtually all churches other than the Russian Orthodox Church have been forced out. Even more alarmingly, a significant number of Christian community leaders have been abducted, imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

The details of Russia’s alleged crimes are often shocking. Baptist children’s pastor Azat Azatyan says Russians attached electrical wires to his genitals. In many cases, Russian Orthodox Church clergy are directly implicated. Evangelical pastor Viktor Cherniiavskyi claims to have been tortured with a taser while a Russian Orthodox priest tried to cast demons out of him. His alleged crime? Being an evangelical Christian.

International awareness of Russia’s hard line campaign against religious freedom in occupied regions of Ukraine is now finally growing. This is shaping attitudes among Christians toward the Russian invasion. While waves of Russian propaganda succeeded in sowing doubt among some Republicans during 2023, recent research has found that seventy percent of Republicans who identity as evangelical Christians are more likely to support aid to Ukraine when they learn of Russia’s oppressive policies against Christians in occupied Ukrainian regions.

The Kremlin is openly using religion to further the Russian war effort. The Russian Orthodox Church routinely portrays the invasion of Ukraine in religious terms, while members of the ROC clergy promote the war as a sacred mission. Throughout occupied Ukraine, all other Christian denominations are prevented from operating, with individual community leaders at risk of being detained or worse.

In stark contrast, the recent Ukrainian National Prayer Breakfast in Kyiv highlighted the Ukrainian government’s commitment to values of religious tolerance and diversity. This is the pluralistic Ukraine that millions of Ukrainians are now struggling to defend. They deserve the support of everyone who values freedom of religion.

Steven Moore is the Founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project.

Ilva Tare is joined in this episode of #BalkansDebrief by Igor Bandovic, Director of the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, and Nikola Burazer, Program Director at the Center for Contemporary Politics, to discuss their main concerns regarding Serbia’s state of democracy, nationalistic rhetoric, and dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

What are the top foreign policy and security challenges facing Serbia currently?

The All-Serb Assembly reignited nationalist sentiment across the region. How significant is this, and what potential consequences could it have for Serbia and regional stability?

ABOUT #BALKANSDEBRIEF

#BalkansDebrief is an online interview series presented by the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and hosted by journalist Ilva Tare. The program offers a fresh look at the Western Balkans and examines the region’s people, culture, challenges, and opportunities.

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#BalkansDebrief – Do Balkan nationalist chants at EURO 2024 fuel ethnic tensions? | A Debrief with Florian Bieber

sjones — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 14:08:16 +0000

IN THIS EPISODE

Do Balkan nationalist chants at EURO 2024 fuel ethnic tensions? Football and politics are deeply intertwined, especially in the Balkans, where the mix can be volatile. At the UEFA Euro Cup in Germany this year, nationalistic chants and provocative acts highlighted the ongoing tensions among Balkan nations. Serbia, Albania, and Croatia clashed not only in the stadiums but also in a display of ethnic rivalries.

In this episode Ilva Tare is joined by Florian Bieber, a renowned historian and professor at the University of Graz, specializing in inter-ethnic relations and nationalism in the Balkans. They discuss the complex role of football as both a catalyst for rivalry and a potential bridge for unity in the region.

How does football act as a double-edged sword, fueling both rivalry and potentially fostering unity in the Balkans?

How do nationalistic rhetoric and historical narratives shape the current tensions?

Can the younger generations break the cycle of resentment, or are they destined to inherit past grievances? What role can they play in reconciliation?

Given the political landscape, is peace in the Balkans a realistic goal? What concrete steps can governments and the international community take to foster stability?

Join #BalkansDebrief for a thought-provoking discussion on the dynamics of football, nationalism, and the quest for peace and reconciliation in the Balkans.

ABOUT #BALKANSDEBRIEF

Watch #BalkansDebrief on YouTube and listen to it as a Podcast.

Explore the #BALKANSDEBRIEF series

SUBSCRIBE TO #BALKANSdebrief

listen to #bALKANSDEBRIEF as a podcast

MEET THE #BALKANSDEBRIEF HOST

Fellow

Ilva Tare

Resident Senior Fellow

Europe Center

Albanian English

The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

Learn more

The post #BalkansDebrief – Do Balkan nationalist chants at EURO 2024 fuel ethnic tensions? | A Debrief with Florian Bieber appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Putin just reminded the world why Russia must lose

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 21:26:06 +0000

On the eve of last weekend’s Global Peace Summit in Switzerland, Vladimir Putin unveiled a peace proposal of his own. The presentation of this rival peace plan was an obvious attempt to undermine Ukraine’s Swiss initiative, but it also served as a timely reminder that Putin is waging an old-fashioned war of imperial conquest and will continue to escalate his demands until he is defeated.

Putin’s uncompromising vision for a future peace in Ukraine was widely condemned, with Kyiv officials and world leaders rejecting it as an “ultimatum.” Crucially, the terms outlined by the Kremlin leader would leave around twenty percent of Ukraine under Russian control, including significant portions of the country that Putin’s army has so far been unable to capture.

This new peace proposal is the latest example of the growing territorial demands that have accompanied Russia’s ten-year invasion of Ukraine. Time after time over the past decade, Putin has rejected accusations of an expansionist agenda, only to then escalate his invasion of Ukraine further.

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When Russia first attacked Ukraine in February 2014, Putin insisted Moscow had no territorial ambitions beyond the seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. “We do not want to divide Ukraine,” he assured the watching world. Within weeks, however, Kremlin forces posing as locals had sparked a separatist war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

For the following eight years, Putin steadily strengthened his grip on the so-called “separatist republics” of eastern Ukraine, while consistently denying any direct involvement. The failure of the international community to hold Putin accountable for this shameless duplicity fuelled a sense of impunity in Moscow that set the stage for the largest European invasion since World War II.

In his February 2022 address announcing the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin once again denied harboring any ambitions to annex additional Ukrainian lands. “It is not our plan to occupy Ukrainian territory,” he stated. “We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.” Just six months later, Putin demonstrated the true value of his word by solemnly announcing the annexation of four more Ukrainian provinces.

Significantly, the invading Russian army did not fully control any of the Ukrainian provinces claimed by Putin in September 2022. This created a degree of ambiguity regarding the exact geographical extent of Russia’s goals, with Kremlin officials typically limiting themselves to vague calls for Ukraine to recognize the “new territorial realities” created by the front lines of the invasion.

Putin’s new peace plan has now removed all doubt. Indeed, he took special care to clarify that he expects the Ukrainian military to withdraw completely from the four Ukrainian provinces in question, including unoccupied areas. Among other things, this would mean handing over the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, with a prewar population of more than seven hundred thousand, along with Kherson, which was the only Ukrainian regional capital captured by the Russians before being liberated in November 2022.

Ukraine would also have to voluntarily demilitarize, accept geopolitical neutrality, and submit to “denazification,” Kremlin code for the suppression of Ukrainian national identity and the imposition of a Russian imperial ideology. In other words, Putin is insisting Ukraine admit defeat and surrender.

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The terms offered by Putin confirm that he has no intention of reaching a sustainable peace with Ukraine. On the contrary, the Russian dictator evidently remains as committed as ever to his overriding war aim of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood and erasing the Ukrainian nation. As if to underline the point, Putin accompanied his latest demands with a chilling warning that “the existence of Ukraine” depends on Kyiv’s readiness to accept his conditions.

In fact, there is even more at stake than the continued existence of the Ukrainian state. It is no exaggeration to say that the future of global security is currently being determined on the battlefields of Ukraine. If Putin’s invasion succeeds, it will signal the dawning of a new era marked by rising international insecurity, ballooning defense budgets, and increasingly frequent wars of aggression.

A victorious Russia would almost certainly remain at the forefront of this descent into lawlessness for many years to come. Throughout the past decade, Putin has steadily escalated his invasion of Ukraine while shifting his entire country onto a war footing. By this point, it should be painfully clear to all objective observers that he will not stop until he is stopped. Indeed, Putin has openly compared today’s war to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Peter the Great, and frequently speaks in terms of a sacred mission to “return historically Russian lands.”

As anyone with a passing knowledge of Russian history will confirm, there are at least fifteen other countries beyond Ukraine that were once part of the Russian Empire and therefore meet Putin’s definition of “historically Russian.” All are now potential targets. While it is impossible to know exactly what Putin will do next if he defeats Ukraine, the idea that he will simply choose to stop is perhaps the most far-fetched scenario of all.

Nor will Putin be the only authoritarian ruler looking to embrace a new age of imperial aggression. China, Iran, and North Korea are all already providing the Russian war effort with varying degrees of support, and make no secret of their eagerness to overturn the existing world order. If Moscow achieves an historic victory in Ukraine, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang will also be emboldened, along with a whole host of fellow autocrats throughout the Global South.

The only way to avoid a geopolitical future shaped by rising insecurity and resurgent imperialism is by ensuring Russia loses in Ukraine. Putin’s recent bogus peace proposal is essentially a call for Kyiv’s capitulation and the absorption of Ukraine into a new Russian Empire. This is entirely in line with the policies of escalation he has pursued throughout the past decade, and reflects an imperial agenda that leaves no room for meaningful compromise.

The Russian dictator still clearly believes he can overwhelm Ukraine with brute force while intimidating the wider Western world into inaction. If he succeeds, the consequences for international security will be devastating. Ukraine’s leaders have already responded to Putin’s latest demands with characteristic defiance. Kyiv’s international partners must now go further and provide the military support to secure Ukrainian victory.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Victory in Ukraine would dramatically strengthen Putin’s war machine

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:58:43 +0000

What will Vladimir Putin do next if he wins in Ukraine? In recent months, more and more Western policymakers have reached the conclusion that a victorious Russia would almost certainly expand the war deeper into Europe as Putin seeks to rewrite the existing world order and continue on his crusade to return “historically Russian lands.” This realization is helping to rally support for Ukraine, with leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron now openly warning that a Russian victory would have disastrous consequences for the rest of Europe.

Not everyone is convinced, of course. Many skeptics point to the Russian army’s surprisingly poor performance during the invasion of Ukraine, and argue that Putin is clearly in no position to embark on further military adventures. According to the doubters, Russia’s obvious difficulties in Ukraine mean Moscow cannot be regarded as a genuine threat to the far greater military might of the NATO alliance. Indeed, some are convinced that any direct Russian attack on the West would amount to a suicide mission.

This argument is dangerously shortsighted. Crucially, it ignores the profound impact military success in Ukraine would have on the Kremlin’s ability to wage war. A Russian victory over Ukraine would transform the geopolitical situation, greatly strengthening Russia militarily, economically, and strategically, while at the same time severely weakening the West. Faced with such uniquely favorable circumstances, it is delusional to believe a triumphant Putin would simply stop and go no further.

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The Russian army has clearly failed to live up to its inflated prewar reputation in Ukraine, but it would nevertheless be reckless to underestimate Moscow’s military potential. Putin’s commanders have learned a series of important lessons since the start of the invasion in February 2022, and have acquired combat experience that no other major power can match. With a battle-hardened and rapidly modernizing army backed by a defense industry operating around the clock, Putin is now arguably in a stronger position relative to his slowly rearming Western adversaries than any Russian ruler since 1945. Victory in Ukraine would further widen this already alarming gap in military capabilities.

The Russian and Ukrainian armies are currently by far the largest and most formidable fighting forces in Europe. If Putin triumphs in Ukraine, he will control them both. While many Ukrainian soldiers would doubtless continue to wage a partisan war or seek to regroup abroad, a victorious Russia would look to rapidly conscript hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians into military service, just as it has already done in areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control. In addition to a massive manpower boost, Russia would also take possession of Ukraine’s extensive military equipment stores, ranging from stockpiles of artillery shells and attack drones to Western-supplied tanks and missile systems.

Control over Ukraine would allow Russia to reintegrate the vast Ukrainian military-industrial complex that played such a central role in arming the Red Army during the Cold War. For much of the Soviet era, Ukraine produced a large proportion of the USSR’s missiles, tanks, aircraft, and warships. This colossal industrial inheritance was neglected during the first three decades of Ukrainian independence and fell into a state of disrepair, but a Russian occupation administration or Kremlin-loyal puppet regime in Kyiv would likely prioritize the revival of military production. This increased output would allow Russia to rapidly recover from the punishing losses of the Ukrainian campaign, while also enabling Moscow to overcome many of the obstacles created by Western sanctions.

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Economically, the conquest of Ukraine would significantly improve Russia’s financial position and strengthen Moscow’s ability to shape world affairs. The Kremlin would acquire Ukraine’s sizable untapped energy reserves along with potentially trillions of dollars in mineral assets. Meanwhile, the famed Ukrainian breadbasket would enable Russia to establish itself virtually overnight as the dominant force on international agricultural markets. Putin has already demonstrated his readiness to weaponize global food security by blockading Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Control over the Ukrainian farming industry would present the Kremlin with powerful new tools to reward allies and punish opponents.

Many in the Global South would not wait to be bribed with grain shipments or coerced by the threat of famine. Instead, they would readily recognize Russian victory in Ukraine as a major geopolitical turning point and would queue up in Moscow to pay their respects. The emphasis on diplomatic neutrality that is currently evident in much of Asia, Africa, and beyond, would be replaced by a scramble to strengthen ties with the Kremlin. Countries throughout the Global South would begin to ship arms and other military supplies to Moscow, while the West’s already limited ability to impose sanctions on Russia would become hopelessly compromised. Commentators everywhere would soon be trumpeting the dawn of a new post-Western era in international affairs.

Where would a strengthened and emboldened Putin be most likely to strike next? The Kremlin dictator has made clear that he sees the current war as an imperial quest to return “historically Russian lands.” Beyond Ukraine, there are more than a dozen other countries including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, and Moldova that were once part of the Russian Empire and therefore meet Putin’s definition of “historically Russian.” All would be potential targets. During the build-up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late 2021, Putin underlined the scale of his ambition by calling on NATO to retreat to the borders of the former Warsaw Pact. It seems reasonable to assume that success in Ukraine will only make him more ambitious.

There is certainly little to indicate that Putin is in any way intimidated by the West. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Russian ruler has proven so skilled at intimidating his enemies that almost two-and-a-half years into the largest European invasion since World War II, Kyiv’s partners remain preoccupied with avoiding escalation and continue to impose absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. This escalation management is the appeasement of the twenty-first century, and risks inviting the same tragic consequences.

If Russia does expand the war further, the one thing Western leaders cannot do is claim they were not warned. Putin has placed the whole of Russian society on a war footing and is openly preparing his entire country for a protracted struggle against the West. The current invasion is an important part of this struggle, but it is only the beginning. Russian victory in Ukraine would set the stage for even bolder acts of international aggression. It would supercharge Putin’s war machine and radically increase the cost of stopping him. The only way to avoid this disastrous outcome is by making sure the Russian invasion of Ukraine ends in defeat.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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US House resolution: Russian abduction of Ukrainian children is genocide

Kristina Hook, Christopher Atwood — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 01:04:43 +0000

For the past month, the Russian military has targeted Ukraine’s civilian population and energy infrastructure with some of its largest nationwide missile and drone attacks since the start of the full-scale invasion just over two years ago. These bombardments underscore the urgency of a renewed push in the United States to pass a stalled military aid package for Ukraine.

Members of the US House of Representatives recently demonstrated that they understand what is at stake and are well aware of the crimes being committed by Russia in Ukraine. On March 19, the US House overwhelmingly passed a resolution “condemning the illegal abduction and forcible transfer of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation” by a 390-9 margin.

Russia’s systematic and coordinated abduction of Ukrainian children from occupied regions of Ukraine has attracted global condemnation, and has led to International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Russian government official Maria Lvova-Belova. Following in the footsteps of American allies in Europe, the recently adopted US House resolution signals a major bipartisan US policy shift in labeling and shaming Russian perpetrators.

Although nonbinding, the House’s condemnation officially formalizes individual remarks made by Congressional Representatives indicating that Russia is conducting a campaign of genocide in Ukraine. Specifically, this super-majority of Representatives, including key leaders like Speaker Mike Johnson, affirmed that Russia’s abduction, transfer, and forcible adoption of Ukrainian children is “contrary to Russia’s obligations under the Genocide Convention and amounts to genocide.”

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By invoking the UN Genocide Convention, the House’s resolution stresses the severity of Russian crimes in Ukraine. Critically, it also denotes the resulting legal obligations to prevent and punish further genocidal acts against Ukrainians. In other words, Congress has finally recognized what countless experts and advocates have been asking them to acknowledge for much of the past two years.

As a principal author and a key contributor on two independent legal inquiries into the question of Russian genocide in Ukraine published by the New Lines Institute (Washington, DC) and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (Montreal, Canada), we applaud the House’s unequivocal language regarding these crimes and resulting legal obligations.

Our investigations have detailed the Kremlin’s escalating violence against the Ukrainian population over the past two years. Russia’s most recent actions targeting the civilian population fit into a broader pattern of genocidal objectives evident throughout the invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, prominent Russian media personalities closely tied to the Kremlin continue to advocate for the eradication of Ukraine.

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Amid mounting international efforts to hold Russian perpetrators to account for crimes taking place in Ukraine, it is important to stress that the central duty of the UN Genocide Convention is prevention rather than punishment. This implies active steps from signatories to ensure that further crimes are not committed and to keep Ukrainian children safe from abduction.

At the same time, the stark reality remains that no genocide has even been stopped in a courtroom. While accountability is vital for surviving victims, international legal processes often take decades and lack the enforcement mechanisms required to decisively end genocides in real-time. Instead, the duty to stop a genocide in motion falls squarely on every country that has ratified the Genocide Convention.

Human rights advocates are currently racing against the clock to locate Ukraine’s missing children and end the daily deportations that continue in Russia-occupied Ukraine. Once Ukrainian children are seized, experts have traced the Kremlin’s efforts to hide these young victims, while subjecting them to frightening surveillance and camps designed to eradicate their Ukrainian identity. The resolution adopted by the US House of Representatives in March confronted this issue squarely, declaring that “the Russian Federation is attempting to wipe out a generation of Ukrainian children.”

Numerous survivor testimonies confirm that the best genocide prevention mechanism in Ukraine today is a fully-equipped Ukrainian army with staunch Western backing. Ukrainian officials know this all too well. With their troops now forced to ration ammunition amid growing supply shortages, they are urgently appealing for the international military aid they need to save their nation.

While the recent US House of Representatives resolution’s clear articulation of Russia’s genocidal crimes in Ukraine is a step in the right direction, Western leaders must follow such statements with the necessary actions. It is vital for Congress, along with the rest of the US government and governments around the world, to act without further delay and enact policies worthy of Ukraine’s courage and sacrifice. History is watching, and so is Vladimir Putin.

Kristina Hook is Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Christopher Atwood is a specialist on Eastern Europe and the Head of the Advisory Board at the Souspilnist Foundation.

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The sentiments expressed in this recently approved document expand on previous statements made by Patriarch Kirill since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than two years ago. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has frequently asserted that Ukrainians and Russians are “one nation,” and is widely viewed as a key ideological supporter of the war. Kirill’s comments have led to widespread criticism, including a warning from Pope Francis to avoid becoming “Putin’s altar boy.”

The new decree positions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as part of a larger spiritual struggle against the West, which it accuses of having “fallen into Satanism.” This is strikingly similar to the ideological arguments favored by Islamist radicals, who have long sought to portray the United States and other Western nations as “Satanic” as part of efforts to justify their extremist agenda. In addition to the Russian Orthodox Church, numerous senior Kremlin officials have sought to frame the war in Ukraine as an existential fight with Western “Satanism.” In a further chilling echo of the Islamist doctrine, Patriarch Kirill has also claimed Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine would have their sins “washed away.”

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The Russian Orthodox Church’s endorsement of language more typically associated with religious extremism should come as no surprise. After all, the entire Russian invasion of Ukraine has been framed as a crusade from the very beginning. Following the 2014 seizure of Crimea, Putin compared the occupied Ukrainian peninsula to Temple Mount and spoke of its spiritual importance to the Russian nation. He routinely insists Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), and has labeled Ukraine “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

The recent confirmation of a holy war against Ukraine and the West comes at a pivotal point in Russia’s full-scale invasion. Since February 2022, Putin’s invading army has been unable to overcome Ukrainian resistance or break the country’s will to defend itself. With little current prospect of a decisive military breakthrough, the Kremlin is now turning increasingly to terror tactics, including a sharp escalation in the bombing of Ukrainian cities and the methodical destruction of Ukraine’s civilian power grid.

By defining the invasion in explicitly spiritual terms, the Russian Orthodox Church hopes to whitewash the war crimes being committed in Ukraine and encourage more ordinary Russians to volunteer. Moscow’s recent declaration of a holy war also sends an unmistakable message to anyone in the West who still believes in the possibility of striking some kind of compromise with the Kremlin. While Putin initially sought to justify the invasion as a pragmatic response to the growth of NATO, it is now apparent that he views the war as a sacred mission and will not stop until Ukraine has been wiped off the map of Europe.

Brian Mefford is the Director of Wooden Horse Strategies, LLC, a governmental-relations and strategic communications firm based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He is a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Putin first emerged on Russia’s political stage against a backdrop of terrorist attacks. When he was appointed Prime Minister in August 1999, Putin was largely unknown to the wider Russian public. Weeks later, the country was rocked by a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and southern Russia.

Putin’s hard-line response to these attacks saw him rise to national prominence. This paved the way for his presidential election win in early 2000, while also serving as justification for the Second Chechen War. Putin’s use of macho street slang was welcomed by many, including his famous pledge to flush terrorists “down the toilet.”

In October 2002, armed militants seized a theater in the center of Moscow and held almost one thousand audience members hostage. The ensuing standoff ended in tragedy when a botched intervention by Russian security forces led to the deaths of more than 100 hostages. This incident was to become another key turning point in the Putin era.

In the wake of the theater siege, Putin passed a series of anti-terrorism laws restricting civil liberties. He also significantly strengthened Kremlin control over the Russian media, making it far more difficult for journalists to report critically on the authorities. Crucially, Putin sought to frame the theater attack as an act of “international terrorism.” This played an important role in transforming international perceptions of Russia’s fight against Chechen separatism by equating it with the US-led “War on Terror.”

The largest terrorist attack of the Putin era came in September 2004, when militants stormed a school in Beslan during traditional ceremonies to mark the first day of the new academic year. This high-profile crisis ended in carnage and the deaths of more than 300 hostages. The Beslan massacre transformed the political landscape in Russia. In the wake of the tragedy, Putin moved to end the direct election of regional governors and return to a system of appointment by the Kremlin. This reversed what was widely regarded as one of the main democratic achievements of the Yeltsin era.

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Throughout the 2010s, Russia experienced sporadic suicide bombings across the country. In 2017, an attack on the St. Petersburg metro system led to new restrictions imposed on the popular Telegram messaging app, after an investigation concluded that the platform had been used by terrorists to coordinate their activities.

With today’s Russia already an increasingly authoritarian state, it is not clear what measures remain available to the Kremlin in response to the recent Moscow attack. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the last vestiges of an independent press and civil society have been largely extinguished, while draconian legislation has criminalized any criticism of the war.

Some fear that the Moscow attack may spark a backlash against Russia’s large community of labor migrants, many of whom are Muslims from Central Asia. Meanwhile, some officials are already calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Given the scale of the attack and the rhetoric currently coming out of the Kremlin, most expect the response to be severe.

The March 22 attack in Moscow has seriously damaged Putin’s carefully crafted public image as a strongman ruler who offers his subjects security in exchange for restrictions on their personal freedoms. In order to reestablish his credentials, Putin is likely to target his enemies in Ukraine and the West. In line with past practice, he will also look to tighten his grip inside Russia itself.

Olivia Yanchik is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Putin adds Islamist terror to the list of absurd excuses for Ukraine invasion

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 21:09:13 +0000

Over the past week, representatives of the Islamic State have gone to considerable lengths to confirm they were behind the March 22 attack on a Moscow concert hall that left more than 140 people dead. In the immediate aftermath of the killings, the radical Islamist group issued a series of statements claiming responsibility. They then went even further, circulating visual proof including graphic bodycam video footage filmed by one of the assailants.

Despite overwhelming evidence pointing to Islamic State terrorists, Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming Ukraine. While the Russian dictator has acknowledged the atrocity was carried out by Islamist militants, he has repeatedly indicated that Ukraine and the country’s Western partners are the real culprits.

The first clear sign that Putin would seek to implicate Ukraine came on the day after the attack. In an official address to the nation, Putin announced that four suspects had been caught while attempting to reach Ukraine, before accusing the Ukrainian authorities of “preparing a window” for them to cross the border.

This version of events made little sense, given the massive military presence along Russia’s wartime border with Ukraine and the intense security spotlight on the wider region. Putin’s far-fetched story of a Ukrainian escape plan has subsequently been further undermined by his closest ally, Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has stated that the terror suspects initially attempted to flee across the border into Belarus and not Ukraine.

None of this has deterred Putin. On the contrary, the campaign to blame Ukraine has continued to gain momentum in the wake of the Moscow massacre. The Kremlin-controlled Russian state media has openly questioned the claims of responsibility made by Islamic State, and has directly accused Ukraine of being behind the terror attack.

Russian officials have followed suit, with Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev stating that Ukraine was “of course” responsible for the attack and Russian Parliamentary Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin naming “the bloody regime of Ukraine” along with Washington and Brussels as the organizers of the atrocity. Meanwhile, Putin himself has doubled down on his earlier accusations, and has attempted to position the Moscow terrorist attack as part of a ten-year conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have rejected Russia’s groundless accusations, suggesting instead that Putin is seeking to exploit the tragedy in order to provide further false justification for the invasion of Ukraine. “Do not let Putin and his henchmen dupe you,” commented Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. “Their only goal is to motivate more Russians to die in their senseless and criminal war against Ukraine, as well as to instill even more hatred for other nations, not just Ukrainians, but the entire West.”

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Russia has yet to produce any credible evidence supporting its claims of a Ukrainian role in the Moscow terror attack. Instead, the Kremlin appears content to rely on a combination of unfounded allegations, conspiracy theories, and innuendo. This is entirely in keeping with the cynical information strategy that has accompanied the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been based on deceit and distraction from the very beginning.

When Putin first launched the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2014, he did so with a lie so large and so transparent that in retrospect it is difficult to believe it actually happened. As his troops methodically seized control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, the Kremlin dictator appeared before global audiences and repeatedly denied any Russian military involvement whatsoever. Instead, he insisted that the thousands of well-armed and disciplined troops involved in the operation were actually local militias.

This astonishing duplicity set the tone for the following eight years as Putin expanded the war by occupying much of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Throughout this period, the Kremlin refused to acknowledge any direct role in hostilities and maintained an official policy of blanket denials, despite the fact that the presence of the Russian army in eastern Ukraine was the world’s worst kept secret. In addition to denying Russia’s obvious involvement, the Kremlin also waged an unprecedented information war to discredit and dehumanize Ukrainians.

For the past decade, the most consistent element of Russia’s anti-Ukrainian disinformation offensive has been the depiction of modern Ukraine as a “Nazi” state. This has been a Kremlin propaganda trope for many decades and was a prominent element of Soviet attempts to demonize Ukraine’s statehood ambitions during the Cold War. Putin has enthusiastically revived this tradition and has used it to justify his quest to extinguish Ukrainian independence. Few were surprised in February 2022 when he cited “de-Nazification” as the main goal of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Putin’s “Nazi Ukraine” propaganda resonates well with Russian audiences drenched in the Kremlin’s World War II mythology, but has been significantly less effective internationally. It is not hard to see why. After all, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, while support for far-right political parties in Ukraine is lower than in most other European countries, with a coalition of Ukrainian nationalist parties receiving just 2% of the vote in the country’s most recent parliamentary election in 2019. Indeed, the entire “Nazi Ukraine” narrative is so ridiculous that even US media personality Tucker Carlson, who can usually be relied upon to echo Kremlin talking points, recently admitted it was “one of the dumbest things I’d ever heard.”

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The Kremlin’s attempts to blame the war on NATO expansion have proved far more persuasive among international audiences, but even this seemingly rational explanation has been undermined by Russia’s own recent actions. Putin has frequently stated that NATO enlargement since 1991 poses an intolerable security threat to Russia, but when neighboring Finland and nearby Sweden responded to the invasion of Ukraine by joining the alliance, he reacted with almost complete indifference and made no effort to obstruct the process.

The contrast between Putin’s evident lack of interest in NATO’s Nordic enlargement and his bellicose denunciations of Ukraine’s far flimsier ties to the alliance could hardly be starker. Far from threatening a military response, the Russian ruler actually downplayed the entire issue of Finnish and Swedish membership, and even withdrew the bulk of his troops from the border with Finland. Clearly, Putin understands perfectly well that NATO poses no security threat to Russia itself, and only objects to the alliance if it prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors.

In addition to imaginary NATO threats and phantom fascists, Putin has now added Islamist terrorism to the expanding list of absurd excuses for the invasion of Ukraine. This relentless flood of disinformation is designed to cloud perceptions and disguise the naked imperialism driving Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As the invasion has unfolded, Putin has become increasingly frank about his true motivations, especially when addressing domestic audiences. In summer 2022, he compared his invasion to the imperial conquests of eighteenth century Russian Czar Peter the Great. Months later, he announced the annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces while claiming they would now be part of Russia “forever.” With increasing frequency, Putin denies Ukraine’s right to exist and characterizes the war as a crusade to reclaim “historically Russian lands.”

Ukrainians are painfully aware of Russia’s genocidal goals and have long since grown used to the shameless disinformation being pushed by the Kremlin to justify the invasion of their country. In recent days, many Ukrainians have responded to allegations of their alleged involvement in the Moscow terror attack with typical gallows humor, quipping that according to Putin, “Ukraine is a Nazi Islamist state headed by a Jewish President.”

The Kremlin’s ludicrous conspiracy theories certainly deserve to be ridiculed, but the implications for millions of Ukrainians are no laughing matter. As Russian dissident Garry Kasparov noted this week, “mocking the absurdities of authoritarians is a worthy endeavor, as long as we never lose sight of how dictatorships like Russia use their laughable lies to justify oppression and murder.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Vladimir Putin’s history obsession is a threat to world peace

Nicholas Chkhaidze — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 20:29:14 +0000

History has always served as an ideological battlefield, but few rulers in the modern era have weaponized the past quite as ruthlessly as Vladimir Putin. For more than two years, the Russian dictator has sought to justify Europe’s largest invasion since World War II by portraying it as a sacred mission to reclaim “historically Russian lands.”

Putin’s preoccupation with history has become increasingly evident as his reign has progressed, and is closely linked to his deep-seated resentment over the perceived historical injustice of the 1991 Soviet collapse. As early as 2005, Putin was lamenting the breakup of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

This sense of injustice has helped fuel Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, a neighboring country that many Russians still regard as a core part of their own nation’s historical heartlands. The existence of an independent Ukraine has long been resented by Putin as a symbol of modern Russia’s retreat from empire. Since the early years of his reign, he has made the subjugation of Ukraine one of his foreign policy priorities.

During the initial stages of the Kremlin campaign to reassert Russian authority over independent Ukraine, considerable effort was made to undermine the historical legitimacy of the Ukrainian state among Russian audiences and inside Ukraine itself. As Russian aggression against Ukraine escalated, the Kremlin’s war on Ukrainian history also expanded, with Ukrainians demonized as “Nazis” and dismissed as an “artificial nation.”

Years of increasingly hostile rhetoric paved the way for military aggression. When Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in spring 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, he began referring to southern and eastern Ukraine as “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”). His decision to revive long-forgotten imperial terminology from the Czarist era was the clearest indication yet that Putin intended to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and reverse more than a century of European history.

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Putin formalized his denial of Ukrainian statehood in a controversial history essay published in July 2021. Entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” this remarkable document laid out Putin’s rejection of Ukraine’s right to exist, while arguing at length that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). Putin’s essay laid the ideological groundwork for the full-scale invasion that commenced months later.

Over the past two years, history has remained a key front in the struggle to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the first summer of the war, Putin directly compared himself to Peter the Great and likened the invasion of Ukraine to the eighteenth century Russian Czar’s wars of imperial conquest.

A year later, Putin ordered the launch of new history textbooks for Russian schoolchildren along with curriculum changes with the apparent aim of legitimizing the ongoing military campaign to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation. This was part of a broader trend within Russia to bring the country’s official historical narrative into line with Putin’s increasingly radical brand of revisionism.

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Strikingly, Putin chose to use his high-profile February 2024 interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson as a platform to frame the war in Ukraine as a quest for historical justice. While Carlson clearly wanted Putin to blame NATO and the US for the invasion, Putin himself preferred to embark on a rambling half-hour history lecture explaining the ancient roots of Russia’s claim to Ukraine.

Other senior Russian officials have taken their lead from Putin’s weaponized version of history. The most prominent example of this trend is former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who regularly employs historical references in his frequent attacks on Ukraine and the wider Western world. “One of Ukraine’s former leaders once said Ukraine is not Russia. That concept needs to disappear forever. Ukraine is definitely Russia,” he declared in March 2024.

With the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine now in its third year, Putin’s historical motivations are becoming more and more apparent. He regularly declares that major Ukrainian cities such as Odesa and entire regions of Ukraine are “historically Russian,” indicating that his imperial ambitions are still far from satisfied.

Many are now asking how far Putin intends to go. He has often expressed his belief that the Soviet Union was the Russian Empire under a different name. If Putin takes his crusade to reclaim “historically Russian lands” further and expands the definition to include all of the former Czarist domains, this would place more than a dozen additional countries at risk of suffering the same fate as Ukraine.

Putin has weaponized history to justify the genocidal invasion of Ukraine and dehumanize the entire Ukrainian nation. Unless he is stopped in Ukraine, the Russian dictator will use the same bogus historical arguments to launch new imperial adventures.

Nicholas Chkhaidze is a Research Fellow at the Baku-based Topchubashov Center.

If these punishing terms had been implemented in spring 2022, It would surely only have been a matter of time before a disarmed and isolated Ukraine found itself facing a fresh Russian invasion with little hope of defending itself. In other words, Putin’s widely touted peace proposal was in fact an attempt to secure the surrender of the Ukrainian state.

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The publication of Putin’s punitive peace plan did not deter Pope Francis from entering the debate in early March with his own controversial call for Ukraine to “have the courage to raise the white flag” and negotiate with Russia. The Pope’s comments sparked outrage in Ukraine and across Europe, with a number of senior officials condemning the religious leader. Days later, the Vatican was forced to backtrack, with Cardinal Pietro Parolin clarifying that the onus in any future peace process should be on Russia as the “aggressor” country.

The most ominous recent contribution to the debate over possible future negotiations has come from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Following his meeting with former US President Donald Trump in Florida, Orban announced that if re-elected in November, Trump plans to cut all US support for Ukraine. “If the Americans don’t give money, the Europeans alone are unable to finance this war. And then the war is over,” commented the Hungarian leader.

These revelations were not entirely unexpected. Indeed, the current deadlock in Congress over US military aid for Ukraine is widely seen as a reflection of Donald Trump’s personal position. Nevertheless, Ukrainians were dismayed by Orban’s claims that Trump’s vision for peace amounts to abandoning Ukraine and letting Russia win. Far from ending the war, this approach would mean the end of Ukraine.

Putin himself has since underlined the obvious flaws in Trump’s strategy. In a March 13 interview, the Kremlin dictator dismissed the idea of peace talks at a time when his army has regained the battlefield initiative thanks in large part to Ukraine’s mounting weapons shortages. “It would be ridiculous for us to start negotiating with Ukraine just because it’s running out of ammunition,” Putin stated.

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At present, the potential negotiating positions of Russia and Ukraine remain poles apart. While Kyiv insists on a complete end to the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory and the payment of reparations for war damage, the Russian leadership is becoming more and more maximalist in its demands. Putin and other senior officials have long insisted Ukraine cede five partially occupied provinces to Russia. With Russia’s military prospects improving and international support for Ukraine wavering, the Kremlin now appears to embracing even more ambitious goals.

Putin used his high-profile February 2024 interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson to position the war as an historic mission to reclaim “Russian lands.” Meanwhile, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has gone even further, declaring in early March that “Ukraine is definitely Russia.”

These maximalist statements tally with the Kremlin’s increasingly vitriolic anti-Ukrainian propaganda, which portrays Ukraine as an enemy of Russia and an instrument of the West’s anti-Russian policy. For the past two years, the invasion of Ukraine has been depicted by the Kremlin as an existential struggle, with Russia’s national survival dependent on the total subjugation of Ukraine.

This framing makes it difficult to see how any kind of negotiated settlement could prove enduring. On the contrary, while Moscow may seek to temporarily pause hostilities for strategic reasons, it is now obvious that the Putin regime has committed Russia to a long-term war of aggression with the clear goal of destroying Ukraine.

Ukrainians are well aware of Russia’s genocidal agenda. They see the daily incitement to genocide on Kremlin TV, and are regularly confronted with fresh evidence of efforts to eradicate Ukrainian identity throughout occupied regions of Ukraine. Understandably, the vast majority of Ukrainians see no room for compromise between Russian genocide and their own survival. Instead, they are committed to fighting on until Ukraine can achieve the basis for long-term national security.

There are indications that Ukraine’s partners are increasingly recognizing the need for comprehensive security guarantees. Since January 2024, Ukraine has signed a series of bilateral security agreements with partner countries including Britain, France, and Germany. While these documents do not qualify as military alliances, they do formalize current cooperation while outlining avenues for future defense sector partnership.

In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron has raised the stakes further by refusing to rule out the deployment of Western troops to Ukraine. Macron’s suggestion has sparked considerable alarm among European leaders, but supporters have noted that the West gains nothing by signalling its own red lines to the Kremlin. Bilateral security agreements and the French President’s increasingly bold rhetoric cannot replace the unrivaled security provided by NATO membership, but these recent developments do indicate growing recognition in Western capitals that European peace depends on a secure Ukraine.

With Russia’s invasion now in its third year, factors such as Ukraine’s failed 2023 counteroffensive and creeping Ukraine fatigue among the country’s Western partners are contributing to calls for a compromise settlement to end the war. At the same time, Putin appears more confident than ever that he can achieve his expansionist goals and is clearly in no hurry to return to the negotiating table.

In the current circumstances, the best way to secure a lasting peace is by demonstrating to the Kremlin that Russia’s hopes of extinguishing Ukrainian statehood are futile. Putin only understands the language of strength. With this in mind, Ukraine’s international partners must send an unambiguous message to Moscow by ditching their “as long as it takes” mantra and deploying the full weight of their overwhelming economic and technological superiority. This would be more than enough to give Ukraine a decisive battlefield advantage and set the stage for victory over Russia.

Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves, but they also recognize that a premature peace with Putin would only lead to more war. Advocates of a negotiated settlement would be wise to listen to these Ukrainian concerns before calling on Kyiv to compromise with the Kremlin. As Winston Churchill observed, meeting jaw to jaw is better than war. However, in this particular case, it should be evident to all that there can be no durable peace in Europe until Ukraine is safe from Russian aggression.

The local residents we met during our recent visit recalled how the most violent Russian troops had seemed to sincerely believe that by killing Ukrainians they were saving Russia. Nevertheless, those who lived through the occupation did not express fear. Despite facing desperate living conditions and constant insecurity, there was no sense of despair. Instead, they were surer than ever in their identity. We are Ukrainians, they told us.

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Vladimir Putin provided ample indication of his intentions during the buildup to the February 2022 invasion. In a remarkable summer 2021 essay, he argued at length that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), while portraying independent Ukraine as an artificial and hostile entity. This document was widely interpreted as a declaration of war on Ukrainian national identity. It was soon being distributed to Russian soldiers, with the aim of convincing them that it was both necessary and justified to apply the harshest possible measures against anyone who insists on identifying as Ukrainian.

Once the invasion began, it was immediately apparent that this was a war against every aspect of Ukrainian national identity including language, culture, and heritage. This genocidal agenda was spelled out in a high-profile editorial that briefly appeared on Kremlin media platforms in the first days of the invasion before being quietly deleted once it became clear that the triumphant tone of the article was premature. Employing the lexicon of imperial conquest, the author credited Putin with solving the “Ukrainian question” for future generations, and trumpeted the restoration of Russia to its “historic fullness.”

As the invasion unfolded, advancing Russian troops were soon putting the Kremlin’s imperialistic ideology into practice. In a chilling echo of tsarist and Soviet crimes against humanity, Ukrainian community leaders, activists, and patriots were hunted down and abducted, while hundreds of thousands of people living in occupied areas were subjected to forced deportation. Those who remained were confronted with blanket russification and pressured to accept Russian citizenship.

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The Russian invasion has also targeted Ukraine’s national heritage. Hundreds of cultural heritage sites have been damaged or destroyed including museums, galleries, churches, and places of historical importance. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian artifacts and priceless national treasures have been stolen and shipped back to Russia, where they have in many cases been repackaged as Russian relics. Significant numbers of Russian academics and museum curators have acted as accomplices in these crimes.

Today’s war on Ukrainian culture is reminiscent of the Stalin regime’s campaign to destroy an entire generation of Ukrainian cultural leaders during the early decades of the Soviet era. This doomed generation of 1920s and 1930s Ukrainian poets, writers, and artists has come to be known as the “Executed Renaissance.” Like their Soviet predecessors, Putin’s invading army has also targeted contemporary writers, musicians, and artists as living symbols of Ukrainian cultural identity.

In a very real sense, Russia’s total war against Ukrainian identity and culture is actually an admission of failure. It reflects the fact that Ukrainians have resoundingly rejected the Kremlin’s so-called “Russian World,” recognizing it as a ploy to subjugate Ukraine. This has left Putin with no option but to resort to force.

Russia’s invasion recently passed the two-year mark with no end in sight. But while nobody knows when or how the war will end, it is already apparent that Russia will not succeed in erasing Ukraine. On the contrary, the invasion has helped fuel an unprecedented consolidation of Ukrainian identity that many have likened to a national coming of age. Putin believed Ukraine was weak and would soon collapse under the overwhelming weight of his invading army. Instead, Ukrainian national identity has been strengthened in a manner so profound that it may only become fully apparent in the decades to come.

Danylo Lubkivsky is director of the Kyiv Security Forum. He is the former Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine and ex-Chair of Ukraine’s UNESCO Commission.

Putin is on an historic mission and will not stop until he is finally defeated

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 11:34:27 +0000

There was no escaping the mounting sense of gloom in late February as the world marked the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale Ukraine invasion. While a chorus of international leaders voiced their determination to continue standing with Ukraine, it is now evident that Russia holds the upper hand as the conflict evolves into a grinding war of attrition. Indeed, with the future of US military aid in doubt, the mood among Ukraine’s partners is visibly darkening as thoughts turn to the disastrous consequences of a potential Russian victory.

In recent weeks, more and more Western leaders have begun publicly warning that their countries may soon become targets of Russian aggression. The latest leader to sound the alarm was French President Emmanuel Macron, who stated on February 26 that Russia could attack NATO member states “in the next few years.” Macron also sparked a heated debate by refusing to rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine.

Not everyone believes a victorious Putin would inevitably go further. Many remain skeptical and claim the Russian dictator is only interested in Ukraine. Others point to the Russian army’s well-documented difficulties during the current invasion as evidence that any Russian attack on the NATO alliance would amount to military suicide. These arguments reflect a fundamental failure among many in the West to grasp the true motives behind Russia’s invasion and the nature of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions.

When Putin first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he initially sought to portray it as a defensive measure against “Ukrainian Nazis” and NATO expansion. However, as the conflict has unfolded, it has become increasingly apparent that the Kremlin is waging an old-fashioned colonial war of imperial expansion.

In summer 2022, Putin directly compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great. Months later, he proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian provinces while declaring them to be “historically Russian lands.” He has since asserted that “no Ukraine ever existed in the history of mankind,” and has issued orders for all traces of Ukrainian national identity to eradicated from areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control.

Putin’s historical motivations were perhaps most immediately obvious during his recent interview with American media personality Tucker Carlson. While Carlson openly encouraged Putin to blame NATO and the US for the invasion, the Russian ruler preferred to embark on a half-hour history lecture that placed the origins of the current war firmly in the distant past. Rather than seeking to justify his invasion in terms of contemporary geopolitics, Putin chose to argue that Ukraine was historically Russian and therefore a legitimate target.

Putin’s chilling dream of reclaiming “historically Russian lands” puts a large number of countries at risk of suffering the same fate as Ukraine. The Kremlin strongman is notorious for lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union, but his revisionist ambitions actually extend beyond the boundaries of the former USSR. On numerous occasions, Putin has expressed his belief that the Soviet Union was in fact a continuation of the Russian Empire, while the fall of the USSR was “the disintegration of historical Russia.” “What had been built up over 1000 years was largely lost,” he commented in December 2021.

Based on this twisted logic, the historical arguments used by Putin to justify the invasion of Ukraine could be equally applied to any country that was once part of the Russian Empire. This would result in a list of potential targets including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the whole of Central Asia, not to mention Alaska. Anyone tempted to dismiss the idea of Russia invading these countries should consider that just ten years ago, most Ukrainians were equally sure such things were impossible in the twenty-first century.

Nor is Putin solely motivated by his deep-seated desire to reverse Russia’s imperial decline. He also sees the invasion of Ukraine as a fight to end the era of Western dominance and establish a new multi-polar world order. After decades spent bristling at Russia’s reduced status and the perceived humiliations of the post-Soviet period, he is now attempting to frame the war in Ukraine as a battle against Pax Americana to shape the future of international relations. Putin believes victory over Ukraine would represent a decisive breakthrough that would undermine the entire post-1991 world order and reverse the verdict of the Cold War.

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Doubters argue that the Russian army is currently in no shape to undertake any further invasions, never mind confronting the military might of NATO itself. This reasoning is superficially persuasive. After all, Putin’s army has seen its reputation as the world’s number two military take a severe battering in Ukraine. Russian commanders have lost a series of key battles and have suffered catastrophic losses in both men and equipment that have left them increasingly dependent on the brute force of primitive human wave tactics.

Despite these setbacks, it would be foolish to underestimate Russia’s military potential. In the past two years, Putin has placed the entire Russian economy on a war footing. Armaments factories are now working around the clock and are already comfortably outproducing the entire NATO alliance in terms of artillery shells and other key armaments. Russia may have lost hundreds of thousands killed and wounded in Ukraine, but the Kremlin still has vast untapped reserves of fighting age men who can be mobilized in time for the next big invasion.

Skeptics also tend to overlook the likely impact of victory in Ukraine on Russia’s military capabilities. In practical terms, the conquest of Ukraine would secure hundreds of thousands of additional conscript troops and a vast array of new weapons for the Russian army. Control over Ukraine would significantly enhance the Kremlin war machine by offering renewed access to a range of major Ukrainian enterprises that previously played key roles in the Soviet military industrial complex. It would make Russia the dominant force on global agricultural markets, handing Moscow enormous leverage that could be used to bribe allies and deter opponents.

Crucially, success in Ukraine would provide Putin with enormous additional momentum while simultaneously destabilizing and demoralizing the whole democratic world. Inside Russia, pro-war sentiment would be further strengthened and Putin’s messianic vision of a new Russian Empire would be vindicated. Internationally, Russia’s existing allies would feel free to increase their support, while the countries of the nonaligned Global South would rush to strengthen ties with the triumphant Kremlin. In such a favorable geopolitical climate, Putin would doubtless find it difficult to resist the temptation to escalate his confrontation with the West. Indeed, he would almost certainly see it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to achieve his historic mission.

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This does not mean we should expect to see Russian tanks on the streets of NATO capitals any time soon. Putin knows he can reach his goals by discrediting NATO rather than actually defeating the alliance on the battlefield. With this in mind, the Kremlin would be far more likely to opt for the kind of hybrid tactics employed during the early stages of the Ukraine invasion in 2014. Indeed, it is all too easy to imagine unidentified Russian troops operating inside NATO territory behind a veil of barely plausible deniability.

An escalation of hybrid warfare against the NATO alliance would enable Moscow to exploit the lack of resolve and fear of escalation demonstrated by Western leaders over the past two years in Ukraine. Would the current generation of US, German, or French leaders be prepared to involve their countries in a war with Russia over an ambiguous “pro-Russian” uprising in an Estonian border town? If not, the absence of a decisive response could fatally undermine NATO’s core commitment to collective defense. The alliance might formally survive such a blow, but the loss of credibility would be catastrophic. It would not be long before individual NATO member countries started forming separate security arrangements of their own and began offering concessions to the Kremlin.

Even if Putin chooses not to test NATO directly, a Russian victory in Ukraine would transform the international security environment and dramatically increase the risk of a truly global war. European countries would be forced to rapidly rearm, with defense budgets soon ballooning to levels that far surpass the current costs of supporting the Ukrainian war effort. Those who begrudge today’s spending on Ukraine would find themselves confronted with security expenditure five or ten times higher.

Putin himself has provided ample evidence that his goals extend far beyond the reconquest of Ukraine. He makes no secret of his commitment to reclaiming what he regards as historically Russian lands, and believes he is fully justified in using military force to do so. Putin’s revisionist agenda is inextricably linked to his other great passion, namely the revival of Russia’s great power status as part of a post-Western world dominated by a handful of regional behemoths. These imperial ambitions led directly to the invasion of Ukraine and make further escalations virtually inevitable unless Russia is defeated.

Ultimately, it is impossible to predict exactly what Putin will do if he wins in Ukraine. He may initially choose to pursue low-hanging geopolitical fruit by seizing small neighborhood countries like Moldova or Georgia. Alternatively, he might seek to press home his advantage against a weakened West by embarking on far bolder military gambits targeting the Baltic states or the Suwałki Gap. Of the many possible post-Ukraine scenarios for Russia, the least likely of all is the idea that an emboldened and victorious Putin would simply stop.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Putin initially sought to portray the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a crusade against “Ukrainian Nazis” and a response to decades of NATO expansion. However, as the war has unfolded, he has become increasingly open about the true nature of his imperial agenda in Ukraine. Putin has directly compared the current invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian ruler Peter the Great, and spent much of his recent high-profile interview with American media personality Tucker Carlson attempting to justify today’s war by arguing that Ukraine was historically part of Russia.

Dmitry Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s influential Security Council, is notorious for echoing Putin’s imperialistic language toward Ukraine. Indeed, he has frequently been even more outspoken than Putin in his denial of Ukrainian statehood and his attacks on Ukraine’s allies. In recent months, Medvedev has warned of possible nuclear attacks on Washington, Berlin, and London, and has vowed to seize more Ukrainian territory including Kyiv.

All this is a far cry from Medvedev’s public persona in 2008 when he replaced Putin as Russian President. At the time, many in the West saw Medvedev as a liberal reformer who would steer Russia toward closer partnership with the West. In fact, the entire Medvedev presidency was a ploy designed to help Putin navigate a two-term constitutional limit before resuming his reign in 2012.

As his political star has waned, Medvedev has sought to reinvent himself as a Russian nationalist hawk. Although often derided as a somewhat buffoonish figure, the former head of state actually plays an important part in Russia’s carefully choreographed political theater. Following the death of Russian nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky in 2022, Medvedev has largely replaced Zhirinovsky as the Kremlin’s unofficial “court clown.”

In this role, Medvedev often makes outrageous statements and voices extremist opinions. This allows the Kremlin to gauge Russian public opinion and test international reaction, while also making Putin himself appear moderate in comparison. With Russia now actively seeking to deter international support for Ukraine by playing on Western fears of escalation, Medvedev’s often colorful threats have become a key element of the Kremlin’s information operations.

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Medvedev’s latest outburst is nothing new, of course. Indeed, senior Russian officials have been publicly questioning Ukraine’s territorial integrity since the early years of the post-Soviet era. This undercurrent of unapologetic imperialism was one of the main reasons why independent Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma, chose to write a book debunking Russia’s claims to his country. The publication of “Ukraine Is Not Russia” in 2003 directly challenged the Kremlin’s attempts to portray Ukrainians and Russians as indivisible, and was widely viewed in Moscow as a hostile act. Clearly, many within the Russian elite have not forgotten this very public rejection by a country they condescendingly regard as a younger sibling.

In the years following the appearance of Kuchma’s book, Ukraine underwent two pro-democracy revolutions, while Russia grew increasingly authoritarian. For the past decade, Russia’s escalating military aggression against Ukraine has served to further deepen the divide separating the two countries. As Ukrainian society has turned away from the Russian past and sought to embrace a European future, Russian public opinion toward Ukraine has become increasingly radicalized. Genocidal anti-Ukrainian rhetoric is now an everyday feature of the country’s political discourse and has been completely normalized throughout the Kremlin-controlled Russian media.

By declaring that “Ukraine is definitely Russia” and referring to the country as “an integral part of Russia’s strategic and historical borders,” Medvedev has made a mockery of international calls for a negotiated settlement to end the war. His unambiguous comments should be more than enough to remove any lingering doubts that Russia is committed to the destruction of Ukraine as a state and as a nation.

In such circumstances, any talk of a peace deal without Ukrainian victory is delusional. There can be no meaningful middle ground between Russia’s genocidal goal and Ukraine’s national survival. Instead, attempts to compromise with the Kremlin would be perceived in Moscow as an opportunity to rearm and regroup before launching the next phase of the invasion.

Many people like to laugh at Dmitry Medvedev. On social media, he is routinely depicted as an angry little man whose absurd antics are a symptom of Russia’s dysfunctional politics and his own personal struggle to remain relevant. However, there is nothing funny about the message he is now delivering. Medvedev’s comments confirm the imperialistic aims of the 2022 invasion and signal Moscow’s intention to wipe Ukraine off the map. With hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians already feared dead and dozens of Ukrainian cities reduced to rubble, his threats must be treated as deadly serious.

Dr. Taras Kuzio is professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He was awarded the Peterson Literary Prize for his book “Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War: Autocracy-Orthodoxy-Nationality” (Routledge, 2022).

Carlson admitted to being initially shocked and annoyed by this monologue, but eventually concluded that Putin’s insistence on articulating his historic claims to Ukraine was actually “a sincere expression of what he thinks.” This seems a fair assessment. Putin’s obsession with history is well known, as is his conviction that Ukrainians are in fact Russians. Indeed, anyone who has listened to Putin’s many public statements on the topic of Ukraine or read his 2021 essay on the “historical unity” of Russians and Ukrainians will have been more than familiar with the content of his latest lecture.

While Putin has often been accused of weaponizing history, it was nonetheless revealing that he should choose to prioritize his historical grievances in such a setting. After all, this was the Russian president’s first major interaction with the Western press since the start of the Ukraine invasion almost two years ago. Tucker Carlson had been handpicked for the occasion, having won the trust of Moscow officials via years of pro-Kremlin messaging in the US media.

The interview was viewed by many within the Putin regime as a rare chance for Russia to make its case on its own terms to a truly global audience. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, things did not go according to plan. Rather than coming away convinced by the rationality of Putin’s arguments, many viewers were left bewildered by his arcane references to medieval princes and seventeenth century diplomatic correspondence.

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Needless to say, much of Putin’s lecture was complete nonsense that echoed longstanding Russian imperial myths while conveniently overlooking Ukraine’s centuries of documented history. In his traditional manner, Putin ridiculed Ukraine as an illegitimate and artificial state. He dismissed the entire notion of a separate Ukrainian nation, calling it an anti-Russian conspiracy involving everyone from the Poles and the Pope to the Austrian General Staff.

These claims owe more to Kremlin propaganda than any actual academic rigor. In reality, the term “Ukraine” first appeared in the twelfth century, while Ukraine’s statehood struggle can be traced back more than three hundred years. As long ago as 1731, French thinker Voltaire was moved to write, “Ukraine has always aspired to be free.”

Putin’s insistence that southern and eastern Ukraine are historically Russian is similarly unsupported by the available evidence. The 1897 census conducted by the Czarist authorities, which provides the most reliable guide to the demographic makeup of the Russian Empire, identified Ukrainian-speaking majorities throughout much of today’s southern and eastern Ukraine, as well as in a number of regions that are now part of Russia.

Likewise, Putin’s assertion that Lenin and Stalin created modern Ukraine ignores the inconvenient fact that the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic had already existed for a number of years before the early Bolsheviks were finally able to extinguish this fledgling Ukrainian state and impose Soviet rule.

Many more of Putin’s statements have since been comprehensively debunked by everyone from the BBC and TIME magazine to the diplomats of the Polish Foreign Ministry, who were understandably outraged by the Russian leader’s attempt to justify Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. As Carlson himself showed little interest in challenging Putin, these fact-checking efforts are particularly important.

At the same time, the real takeaway from the interview was Putin’s apparently genuine belief that his antiquated historical arguments could serve as plausible justification for a major war in twenty-first century Europe. This is perhaps the clearest indication yet of the dangerous delusions and imperial ambitions that led Putin to invade Ukraine.

Putin is no stranger to openly imperialistic rhetoric, of course. For years, he has subjected domestic audiences to long sermons detailing Russia’s historic grievances and the injustices of the post-Soviet settlement. Ukraine has always been the main focus of this revanchist zeal.

As his grip on power has tightened, Putin has grown increasingly fixated with the idea of reasserting Russian authority over Ukraine, and has come to view this as his historic mission. On the eve of the full-scale invasion two years ago, he described Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.” In summer 2022, Putin directly compared the current war to the imperial conquests of eighteenth century Russian Czar Peter the Great and claimed to be “returning” historically Russian lands.

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Unless Putin is defeated in Ukraine, it is fanciful to imagine that he will voluntarily abandon his increasingly aggressive brand of historical revisionism. On the contrary, it is far more likely that other countries will also fall victim to the Russian ruler’s expanding imperial ambitions. Naturally, Putin assured Tucker Carlson that he has no such intentions, but he has issued similar denials prior to each new stage of his escalating Ukraine invasion. At this point, the most logical conclusion is that he will not stop until he is stopped.

How far could Putin go? Throughout his reign, he has consistently lamented the fall of the USSR, which he has referred to as the demise of “historical Russia.” After the events of the past two years, it should be painfully apparent that anywhere Putin regards as “historical Russia” is potentially at risk.

In theory, at least, the same bogus historical arguments that have been used to justify the invasion of Ukraine could easily be applied to other parts of the former Soviet Union, or to the Russian Empire of the Czarist era. This would create an array of possible targets for Russian aggression including Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Alaska, and the whole of Central Asia. A maximalist interpretation could even see all of Central Europe’s former Soviet satellite states besides Poland added to the list.

In today’s increasingly unstable geopolitical climate, talk of further Russian invasions can no longer be dismissed as alarmist. Mounting signs of Western weakness in Ukraine have visibly emboldened Putin, and may yet tempt him to test NATO’s resolve in a more direct manner. He has already succeeded in shifting the Russian economy onto a war footing, and is cranking up arms manufacturing at a rate that far outpaces the West. Even now, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine still very much undecided, it is all-too-easy to imagine waking up to social media posts labeling Kazakhstan an “artificial country” or proclaiming Estonia “historically Russian” as Putin’s tanks roll across the border.

As the tenth anniversary of Russia’s war in Ukraine draws close, Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson should serve as a wake-up call for the collective West. A decade ago, Putin began his attack on Ukraine by occupying Crimea. At first, he acted with a degree of caution, officially denying any role in the military takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula and orchestrating a fig leaf referendum to disguise the crime. Ten years on, Putin now feels confident enough to sit down with one of the world’s most famous journalists and defend the invasion of a major European country by claiming it is rightfully his. Anyone who still believes he would not dare attack NATO is only fooling themselves.

Putin’s history obsession would be comical if the consequences were not so tragic. Using ancient dynasties and long forgotten treaties to justify the biggest European conflict since World War II is indeed farcical, and has duly inspired a flood of memes mocking the Kremlin dictator as a man completed detached from reality. But as we chuckle at Putin the ultimate history bore, he will continue distorting the past to shape the future. At present, there is a very real danger he will have the last laugh.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Such arguments have long circulated in Russian nationalist circles. Indeed, one prominent advocate was celebrated Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who opposed Ukrainian independence and openly questioned the country’s claims to its southern and eastern regions. Solzhenitsyn’s troubling legacy of support for Russian imperialism illustrates why many Ukrainians continue to believe Russian liberalism ends at the border with Ukraine.

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Putin laid out his historical claims to Ukraine in a 5000-word essay published in July 2021 that read like a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. Many now see this chilling document as an ideological blueprint for the full-scale invasion that was to follow just seven months later.

When speaking to domestic Russian audiences, Putin has not shied away from describing the invasion in overtly imperialistic terms as a war of conquest. In summer 2022, he directly compared his invasion to the imperial conquests of eighteenth century Russian Czar Peter the Great. More recently, he has referred to the areas of Ukraine currently under Russian occupation as “conquests.”

Putin’s stubborn refusal to recognize Ukraine’s right to exist has sometimes led to instances of selective blindness. In May 2023, he was filmed examining a seventeenth century map of Eastern Europe before declaring “no Ukraine ever existed in the history of mankind,” despite the fact that the word “Ukraine” was clearly marked on the map in front of him.

The term “Ukraine” can actually be traced back much further than the seventeenth century. Indeed, as Harvard University Professor Serhii Plokhy and others have noted, “Ukraine” has medieval origins and was first used by twelfth century chroniclers, around six hundred years before Peter the Great rebranded Muscovy as the Russian Empire.

Putin’s claims regarding Russia’s ancestral ties to southern and eastern Ukraine are equally historically illiterate. Throughout the Middle Ages, these regions formed the sparsely populated “Wild Fields” that served as an informal boundary separating the Mongol and Turkish empires from Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Early records show a Ukrainian presence including Cossacks and agricultural communities.

Even as Russian imperial influence spread southward toward the Black Sea, most of the territory Putin now refers to as Novorossiya continued to have a majority Ukrainian population. The only official demographic data from this era, the Czarist census of 1897, creates a picture of highly cosmopolitan urban populations, including significant French and Italian contingents in Odesa and a prominent Greek community in Mariupol. Meanwhile, the rural population throughout today’s southern and eastern Ukraine remained predominantly Ukrainian. In other words, Putin’s assertion that modern Russia has some kind of ancient claim to these regions is complete nonsense.

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Zelenskyy is now signalling to Putin that Ukraine has historical claims of its own. The Ukrainian leader’s recent decree does not indicate Kyiv’s intention to annex Russian territory, but it does send a clear message to Moscow that Ukrainians have a proud national history and will defend themselves against Russian attempts to deny their existence or extinguish Ukrainian identity.

Zelenskyy’s decree also serves as a not-so-subtle reminder that Russia’s own borders are extremely vulnerable to the kind of reckless historical revisionism being pushed by Putin. As the leader of the world’s largest country, which has expanded for centuries to encompass more than ten percent of the planet’s entire landmass, Putin is particularly unwise to argue in favor of reinstating old borders. If taken to its logical conclusion, Putin’s revisionist stance would see Russia cede land to everyone from Finland and Germany to China and Japan. It would also destabilize the wider world, leading to endless border disputes throughout Europe, Africa, and beyond.

Putin’s weaponization of bad history has helped fuel the bloodiest European conflict since World War II. His claims to Ukrainian land are based on an outdated imperialistic mythology that has no place in the twenty-first century and poses a grave threat to global security. The Russian dictator believes he can distort the past to justify the crimes of the present. Unless he is stopped, other countries will suffer Ukraine’s fate.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He is the author of “Fascism and Genocide. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians.”

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The International Criminal Court has already issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges in connection with the mass deportation of Ukrainian children since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Putin has yet to be detained in line with the warrant, but the Russian dictator is now obliged to tailor his travel plans to avoid possible arrest. In August 2023, he cancelled plans to attend a BRICS summit in South Africa after the host country was unable to guarantee he would not face legal challenges.

Russia’s January 2024 citizenship decree is the latest evidence of a systematic Kremlin campaign to rob children abducted in Ukraine of their Ukrainian identity and forcibly turn them into Russians. The Ukrainian authorities have so far managed to identify almost 20,000 Ukrainian children who have been subjected to Russian abduction. Many fear the true number of victims may be far higher.

International investigations into the mass abduction of Ukrainian children have found that once taken to Russia, victims are subjected to indoctrination that aims to erase their Ukrainian identity and impose a Russian national identity. This process is undertaken at a network of camps across Russia. Research published by The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) in February 2023 identified 43 Russian facilities for the indoctrination of abducted Ukrainian children, with all levels of the Russian government involved in a large-scale, state-sanctioned initiative.

The mass abduction and indoctrination of Ukrainian children by Russia has been branded as an act of genocide. In an April 2023 resolution, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said the abductions matched the international definition of genocide and stated that the forced transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia had the aim of “annihilating every link to and feature of their Ukrainian identity.” The UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention identifies “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as one of five acts that qualify as genocide.

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Evidence continues to emerge that in addition to exposing Ukrainian children to a wide range of patriotic propaganda, Russia is also militarizing them by involving them in various paramilitary structures aimed at teenagers. This includes the Yunarmiya (“Young Army”) youth organization, which was established in 2015 and is funded by the Kremlin. Deported Ukrainian children have reportedly been obliged to undergo military training and coerced into writing supportive letters to Russian military personnel engaged in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

In the first weeks of 2024, details emerged of abducted Ukrainian children being forced to undergo training with the Belarusian military. Belarusian state TV reported on January 10 that 35 children from Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine had been sent to Mogilev in eastern Belarus to take part in exercises with the Belarusian military. Belarus is accused of participating in Russia’s abduction operations.

Efforts are ongoing to rescue abducted Ukrainian children and bring those responsible for the abductions to justice. The Ukrainian state and civil society are currently focused on bringing every single victim home. These efforts are benefiting from significant international support. For example, in December 2023, six abducted Ukrainian children were released by Russia thanks to mediation from Qatar.

Further international support is needed if the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia are to be saved. The clock is ticking and every moment counts. Indoctrination efforts continue in camps across Russia, while the Kremlin is clearly seeking to speed up the process of granting Russian citizenship.

The international community appears to recognize the importance of holding Russia accountable for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. “We cannot allow children to be treated as if they are the spoils of war,” ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan commented in 2023.

This year, it is vital to maintain the pressure on Russia and demonstrate that such behavior has no place in the modern world. The deliberate targeting of vulnerable Ukrainian children has been one of the most shocking features of an invasion that has stunned the world. The abductions are also arguably the most striking evidence that the Kremlin’s ultimate goal is to erase Ukrainian national identity entirely in areas under its control.

Vladyslav Havrylov is a research fellow with the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University and lead researcher at the “Where Are Our People?” initiative.

Confident Putin boasts of Russian “conquests” in Ukraine

Peter Dickinson — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 22:19:11 +0000

When Vladimir Putin first embarked on the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he sought to disguise the attack as an act of self-defense while claiming Russia had no interest in occupying Ukrainian territory. “We do not plan to impose ourselves on anyone,” he declared.

With the invasion now fast approaching the two-year mark, the Russian dictator apparently no longer feels the need to dress up his true intentions. Buoyed by a very visible recent weakening in Western resolve, Putin is now openly embracing the language of imperialism and referring to Russian “conquests” in Ukraine.

Speaking at a January 16 meeting of municipal authorities in the Moscow region, Putin dismissed Ukraine’s Peace Formula and expressed his unwillingness to discuss the status of the Ukrainian regions currently under Russian occupation. “As for the negotiation process, this is an attempt to encourage us to abandon the conquests we have made over the past one-and-a-half years. Everyone understands that this is impossible,” he commented.

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Putin’s revealing reference to conquered Ukrainian lands underlines the imperialistic ambitions at the heart of Russia’s Ukraine invasion. It also further discredits Russian efforts to blame the invasion on imaginary Nazis and a non-existent NATO threat.

On the eve of the invasion, Putin made much of NATO’s post-1991 enlargement and was highly critical of the alliance’s decision to accept former Warsaw Pact countries as members. While Ukraine itself had no realistic prospects of joining the alliance in 2022, Putin claimed the prospect of deepening cooperation between NATO and Kyiv posed an intolerable security threat to Russia.

Putin’s protestations were undermined by his own subsequent lack of concern over Finnish NATO membership. When the Finns responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by abandoning decades of neutrality and joining the alliance, Putin reacted by demilitarizing Russia’s entire 1300 kilometer border with Finland. “If we were a threat, they would certainly not have moved their troops away, even in a situation where they are engaged somewhere else,” commented Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen in August 2023.

While Russia’s NATO claims do not stand up to scrutiny, Moscow’s entire anti-Nazi narrative is even less convincing. During Putin’s reign, the Kremlin has revived and dramatically amplified lingering Soviet propaganda labeling Ukrainians as Nazis. This has helped to dehumanize Ukrainians in the eyes of the Russian population and generate grassroots support for the current war.

Putin himself has been at the heart of this process, regularly equating expressions of Ukrainian identity with Nazism while insisting Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”). Unsurprisingly, when Putin announced his invasion in February 2022, he declared the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine as his main war aim. This was widely understood to mean the eradication of a separate Ukrainian national identity and the imposition of a Russian imperial identity.

The Kremlin’s attempts to portray Ukraine as some kind of fascist threat have played well within the Russian information bubble but have failed to convince international audiences, due largely to the absence of any actual Ukrainian Nazis. Indeed, Ukraine’s far right parties are so unpopular that they actually formed a coalition ahead of the country’s last parliamentary elections in 2019 in a bid to end decades of ballot box failure, but still only managed to secure 2.16 percent of the vote.

Russian propagandists have also been unable to explain how “Nazi” Ukraine could be led by Jewish President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. When quizzed about this obvious inconsistency on Italian TV in May 2022, a clearly flustered Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that Zelenskyy’s Jewishness was irrelevant as “Hitler also had Jewish blood.” This shameful episode highlighted the absurdity of Russia’s attempts to portray democratic Ukraine as a hotbed of Nazism.

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It should now be clear to any objective observer that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has always been an exercise in old-fashioned imperialism. Putin’s most recent statement about Russian “conquests” in Ukraine is not the first time he has adopted the swagger of the conqueror. In summer 2022, he compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great. He has repeatedly claimed to be fighting for “historic Russian lands,” while denying Ukraine’s right to exist.

Putin’s increasingly open imperialism raises serious doubts over the possibility of reaching any kind of compromise agreement to end the war. Recent reports in the international media have suggested that he is “quietly signaling” his readiness for a ceasefire, but it is difficult to see how this could work without legitimizing a land grab that would have profound negative connotations for European stability and international security.

The most obvious question is how far Putin’s imperial ambitions extend. The man himself has proclaimed much of unoccupied Ukraine to be historically Russian, including the country’s main Black Sea port city, Odesa, and the entire southern coastline. This alone is reason enough to believe that any ceasefire along the current front lines of the conflict would merely provide Russia with a pause to rearm and regroup before renewing hostilities.

There are also mounting concerns that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he will go further. He has repeatedly stated that the entire Soviet Union was “historical Russia,” while the borders of the old Russian Empire stretched even further. If Putin chooses to apply his weaponized version of Russian imperial history in its broadest sense, the list of potential targets would include Finland, Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Alaska, and the whole of Central Asia.

Putin’s use of unambiguously imperialistic language is an indication of his growing confidence amid mounting signs of Western weakness. With vital Ukrainian aid packages currently held up in both the US and EU, Putin clearly believes he can outlast the democratic world and achieve his goals in Ukraine. If he is proved right, Ukrainians are highly unlikely to be the last victims of Russian imperial aggression.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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While polling data in an authoritarian society such as Putin’s Russia must be treated with caution, recent trends identified by Levada and Russian Field are confirmed by a source close to the Kremlin. Valery Fedorov is director of Kremlin-loyal pollster WCIOM and an official advisor to the first deputy chairman of Russia’s presidential administration. In a September 2023 interview with Russia’s RBC, Fedorov reluctantly acknowledged that the number of Russians who actively and enthusiastically support Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is not more than 10-15 percent of the population. “The majority of Russians do not want to seize Kyiv or Odesa,” he commented. ‘If it was up to them whether to the start the “special military operation,” they probably would not have done it.”

Recent WCIOM research also acknowledges a sharp decline in both viewership and audience trust toward Russia’s state propaganda television channels. In 2023, just 40 percent of Russians cited state TV as their main source of information, down from 53 percent five years earlier. Since 2016, trust in Russian state channels as “objective” sources of information has almost halved, plunging from 46 percent to 26 percent.

Interestingly, only five percent of Russians under the age of 25 regard state TV as an objective source of information, compared to 51 percent of those aged 60 and over. This age breakdown is important if one wants to predict future trends. The patterns evident in media consumption match broader attitudes toward the war, with Levada finding that 56 percent of those aged 65 and above unconditionally back the invasion, with this figure shrinking to just 30 percent for those aged below 25.

Clearly, demography is against Putin, with younger Russians far more skeptical about the war. Indeed, a selective analysis of polling data excluding Russians over the age of 50, who were most traumatized by the Soviet and early post-Soviet experience and are therefore most easily susceptible to propaganda, would present a strikingly different picture of current attitudes toward the invasion of Ukraine.

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Based on the findings of different pollsters and non-polling criteria, a picture emerges of conscious support for the invasion of Ukraine among a significant number of Russians representing 30 percent to 40 percent of the population. This is not an unusual figure for totalitarian societies that run on fear and propaganda. Nevertheless, it is not a majority position. The available evidence indicates that the majority of Russians want the war to end, with support for the invasion fading over time and increasingly concentrated among older generations.

Similar trends can be seen in relation to military service. A range of polls show that between 50 and 60 percent of Russians reject a second wave of mobilization. This is a key reason why Putin has been reluctant to announce further mobilization over the past year or so, despite the obvious need to do so. As a result, soldiers mobilized in the final months of 2022 are stuck on the front lines of the war with little chance of any break in their service, prompting protests from family members. Polling indicates that a majority of Russians support calls from the wives of mobilized soldiers for their demobilization.

This is particularly bad news for Putin. It reveals that during almost two years of full-scale war, he has been unable to induce Russians to volunteer for combat in sufficient numbers. There are no lines at army recruitment points in the central squares of Russian cities. Instead, according to the Conflict Intelligence Team and other independent analysis, official numbers of “volunteer recruits” are wildly exaggerated. Russians may be prepared to “support” the war verbally, but they are clearly not rushing to fight themselves.

The most recent indication that Putin may be worried about waning public enthusiasm for the war against Ukraine came in his 2024 New Year address. One year earlier, Putin filmed his annual address alongside soldiers in uniform, with his speech focusing largely on the invasion of Ukraine. This year, however, he opted for a more familiar Kremlin backdrop and only mentioned the war in passing before switching to more mundane topics.

Putin understands the mood in Russia better than many Western commentators, and he appears to sense a declining public appetite for the invasion he unleashed almost two years ago. If this trend continues, it could further constrain Putin and his actions.

Vladimir Milov is Vice President for International Advocacy at the Free Russia Foundation.

Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael Schuman in the Atlantic: Xi Jinping Is Fighting a Culture War at Home

Michael Schuman — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 22:21:55 +0000

Original Source

On December 20, Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael Schuman’s latest article in The Atlantic looked at Xi Jinping’s new culture war and how this may lead to “an ever more isolated, indoctrinated, and politicized Chinese populace [that] could become that much more hostile to the West and more supportive of nationalist causes.”

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Michael Schuman

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Fake history is a crucial weapon in Vladimir Putin’s bid to destroy Ukraine

Ihor Smeshko — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 20:46:15 +0000

It is doubtful Vladimir Putin actually believes much of the anti-Ukrainian propaganda coming from the Kremlin’s echo chamber. After all, few educated people would. Still, he and his colleagues have little choice but to vigorously counter Ukraine’s compelling national narrative of a country emerging from centuries of imperial subjugation and reclaiming its place among the European family of nations. Russia’s response has focused on denying Ukraine’s right to exist. The Kremlin’s use of false historical narratives delegitimizing Ukraine is a key element of Russia’s broader campaign to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation. As such, it is worthy of far more international attention than it currently receives.

Ukraine’s story is straightforward, unlike the tall tales promoted by the Russian authorities. Contrary to the Kremlin’s claims, Ukraine is a democratic, unified nation with a distinct and varied history stretching back more than a thousand years. In no way is modern Ukraine Russia’s “younger sibling.” In fact, it could easily be argued that the opposite is true. According to its own origin story, Russia emerged from the medieval Kyivan Rus state centered on the Ukrainian capital city. Christianity and European culture came to Russia via Ukraine.

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The many different puzzle pieces that make up Putin’s official version of the deeply troubled historical relationship between Russia and Ukraine simply don’t add up. His claims of a common past and shared identity conveniently ignore centuries of oppressive policies and forced russification imposed on Ukrainians by the Russian imperial authorities throughout the Tsarist and Soviet eras.

Nevertheless, Putin has deployed his distorted vision to argue that the two countries are one nation and that, in essence, there is a civil conflict currently underway among the people of Ukraine. This is a people that voted 92 percent in favor of independence in 1991, with majorities in every single region of the country. It is also a people that staged two revolutions since becoming independent in order to remain both free and democratic.

Recent polls consistently indicate that Ukrainians do not want to surrender a single inch of occupied land to Russia in exchange for an end to what Putin euphemistically calls his “special military operation.” Ukrainians and global audiences overwhelmingly recognize this “operation” as a war of aggression that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives over the past twenty-one months, in addition to the thousands killed during the previous eight years of hostilities following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region.

Despite Putin’s insistence that Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”), the differences between the two countries are now more immediately apparent than ever. Today’s Ukraine is a democracy, though at times a messy one. In stark contrast, Putin’s Russia is a dictatorship, a top-to-bottom power vertical led by one man.

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The invading Russian army is not the only enemy Ukraine faces; the Russian propaganda that drives and justifies the invasion is arguably just as deadly. Moscow does everything it can to silence Ukrainian voices and make sure that the history of Ukraine is viewed through Russia’s very selective and murky prism. These indoctrination efforts target Russians, Ukrainians, and also international audiences in different ways but with equal gusto.

For many years, it has been apparent that Western politicians, policymakers, and commentators are particularly susceptible to Russian’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda due to their often limited knowledge of the relevant regional history. Today, it has become more important than ever to counter Russia’s false historical narratives, as international support for Ukraine could very well determine the outcome of the war.

If Russian propaganda is not blunted, the average voter in Western countries will be left face-to-face with the fake Ukrainian history disseminated internationally by the Kremlin and its networks of allies and agents. These falsehoods include the central message that there is no separate Ukrainian people or Ukrainian state. Instead, there is only Russia.

This twisted logic allows Putin to claim, with a poker face, that Russia is not waging war against the Ukrainian people, despite the unprecedented bloodshed since February 2022. It forms the basis of his claim that Russia’s full-scale invasion is really an attempt to liberate Ukraine from “Nazis.” According to Putin, Ukraine is part of Russia, so the Western world has no right to interfere in what is essentially an internal affair.

The Kremlin’s weaponized version of history has helped garner high levels of domestic support for Putin and his invasion of Ukraine within Russia itself, if one is to take as gospel the integrity of opinion polls conducted in a dictatorship. Whether these surveys are genuinely representative or not, it is clear that there is no meaningful anti-war movement in today’s Russia.

Little can realistically be done at present about the state of public opinion inside Russia. The real danger is that Russian disinformation regarding Ukrainian history will be allowed to further influence opinion throughout the West and raise doubts over the legitimacy of Ukraine’s fight for survival. This could diminish the supply of military and other support at a time of Ukraine’s greatest need. That would be a tragedy for Ukraine and a disaster for the wider Western world, with grave consequences for the future of international security.

Ihor Smeshko is a Ukrainian politician and former head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence and Security Service.

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Debate has raged for the past twenty-one months over the true extent of Russian public support for the invasion of Ukraine. Many continue to question the validity of polls conducted in wartime Russia, with skeptics arguing that very few members of the public would be comfortable expressing anti-regime opinions to strangers. Indeed, given the draconian legislation adopted in Russia since February 2022 criminalizing criticism of the invasion, there is good reason to treat all research data coming out of the country with caution.

While there are legitimate doubts over the credibility of polling data, the findings detailed in this new report and the Levada Center’s more regular monitoring both closely mirror the available anecdotal evidence, which indicates high levels of public acceptance for the ongoing invasion. Perhaps the most compelling evidence has come from personal interactions between Ukrainians and their Russian relatives. With family ties connecting millions on both sides of the border, there has been ample opportunity for Ukrainians to get a sense of how ordinary Russians feel about the war. This has led to countless painful conversations, with Ukrainians frequently finding that people they have known all their lives now parrot Kremlin propaganda, blame Ukraine for the war, or deny core aspects of the invasion altogether.

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The almost complete absence of any meaningful anti-war activity in Russia is a further indication of public support, or at least acceptance, of the invasion. During the first weeks of hostilities, there were some attempts to hold anti-war rallies in a number of Russian cities, but these modest efforts soon ran out of steam. Some commentators have since argued that it is simply too dangerous to protest. However, wartime restrictions have not prevented Russians from freely voicing their opposition to various specific aspects of the invasion.

Since Putin first announced mobilization in September 2022, Russian soldiers and their family members have recorded and published hundreds of individual protest videos complaining about everything from poor conditions and lack of equipment to heavy losses and suicidal tactics. These publicly available addresses have often been highly critical of the Russian authorities, raising obvious questions about the validity of claims that Russians are afraid to oppose the state. Tellingly, there have been almost no videos of soldiers condemning the war itself or refusing to follow criminal orders, despite an apparent readiness to go public with their often explosive grievances.

The more than one million Russians who are believed to have fled the country following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine have also proven largely unwilling to voice their opposition to the war, despite not facing any of the restrictions in place inside Russia itself. While there are large Russian diasporas in multiple cities across Europe, there have been very few anti-war rallies since February 2022 or any other attempts by Russian citizens to protest against the invasion being carried out in their name. When Russians in Finland did recently mobilize to protest, it was to complain against the temporary closure of some border crossings with Russia.

All this is very good news for Vladimir Putin. The Russian dictator had initially hoped to secure a rapid military victory in Ukraine, but he is now actively preparing his country for a long war. He has already moved much of the Russian economy onto a war footing, and seems to have succeeded in convincing the vast majority of his compatriots that they are engaged in a struggle with the West that is both existential and unavoidable. With his home front looking remarkably stable and no sign of any domestic challenges on the horizon, Putin can look ahead to 2024 with a degree of confidence.

These latest indications of continued Russian public support for the war will further dampen any lingering hopes in Western capitals that internal opposition could yet derail the Russian invasion. The timing is particularly unfortunate, with talk of a battlefield stalemate in Ukraine already fueling doubts over the future of Western military aid. For now, Western leaders remain adamant that they will continue to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. However, they are extremely unlikely to be aided by any kind of anti-war uprising inside Russia itself.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Western leaders must choose: Arm Ukraine or enable Putin’s genocide

Taras Kuzio — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 21:27:34 +0000

As the year draws to a close, there is a growing sense of Ukraine fatigue in Western capitals amid pessimistic forecasts, talk of a battlefield stalemate, and recriminations over the perceived failure of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. This grim mood is raising serious questions about the future of military aid to Ukraine and the prospects for continued Western support into 2024 and beyond.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is looking more confident than ever. This week, he was in particularly messianic mood as he addressed the World Russian People’s Council. Ukrainians and Belarusians are not independent but are in fact part of the “great Russian nation,” he declared. According to Putin, these two nations have been artificially divided from Russia by the “separatist illusions” of the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Putin’s casual denial of Ukraine’s right to exist is a timely reminder of exactly what is at stake in the current war. The Kremlin dictator is clearly not a rational statesman pursuing limited political goals or seeking a negotiated settlement; he is an all-powerful autocrat who genuinely believes he is on a sacred historic mission. That mission includes the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

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We already have a good idea of what Putin has in store for Ukraine. In the approximately seventeen percent of the country that is currently under Kremlin control, millions of Ukrainians are subjected to a daily reality that includes the possibility of abduction, torture, death, or deportation. Those who manage to avoid these direct physical threats face the prospect of forced russification as the Russian occupation authorities systematically erase all traces of Ukrainian statehood and identity while pressuring the captive population to accept Russian nationality.

The Kremlin began preparing these genocidal policies well in advance of the full-scale invasion. Russian security officers reportedly compiled detailed lists of Ukrainian community leaders who would be targeted by advancing Russian forces in a bid to prevent any coordinated Ukrainian opposition to the takeover of the country. These registers included elected local officials, priests, journalists, teachers, activists, and military veterans. A clear pattern of abductions and disappearances has subsequently been witnessed in every region of Ukraine under Russian occupation. Meanwhile, in liberated villages, towns, and cities, the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly encountered mass graves, torture chambers, and widespread reports of missing persons.

Throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine, Ukrainian monuments have been pulled down and replaced with commemorations of Russian imperial and Soviet history, while symbols of Ukrainian statehood have been systematically removed from public spaces. Moscow has imported Russian teachers to indoctrinate Ukrainian schoolchildren, pushing them to reject their nationality and embrace an alternative imperial identity. Entire parks and museums have been created to aid in this process, with children also forced to express thanks and gratitude to the Russian soldiers engaged in destroying their homeland. Predictably, the Ukrainian language is no longer taught in schools and has been banished from public life throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine.

Perhaps the single most chilling aspect of the Kremlin campaign to eradicate Ukrainian national identity has been the mass abduction and indoctrination of Ukrainian children at an extensive network of re-education camps inside Russia itself. This has already led to war crimes charges again Putin from the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It also appears to be a textbook case of genocide according to the UN’s Genocide Convention, which identifies “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” as one of five recognized acts of genocide.

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This is not the first time the Kremlin has been accused of committing genocide in Ukraine. In many ways, Putin’s genocidal policies toward Ukrainians are a continuation of the campaign unleashed by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who sought to eradicate Ukrainian identity in the early decades of the USSR. The Stalin regime was responsible for the Holodomor, an artificial famine in 1930s Ukraine that killed millions of Ukrainians. Hundreds of thousands more were murdered during the Great Terror. Much like today’s Russian invasion, the Soviet authorities specifically targeted spiritual, academic, and community leaders who represented Ukraine’s statehood aspirations. The man who coined the term “genocide,” Raphael Lemkin, would later call Stalin’s efforts to destroy the Ukrainian nation “the classic example of Soviet genocide.”

Far from condemning the crimes of the Stalin era, Putin has sought to emulate them. Indeed, he has overseen the rehabilitation of Stalin, with memorials to victims disappearing and new monuments honoring the Soviet dictator sprouting up across Russia. It is likely no coincidence that on November 25, the day Ukrainians honor the millions killed in the Holodomor, Putin ordered the largest drone attack on Ukraine of the entire war.

If Western military support for Ukraine does not continue at current or increased levels, the present stalemate will deepen and much of the country will remain under Russian occupation. There is also a significant chance that the whole of Ukraine could fall under Kremlin control, exposing tens of millions of Ukrainians to the genocidal policies already being implemented throughout the occupied regions. This would obviously be a catastrophe for the Ukrainian nation, but the tragedy would not end there. On the contrary, the repercussions would also be felt far beyond the borders of Ukraine.

A genocide in the heart of twenty-first century Europe would shake the foundations of the entire rules-based international security system and transform the geopolitical landscape. It would plunge NATO into crisis while emboldening Russia and other authoritarian regimes around the world, ushering in a new era of militarism, instability, and international aggression. Even if a major war could be avoided, Western defense budgets would balloon to levels far beyond the current cost of arming Ukraine, while an increasingly hostile international environment would severely hamper economic growth. If Western leaders wish to avoid this nightmare scenario, they must adequately arm Ukraine now.

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The weakening of Kaliningrad’s air defenses is the latest in a series of steps that have revealed the reality behind Moscow’s frequent anti-NATO rhetoric. The first major indication that Russia was being less than honest about its NATO fears came in May 2022, when Sweden and Finland announced plans to abandon decades of neutrality and join the Alliance. Just a few months earlier, the Kremlin had paraded its NATO grievances in a bid to justify the bloodiest European invasion since World War II. In stark contrast, Russia now responded to the news from Stockholm and Helsinki with a shrug.

The complete lack of concern on display in Moscow was all the more remarkable given the fact that Finnish NATO accession would more than double Russia’s existing border with the Alliance, while Swedish membership would transform the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Nevertheless, Putin insisted Russia had “no problem” with this dramatic transformation of the geopolitical landscape in Northern Europe. He actively sought to downplay the issue, declining even to deploy the dark arts of Russian hybrid warfare or otherwise attempt to interfere in the accession process.

The Kremlin response to NATO’s recent Nordic expansion has extended beyond mere indifference. In the eighteen months since Finland’s announcement of impending NATO membership, Moscow has actively demilitarized the Finnish frontier and withdrawn the bulk of its troops away from the border zone for redeployment to the killing fields of Ukraine. Speaking in August 2023, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen confirmed that the border area was now “pretty empty” of Russian troops. “If we were a threat, they would certainly not have moved their troops away, even in a situation where they are engaged somewhere else,” she noted.

A similar process has been underway since February 2022 on Russia’s nearby border with NATO member Norway. Norwegian army chief General Eirik Kristoffersen revealed in September 2023 that Russia had withdrawn approximately 80% of its troops from the border zone. “Vladimir Putin knows very well that NATO is not a threat against Russia,” commented Kristoffersen. “If he believed we were threatening Russia, he couldn’t have moved all his troops to Ukraine.”

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Putin’s readiness to demilitarize his country’s borders with neighboring NATO members is damning evidence that the decision to invade Ukraine had nothing to do with an alleged NATO threat to Russia itself. This does not mean his attacks on the Alliance are entirely insincere, of course. The vitriol Putin frequently displays toward NATO is real enough, but it does not reflect any legitimate security concerns. Instead, Putin resents NATO because it thwarts his revanchist agenda and prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors in the traditional manner. In other words, NATO presents no danger whatsoever to Russian national security, but it does pose a very serious threat to Russian imperialism.

This has long been apparent to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, who clamored to join NATO following the fall of the USSR precisely because they sought protection against what was widely seen as the inevitable revival of Russian aggression. Indeed, while Putin equates NATO enlargement with Western expansionism, the post-1991 growth of the Alliance was in fact almost exclusively driven by fear of Russia among the many countries queuing up to join. Their concerns were shaped by decades and in some cases centuries of brutal subjugation at the hands of the Russian Empire in its Tsarist and Soviet forms. If Russians want somebody to blame for the current NATO presence on their doorstep, they would be well advised to look in the mirror.

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now confirmed that these earlier fears of resurgent Russian imperialism were more than justified. Putin himself has openly compared the current invasion to Russian Tsar Peter the Great’s eighteenth century wars of imperial conquest, and has referred to occupied Ukrainian regions as “historical Russian lands.” He routinely denies Ukraine’s right to exist, while insisting Ukrainians are Russians (“one people”). Meanwhile, incitement to genocide has become completely normalized on Russian state television, with Russian soldiers in Ukraine acting on this genocidal rhetoric. The entire NATO narrative has served as a convenient smokescreen for what is a classic campaign of colonial conquest to destroy independent Ukraine.

The Kremlin knows very well that it has nothing to fear from NATO, and is evidently comfortable leaving its borders with the Alliance unguarded. Despite his anti-NATO posturing, Putin is actually motivated by a rising sense of alarm over the emergence of a democratic Ukraine, which he sees as an existential threat to his own authoritarian regime and a hated symbol of Russia’s post-1991 retreat from empire. As Ukraine has gradually slipped further and further away from the Kremlin orbit during Putin’s reign, his responses have become increasingly extreme, evolving from political interference in the 2000s to escalating military aggression since 2014. We have now reached the stage of open genocide.

With the invasion of Ukraine set to enter a third year, too many Western commentators and politicians are still laboring under the delusion that some kind of compromise with the Kremlin remains possible. This assumes the invasion of Ukraine is a conventional war with limited geopolitical objectives, which is clearly not the case. Instead, Putin is a messianic leader convinced of his own historic mission, who has staked everything on the destruction of the Ukrainian state and the reversal of Russia’s Cold War defeat. By pointing the finger of blame at NATO, Putin has sought to distract attention from this chilling reality, but a brief look at Russia’s recently demilitarized NATO borders should be enough to dismiss such claims.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

In late November, Ukrainians commemorate the artificial famine of the early 1930s known as the Holodomor. One of Stalin’s most notorious crimes, this deliberately engineered famine killed at estimated four million Ukrainians in less than two years. Declassified Soviet records now depict Stalin’s behavior as part of a broader campaign to extinguish Ukraine’s statehood aspirations.

Stalin’s bid to crush Ukraine’s dream of independence ultimately failed. Millions of Ukrainians would continue to resist Soviet rule, becoming the largest group of political prisoners during the final decades of the Soviet Union before playing a critical role in the eventual collapse of the USSR. Nevertheless, many irreplaceable features of Ukraine’s cultural heritage were lost forever during the Holodomor. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term “genocide,” saw Stalin’s attempt to destroy the Ukrainian nation as “the classic example of Soviet genocide.” There is now a growing scholarly consensus that defines the Holodomor as an act of genocide committed against Ukraine.

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Modern Ukrainians are acutely aware that their freedom is not free. Most have a friend or family member who has been killed or wounded in Russia’s invasion. Many are also the descendants of people killed by the Stalin regime.

In June 2017, I interviewed Ukrainian museum director Ihor Poshyvailo about the Holodomor, asking how Ukrainians should commemorate Moscow’s past violence. Now, Poshyvailo finds himself working around-the-clock to prevent Moscow’s latest attempt at destroying Ukraine’s cultural heritage. He has condemned modern Russia’s escalating aggression against Ukraine as a genocide and has called the current invasion “a war against our historical memory, against our being Ukrainian.” These accusations are increasingly supported by independent inquiries.

Genocides are called the “crime of crimes” because they target a group’s basic right to exist. In historical terms, genocides are exceedingly rare, complicating scholarly understandings of how this extreme behavior unfolds. Russia-Ukraine relations are remarkable in this regard, as Kremlin dictators are now accused of committing genocide against Ukrainians twice in just ninety years.

Not everyone is surprised. Historian Daria Mattingly, who has studied the Holodomor’s rank-and-file perpetrators, says the genocidal violence of the current Russian invasion reflects the nature of the Putin regime. “As an unapologetic imperial power, Moscow consistently treats the people it oppresses as resources, not human beings worthy of rights and protections,” she comments.

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Moscow’s atrocities in Ukraine blur the lines between past and present. Today, eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region is relentlessly bombed from just over the Russian border. Grief at the senseless destruction pours out of residents. “Life used to be beautiful here. They have left us without our loved ones, without our parents, without husbands, without sons, without our previous life, without jobs, without anything,” newly widowed Olga recently told a reporter.

Kharkiv also experienced terrible suffering during the Holodomor, when it was among the most badly affected regions of Ukraine. In 1932, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, Oleksandra Radchenko, kept a private diary, later serving ten years in a Soviet gulag after it was discovered by the Soviet authorities. Describing whole villages dying out, she wrote, “I am so afraid of hunger; I’m afraid for the children. It would not be so offensive if it were due to a bad harvest, but they have taken away the grain and created an artificial famine.”

For some Ukrainians, understanding the Holodomor’s long-suppressed history has been key to reclaiming their national identity. In 2019, I sat down with renowned scholar and theologian Ihor Kozlovskyi. Detained by Russia’s proxy forces in eastern Ukraine in 2016, he was tortured for nearly two years before being released in a prisoner exchange. When I asked him why understanding the Holodomor was important for modern Ukrainians, he told me this was the only way “to build our truly independent state free of aggression and dictatorship.”

Kozlovskyi passed away from a heart attack this year, but his words remain more important than ever. Learning from the past also holds a somber warning for the West. Despite strenuous Soviet efforts to hide information about the Holodomor, some intrepid journalists raised the alarm even as the genocide unfolded. Notwithstanding these news reports, personal appeals, and confirmation from his own diplomats, US President Franklin Roosevelt officially recognized the Soviet Union in November 1933, spurred on by what some scholars now call a mixture of US economic self-interest and realpolitik.

Today, many Western leaders continue to insist Putin cannot be allowed to repeat Stalin’s crimes. But Ukrainian pleas for comprehensive aid to expel Russian forces and finally break this violent cycle are only being partially addressed. On the anniversary of the Holodomor, Western leaders have the opportunity to bring life-saving poetic justice to the people of Ukraine, fighting against the memories and brutal realities of two Kremlin dictators.

Kristina Hook is Assistant Professor of Conflict Management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Ukraine’s heritage protection unit carries echoes of the World War II era “Monuments Men” and the US Army’s 2019 creation of a Cultural Heritage Task Force charged with ensuring the US military is equipped to preserve local heritage sites. However, there are key differences: Ukraine’s new Territorial Defense Forces unit is not only working to protect the physical cornerstones of Ukraine’s national identity, but to collect an expanding body of evidence for future prosecutions.

Since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022, Russia has been accused of committing countless war crimes in Ukraine. Targeted attacks on Ukraine’s cultural heritage are seen as part of a broader strategy to eradicate all traces of Ukrainian national identity, which Russia regards as an existential threat to its own imperial identity. Some Ukrainian cultural leaders have defined the Russian invasion as “a heritage war.” Ihor Poshyvailo, the director of Kyiv’s Maidan Museum who currently serves in the Ukrainian military’s cultural heritage protection unit, has described Russia’s invasion as a war “against our historical memory. Against our soul.”

By mid-November 2023, UNESCO had verified damage to 329 cultural sites in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. This includes damage to 125 religious sites, 143 buildings of historical and artistic importance, 28 museums, 19 monuments, 13 libraries, and one archive. From Odesa’s National Art Museum to Kherson’s regional library, and from Kharkiv’s Drobytskyi Holocaust Memorial and Memorial to Victims of Totalitarianism to Zaporizhzhia’s Popov Manor House museum, Russia has shelled, bombed, and looted Ukraine’s cultural heritage extensively across the country.

The Russian military’s campaign to erase Ukrainian national identity is sparking strong resistance and a determination to hold Russia internationally accountable. The recently formed Territorial Defense Forces unit is working alongside a growing network of cultural industry experts committed to cataloging Russian crimes.

Ukrainian museum experts have set up the Heritage Emergency Response Initiative (HERI) to document Russia’s attacks while working in coordination with UNESCO. HERI works to collect resources to support museums across Ukraine, responding to regularly updated requests from different regions of the country. Some museum staff have been painstakingly evacuating their collections and storing them to protect priceless works of art from Russian aggression, while others have stayed behind despite obvious dangers to help safeguard Ukraine’s cultural heritage.

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Ukraine’s cultural guardians are also receiving international support. One year after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the US Department of State announced that it would invest $7 million to support Ukraine’s cultural heritage protection efforts. In addition, the US Army’s Civil Affairs and Psychological Operation Command has joined forces with the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative to train Ukrainian soldiers in protecting cultural heritage during armed conflict.

The Smithsonian Institution has also partnered with the Kosciuszko Foundation to provide museums with the necessary tools and technology to safely store priceless works of art. Across the Ukrainian border in neighboring Poland, the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has established a Cultural Assistance Center to help coordinate domestic and foreign actions to protect Ukraine’s cultural resources.

In a March 2023 study commissioned and published by the European Parliament, researchers determined that the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict is covered by international humanitarian law, human rights law, cultural law, and criminal law. A report for the European Union Advisory Mission Ukraine found concrete evidence that cultural property has been intentionally targeted during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Russia’s war in Ukraine is being fought along many different fronts. This includes the targeting of cultural heritage as Russia attempts to erase Ukraine’s national identity and impose an imperial identity on a conquered nation. The creation of a dedicated Territorial Defense Forces unit reflects Ukraine’s determination to expose this genocidal agenda. By documenting the deliberate destruction of their country’s cultural heritage, Ukrainians aim to raise international awareness of the criminal objectives underpinning Russia’s invasion. Ultimately, the aim is to hold Russia accountable for its crimes.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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Dagestan and the surrounding North Caucasus region have a long record of ethnic nationalism and religious extremism, especially following the import of Wahhabism in the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conflicts between nationalist and religious extremist groups have plagued the region for years. This extremist influence was on full display during the storming of Makhachkala Airport.

The attempted pogrom also echoed the worst excesses of Russian nationalism, which has a history of antisemitism stretching back hundreds of years. The term “pogrom” itself can be traced to imperial Russia, which witnessed frequent outbreaks of deadly violence targeting Jewish communities. Meanwhile, the most notorious antisemitic forgery in history, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, originated in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century.

This legacy of antisemitic baggage is particularly important at a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively promoting an aggressive brand of imperial nostalgia. Officially, modern Russia is a pluralistic state that celebrates its ethnic and religious diversity. Indeed, Putin has accused neighboring Ukraine of antisemitism and has framed the current invasion as a quest to “de-Nazify” the country. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, there is little evidence to support such assertions.

The groundless claim that Russia invaded Ukraine to combat Nazism is a transparent attempt to justify an old-fashioned war of imperial aggression. When confronted with the uncomfortable fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is himself Jewish, top Kremlin officials have retreated into the quagmire of antisemitic conspiracy theories. In May 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attempted to dismiss Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity by declaring that “Hitler also had Jewish blood.” More recently, Putin alleged that Zelenskyy had been deliberately chosen by the West as a Jewish puppet to cover up the “anti-human essence” of the Ukrainian state.

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There is antisemitism in Ukraine, of course, just as there is in all states. The real issue is whether extremist actors have inordinate political power, enjoy the support (or at least inaction) of the government, or the ability to coordinate large-scale violence. In Putin’s Russia, that may well be the case. Many see the recent attempted pogrom at Makhachkala Airport as a direct consequence of the antisemitic invective that has become increasingly normalized in the Russian public discourse following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In the nationalistic environment of wartime Russia, the country’s Jewish community has faced accusations from some quarters of being insufficiently supportive of the invasion. Senior Rabbi Berel Lazar has felt obliged to speak out against “vulgar antisemitism” that poses a “huge danger” to Russian Jews. In one particularly chilling incident, prominent Russian journalist Alexei Venediktov found a pig’s head with the word “Judensau” (German for “Jewish pig”) placed outside his apartment.

Russian Jews with close ties to the Kremlin have also become targets of antisemitic attacks. Russia’s most high-profile propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, recently faced criticism that his media network employs too many Jewish staffers. When Solovyov’s colleague and fellow pundit Yevgeny Satanovsky, who is also Jewish, used strong language to accuse senior Russian Foreign Ministry officials of antisemitism and criticize the government’s policy on Israel, he was promptly dismissed.

These developments are fueling alarm among Russia’s remaining Jews and reawakening painful historical memories, while also sparking debate over the future security of the community. Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt was Chief Rabbi of Moscow for almost thirty years, but was forced to flee the country in March 2022 after refusing a request from state officials to publicly support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He has since called on Russian Jews to leave the country.

“When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses toward the Jewish community,” Rabbi Goldschmidt told The Guardian in December 2022. “We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave.”

Joshua Stein holds a PhD from the University of Calgary and is a researcher on antisemitism and ethics.

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In the West, it has become common to explain this pro-war sentiment by arguing that Russians have been brainwashed by the Kremlin-controlled state media. Some commentators also mention widespread Russian apathy and disengagement from politics. However, these explanations risk infantilizing Russian society and stereotyping Russians as passive conformists with no agency of their own.

Most Western observers struggle to perceive Russian support for the war as a conscious choice because they are unable to accept that supporting a genocidal war could ever be seen as rational. Nevertheless, studies of past wars of aggression and authoritarianism tell us that the protagonists of evil typically regard their actions as both reasonable and justifiable. In Russia’s case, it is the country’s imperial past and the imperial intimacy of the Russian relationship with Ukraine that serve to justify the current war.

This imperial intimacy reflects deeply rooted historical ideas of kinship and fraternity that have encouraged generations of Russians to view Ukrainians as part of their nation. It is a hierarchical intimacy, with Ukrainians cast in the role of “little brothers” in need of protection and tutelage. This encompasses the necessity of “disciplining” Ukrainians for their own good. Such thinking is a central pillar of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Russian World” ideology.

Putin’s notorious July 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” was a manifesto of imperial intimacy that openly questioned Ukraine’s right to statehood while denying the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation. Instead, Putin argued, Ukrainians were really Russians (“one people”). On the eve of the full-scale invasion, he declared that Ukraine was “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

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Officially, the Kremlin has sought to justify the war by pointing to decades of post-Cold War NATO expansion while portraying Ukraine as a far-right threat to Russia itself. However, when addressing domestic audiences, Putin has often been more open about his imperial agenda. Speaking in summer 2022, he compared the current invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great and claimed it was now his turn to “return” Russian lands. A few months later, Putin oversaw a lavish Kremlin ceremony marking the “annexation” of four Ukrainian provinces. Amid the unmistakable trappings of empire, he declared that these partially occupied Ukrainian regions had returned to Russia “forever.”

Such imperial posturing in relation to Ukraine resonates widely with the Russian public. Many Russians see today’s war as an historic mission to overcome the injustice of the Soviet collapse and reunite their country with Ukraine following decades of “artificial separation.” The imperial intimacy underpinning their attitudes toward Ukraine allows them to overlook the obvious opposition of the Ukrainian people to this reunion.

Over the past twenty months of full-scale warfare, denial of Ukrainian statehood and talk of imperial revival have become prominent features of Russia’s heavily censored and carefully choreographed information space. Ukrainians are routinely dehumanized and Ukraine itself is dismissed as an intolerable “anti-Russia.” Meanwhile, pundits on Russian state TV regularly discuss the need to exile or annihilate large numbers of Ukrainians. This genocidal rhetoric is typically framed as the inevitable price of achieving historical justice and saving Ukrainians from themselves.

While it is convenient to blame today’s war on Vladimir Putin and view it as the product of one man’s criminal fantasies, the problem of Russian imperialism is far bigger than Putin alone. Many millions of ordinary Russians support the war because they continue to view Ukraine through the distorting prism of imperial intimacy.

The situation is unlikely to change until a majority of Russians recognize that true patriotism means acknowledging past injustices bestowed by empire on Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Lithuanians, Chechens, and many others. This would open the way for the emergence of a new Russia with the potential to live in peace with its neighbors while finally realizing its vast potential. Unless this change occurs, Russian imperialism will remain a major destabilizing factor in global security.

Neringa Klumbytė is director of the Lithuania Program at Miami University’s Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.

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Jewish president picks Muslim defense minister: Ukraine’s diverse leadership debunks Russia’s “Nazi” slurs

Peter Dickinson — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 23:52:04 +0000

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the removal of Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on September 3 in what was the biggest change among the country’s political leaders since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion more than eighteen months ago. Reznikov’s departure comes following weeks of speculation over allegations of financial improprieties at the Ministry of Defense, and reflects Ukraine’s desire to demonstrate a zero tolerance approach toward allegations of corruption.

Reznikov is set to be replaced by Rustem Umerov (pictured), who currently chairs Ukraine’s State Property Fund and has previously played key roles as a negotiator in prisoner exchanges with Russia and the UN-brokered Black Sea Grain Initiative. While Umerov is a strong candidate in his own right, his status as a member of Ukraine’s Muslim Crimean Tatar minority makes his anticipated appointment particularly significant on a symbolic level. Once Umerov is confirmed, Ukraine will have a Jewish President and a Muslim Minister of Defense, underlining the diversity of the country’s leadership while exposing the absurdity of Russia’s “Nazi Ukraine” propaganda.

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When Russian President Vladimir Putin first launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he identified the “de-Nazification” of the country as one of his two key war aims, alongside the complete demilitarization of Ukraine. In doing so, he was building on decades of similar disinformation. Indeed, the Putin regime’s degrading depictions of Ukrainians as fascists can be traced all the way back to the Stalin era.

Throughout the Cold War, Moscow propagandists sought to discredit Ukraine’s centuries-long independence struggle by associating it with Nazi collaboration. In the post-Soviet era, Russian officials have actively sought to revive these slurs, and have argued consistently that Ukraine’s pro-democracy 2014 Euromaidan Revolution was in fact a far-right coup that transformed the country into a hotbed of fascism. By the time of last year’s full-scale invasion, references to “Nazi Ukraine” had become completely normalized throughout Russia’s carefully choreographed and heavily censored mainstream media.

This Nazi narrative has played predictably well among domestic Russian audiences conditioned to view contemporary politics through the distorting prism of the Soviet Union’s cataclysmic World War II experience. Perhaps more surprisingly, it has also been embraced beyond Russia by some leftists and opponents of America’s dominant role in international affairs. Crucially, however, nobody has been able to provide any convincing evidence to support the Kremlin’s lurid claims.

While Russian propagandists insist today’s Ukraine is overrun with Nazis, Ukrainian far-right groups are actually confined to the margins of the country’s political landscape. During Ukraine’s 2014 presidential election, which took place just a few months after a popular uprising that Russia had characterized as a fascist putsch, the two leading far-right candidates were backed by less than 2% of the Ukrainian electorate. Five years later, Ukraine’s main nationalist parties sought to overcome a long record of ballot box rejection by forming a coalition to contest the country’s parliamentary elections. They received just 2.15% of the vote. These pathetic results are a reminder that contrary to the Kremlin’s wild assertions, support for far-right politicians in today’s Ukraine is lower than in virtually any other European country.

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The election of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as president of Ukraine in spring 2019 served as a further blow to Russia’s fact-free fantasies about “fascist Ukraine.” Zelenskyy’s Jewish roots and high-profile showbiz career as a Russian-speaking comic should theoretically have made him the archetypal enemy of the allegedly nationalistic Ukrainian population; instead, Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity was never an issue among Ukrainian voters, who elected him by a landslide margin of over 73%.

Russian officials and propagandists have twisted themselves into all sorts of knots in their desperate attempts to explain how a supposedly Nazi country could so overwhelmingly support a Jewish leader. Most notoriously, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared during a spring 2022 interview on Italian television that Zelenskyy’s Jewish roots meant nothing as Adolf Hitler “also had Jewish blood.” The fallout from Lavrov’s disgraceful comments was predictably severe. Following a chorus of international condemnation led by Israel, Putin was obliged to intervene and personally apologized to the Israeli PM on behalf of his foreign minister.

The Kremlin must now also explain how their nightmarish vision of xenophobic, intolerant Ukraine tallies with the appointment of an ethnic minority Muslim as defense minister during arguably the most important war in the country’s entire history. Rustem Umerov has not been chosen on the basis of his ethnicity or faith, of course; he has been picked to succeed Oleksii Reznikov because he is viewed as the best person for the job. Nevertheless, his selection would have been unthinkable if Ukraine even vaguely resembled the far-right dystopia of Russian propaganda.

All this is just one more reminder that Putin’s whole invasion has been based on shameless lies. In an effort to disguise its illegal war of aggression, Russia has sought to cynically exploit some of Europe’s most painful historical wounds, and has attempted to dehumanize its Ukrainian victims by baselessly branding them as modern-day successors to Nazi Germany. In reality, the only fascists in Ukraine are the Russian troops sent by Putin to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and erase Ukrainian identity. These soldiers of authoritarian empire are fighting a brutal but ultimately losing battle against an increasingly self-confident Ukraine that is comfortable in its diversity and united by its European identity.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Western leaders should know that downplaying the geopolitical changes currently taking place in Georgia is short-sighted. The West’s weak response to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia is now widely seen as a major strategic blunder that emboldened Vladimir Putin and set the stage for the genocidal invasion of Ukraine. Fifteen years on, the revival of Russian influence in Georgia is helping to convince Putin that despite major setbacks, he will ultimately be able to achieve his goals in Ukraine.

While the Western world has united in opposition to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Georgia has stood aside and has instead adopted a range of Kremlin-friendly policies. Crucially, the Georgian authorities have flatly refused to join international sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, Tbilisi recently restored direct flights with Russia, despite calls from the EU and US not to do so. Government officials have also echoed Kremlin propaganda accusing the West of attempting to pressure Georgia into attacking Russia.

Meanwhile, critics have accused the Georgian authorities of embracing anti-democratic policies similar to those adopted by Russia in recent decades. In spring 2023, the ruling Georgian Dream party attempted to implement new laws that closely mirrored existing Russian legislation targeting civil society organizations as “foreign agents.” This initiative was eventually blocked by large-scale public protests, but efforts to demonize civil society and the country’s political opposition have continued.

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The impact of Russian propaganda in the Georgian information space is another problematic issue that is particularly evident in the rehabilitation of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. For years, the Putin regime has promoted a revisionist approach to Stalin, portraying him a strong leader whose role in securing victory over Nazi Germany outweighs his crimes. Among Georgian audiences, Russia has successfully utilized Stalin’s Georgian roots, with the Soviet dictator emerging as a figurehead for an anti-Western strain of Georgian nationalism that aligns closely with Kremlin narratives.

In recent years, 11 new statues to Stalin have been erected in Georgia, while one recent Georgian opinion poll found almost 46% of respondents agreed that “patriotic Georgians should be proud of Stalin.” This change in attitudes toward Stalin has yet to attract much attention in the West, but it serves to highlight the vulnerability of Georgian society to Russian information warfare.

Failing to address Georgia’s slide into Russia’s geopolitical orbit would be a costly mistake. To avoid this outcome, Washington and Brussels need to adopt clear policies. Time is of the essence. As Russian influence continues to grow in today’s Georgia, Western leverage is inevitably diminishing. It is vital that the West puts its legitimate leverage to work without delay to demonstrate that further steps toward Moscow will come with considerable costs. This would help the Georgian people to democratically reverse the country’s dangerous current trajectory.

The alternative would be disastrous for Georgia, Ukraine, and Western interests. If Putin is able to reassert Russian dominance over Georgia and derail the country’s Euro-Atlantic ambitions while continuing to occupy twenty percent of the country, he will be encouraged to believe that a similar outcome will eventually prove possible in Ukraine. That would prolong the current war and pave the way for further acts of Russian aggression.

Giorgi Kandelaki is a former Georgian MP and a former Chair of the Georgian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He is currently a project manager at the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (Sovlab), a think-tank dedicated to researching Georgia’s totalitarian past and countering the weaponization of history.

This refusal to recognize Ukraine as an independent nation is a longstanding Russian tradition stretching back hundreds of years. From the eighteenth century onward, successive Russian rulers have viewed any expression of a separate Ukrainian identity as direct challenge to Russia’s imperial identity and a potential catalyst for the breakup of the Russian state. In the modern era, independent Ukraine’s gradual embrace of European democratic values has added an ideological dimension to this Russian opposition, with Kremlin leaders fearful that Ukrainian democracy could prove contagious and spell doom for their own authoritarian regime.

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Ukraine’s first push for statehood came in the seventeenth century, when Ukrainian cossacks rose up in an ultimately failed attempt to establish a state of their own. The modern independence movement gained ground throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, leading to the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1918 during the chaotic aftermath of the Russian Revolution. The Ukrainian People’s Republic proved to be short-lived, but in many ways it paved the way for the independent state that would emerge from the wreckage of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Russia’s denial of Ukrainian identity and refusal to accept the reality of Ukrainian independence are now fueling an invasion that many view as genocidal in nature. According to the UN, a crucial indicator of genocide is the “denial of the existence of protected groups or of recognition of elements of their identity.” A very large number of public statements by Russian officials including Putin would seem to meet this definition. Russia’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s cultural heritage, along with the relentless barrage of genocidal anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in Russia’s heavily censored and carefully choreographed mainstream media, strongly indicate genocidal intent.

In areas of Ukraine under Russian control, local populations are being subjected to a range of genocidal policies including summary executions and mass deportations, along with the abduction and anti-Ukrainian indoctrination of children. Those who remain are being forced to accept Russian citizenship. Meanwhile, all symbols of Ukrainian national identity are being systematically removed. An international investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces during the occupation of Kherson found that “Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity includes a range of crimes evocative of genocide.”

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So far, Putin’s invasion is failing to achieve its imperial objectives. Indeed, the war he unleashed in February 2022 appears to have greatly consolidated Ukrainian national identity and confirmed the finality of the country’s historic departure from the Russian sphere of influence. Last year, as Ukrainians marked Independence Day for the first time since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, President Zelenskyy stressed the impact of the war on Ukrainian national identity, commenting that Ukraine had been “not born but reborn.”

Evidence of this rebirth can be seen in villages, towns, and cities across Ukraine. Millions of people who initially fled the Russian invasion have since returned home. Many are choosing to switch to the Ukrainian language in their everyday lives, while interest in Ukrainian history and culture has risen to unprecedented highs. Despite the horrors of the ongoing invasion, national pride is soaring, while polls consistently indicate overwhelming opposition to any kind of compromise peace that would cede Ukrainian land to Russia.

Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, the Mykhailo Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University, echoes President Zelenskyy’s comments on the profound impact of the Russian invasion on Ukrainian identity. “What you see today in Ukraine is really something that many other nations experienced. It is a war for independence. And the war for independence is very much about the formation of this new identity,” he commented during an interview with NPR.

In February 2022, Vladimir Putin set out to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and erase Ukrainian identity. In doing so, he was pursuing a genocidal agenda that has deep roots in Russian imperial history. However, the Russian invasion has backfired disastrously for the Kremlin, greatly strengthening Ukrainian national identity while poisoning bilateral ties and shattering historic links that had once bound the two countries closely together. Russians may still be in denial over Ukrainian identity, but sooner or later they will have to face up to the reality of living next door to a strong and independent Ukraine.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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Throughout his 23-year reign, Vladimir Putin has enthusiastically embraced this imperial identity. Soon after taking office, he signaled his intentions by reintroducing the Soviet national anthem and consciously reviving the gold-plated splendor of the Czarist court. More recently, he has emphasized the continuity between the imperial past and his own regime by lamenting the fall of the USSR as the “disintegration of historical Russia” and vowing to reclaim “historically Russian lands” from Ukraine.

Putin’s bitterness over the break-up of the Soviet Union has fueled an unhealthy obsession with Ukraine that has come to symbolize his increasingly messianic brand of Russian imperialism. Among the many perceived injustices of the Soviet collapse, it is the emergence of an independent Ukraine that rankles Putin most. He insists Ukrainians are really Russians (“one people”), and claims the entire notion of a separate Ukrainian national identity is an anti-Russian plot hatched by foreign agents. During the build-up to the current war, the Russian dictator published a 5,000-word essay questioning Ukraine’s right to exist, and described Ukraine as “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space.”

Such posturing is nothing new. Russian rulers have been denying Ukrainian national identity and suppressing Ukraine’s statehood ambitions for more than three hundred years. This grim history of oppression is studded with atrocities such as the 1708 Baturyn Massacre and the artificially engineered famine in 1930s Soviet Ukraine, which left millions dead and is now recognized by more than 30 countries as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation. These unpunished crimes helped fuel a sense of imperial impunity that laid the ideological foundations for the current invasion. Almost a century after the horrors of the Holodomor famine, Russia is once again accused of committing genocide in Ukraine.

Throughout the Czarist and Soviet eras, Russia’s many landmark crimes in Ukraine were accompanied by relentless waves of russification in every sphere of Ukrainian life. This took place alongside the slow but steady suffocation of Ukraine’s national aspirations under layer upon layer of restrictions and bureaucratic bans. Perhaps the single most succinct example of Russia’s pathological refusal to acknowledge the existence of a separate Ukrainian identity remains the Valuev Circular. This 1863 Czarist decree banning the publication of Ukrainian-language literature declares: “a separate Ukrainian (“Little Russian”) language never existed, does not exist, and shall not exist.”

Disinformation has always played an important part in Russian efforts to suppress Ukrainian identity. Long before the era of social media fakes and Kremlin troll farms, Russian agents were actively destroying or rewriting ancient chronicles to fit imperial orthodoxies and remove anything that could strengthen Ukrainian claims to a national narrative of their own. Indeed, it is somewhat fitting that the term “Potemkin Village,” which is used to denote acts of shameless political deception, can be traced back to the artificial villages allegedly erected by Czarist officials in the Ukrainian countryside for the benefit of visiting Russian Empress Catherine the Great.

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The dawn of Ukrainian independence did little to dampen Russia’s imperial ambitions, with Moscow continuing to treat post-Soviet Ukraine as a vassal state. The turning point came in late 2004, when attempts to rig Ukraine’s presidential election in favor of a Kremlin-friendly candidate sparked massive street protests in Kyiv that came to be known as the Orange Revolution. This was to prove a watershed moment in Putin’s reign. The Orange Revolution sparked painful memories of his own experience as a young KGB officer in East Germany as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire in Central Europe crumbled. Putin became convinced the West was plotting a similar pro-democracy uprising in Russia itself, and began to view Ukraine not just as an accident of history but as an existential threat to his own regime.

After the Orange Revolution, Putin’s policies toward Ukraine grew increasingly aggressive while his rhetoric became openly imperialistic. When years of energy cutoffs, trade embargoes, and attempts to subvert domestic Ukrainian politics all failed to force the country back into the Russian orbit, he eventually resorted to military force with the 2014 occupation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. This proved counter-productive, fueling a surge in Ukrainian patriotic sentiment and dramatically accelerating the nation-building processes that had been underway in Ukraine since the early 1990s. Faced with the prospect of losing Ukraine entirely, Putin made the fateful decision to launch the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

Amid the horrors of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russia’s imperialistic objectives have become increasingly obvious. Kremlin officials routinely deny the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state, while genocidal anti-Ukrainian outbursts have become completely normalized on Russian state TV channels. Meanwhile, Putin himself has proudly compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Peter the Great.

The actions of Russian forces inside Ukraine more than mirror this imperialistic rhetoric. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, with millions more subjected to forced deportation. Those who remain in occupied regions are being pressured into accepting Russian passports as part of a ruthless russification campaign. Time and again, survivors of Russian captivity have recounted the especially brutal treatment reserved for anyone considered a Ukrainian patriot.

None of this is entirely surprising to Ukrainians, who have spent much of their lives in the shadow of Russia’s imperial pretensions and are painfully aware of their colossal neighbor’s longstanding disdain for Ukrainian statehood. While many Ukrainians were admittedly taken aback by the ferocity of the Russian onslaught, few were genuinely shocked to witness yet another manifestation of the imperial aggression that has shaped their country’s history for generations. This familiarity helps to explain why an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians are so determined to fight on until their country is fully liberated. They understand the futility of trying to compromise with the Kremlin and recognize that any attempt to strike a deal would be interpreted by Putin as an invitation to go further.

As Ukrainians defend their statehood on the battlefield, they are also attempting to remove any remaining symbols of Russian imperialism from the country. In the past year, high profile departures have included Odesa’s Catherine the Great monument and the giant Soviet crest adorning the shield of Kyiv’s iconic motherland monument. In everyday life, more and more Ukrainians are opting to switch to the Ukrainian language, exploring different aspects of Ukrainian culture, and expressing an interest in Ukrainian history. A war of independence is taking place along an 800-mile front and in the minds of millions of individual Ukrainians.

An understanding of Russian imperialism in Ukraine is essential for anyone seeking to make sense of today’s war. Putin has attempted to blame the invasion on everything from nonexistent Nazis to imaginary NATO security threats, but at heart it is an old-fashioned colonial war of extermination. In words and deeds, Russia has made clear that it seeks to destroy the Ukrainian state and erase Ukrainian identity. Asking Ukrainians to negotiate with this genocidal agenda is absurd and grotesque. Instead, the goal must be a decisive Ukrainian victory over Russian imperialism. Until Europe’s longest independence struggle reaches a successful conclusion, a sustainable peace will remain elusive.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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The launch of this new textbook is worthy of particular attention. As an officially sanctioned guide to Russian history that is clearly designed to shape the world view of young Russians, it highlights many of the key messages at the heart of modern Russian imperialism and lays bare the Kremlin’s efforts to weaponize history in order to justify its own wars of aggression.

Unsurprisingly, the textbook glorifies centuries of Russian imperial expansion and whitewashes the crimes of the Soviet era, while dehumanizing Ukrainians as Nazis and portraying the West as implacably hostile to Russia. It defends the Russian invasion of Ukraine and places Putin alongside other leading Russian imperialists such as Peter the Great and Stalin as a “gatherer of Russian lands.” Meanwhile, setbacks such as the collapse of the USSR and the loss of Russian influence in the post-Soviet space are portrayed as part of a long-term Western anti-Russian conspiracy.

One of the key threads running through the new textbook is the notion of Russian victimhood. Russia is consistently portrayed as a victim of Western intrigues and is never the aggressor. Needless to say, there is no thought for the entire nations subjugated or destroyed by Russian imperial aggression. In this highly distorted and hopelessly partisan reading of history, the largest nation on the planet is also the world’s biggest victim.

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The messianic view of Russian history outlined in this newly published textbook is part of a long tradition of Russian exceptionalism dating back to Czarist times that portrays Russia as a nation on a sacred civilizing mission. With Russia depicted as an unquestionably positive force for good in the world, the use of force in pursuit of this role becomes easily justified. Such twisted logic remains prevalent today and helps to explain the popularity of otherwise absurd arguments framing the invasion of Ukraine as an attempt to rescue Ukrainians from themselves.

This embrace of exceptionalism encourages Russians to romanticize the violence that has defined much of their country’s history. It also reinforces a sense of continuity linking the Czarist and Soviet past with the Putinist present. For millions of Russians, post-Soviet military campaigns including the frozen conflict in Moldova, two Chechen wars, the invasion of Georgia, the seizure of Crimea, and the intervention in Syria are all part of a expansionist tradition stretching back centuries.

Putin himself has spoken of the USSR as “historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union.” He has directly compared his Ukraine invasion with the imperial conquests of Peter the Great, and has made clear that the goal of today’s war is to reclaim “historically Russian lands.” No doubt Putin’s Czarist predecessors would find these imperial ambitions immediately recognizable.

In line with Putin’s claims to be restoring historical justice in Ukraine, the new textbook rejects the idea of Russia as a colonial power and instead speaks of “reuniting” territories or liberating neighboring nations from oppression. Meanwhile, those who have dared to condemn or fight against Russian expansionism are depicted as agents of the West or nationalist extremists. The incorporation of new territories by Russia is portrayed as beneficial for the people being incorporated, regardless of whether they themselves agree.

The recent publication of Russia’s new history textbook is a comparatively minor event at a time when the Kremlin is waging a genocidal war of imperial conquest in the heart of Europe. Nevertheless, it should serve as a wake-up call for anyone still laboring under the delusion that Putin is a rational leader pursuing limited geopolitical objectives. On the contrary, he presides over a regime and a society that openly embraces a brand of imperialism which most Europeans assumed had been consigned to the ash heap of history generations ago.

This imperialistic mindset represents perhaps the greatest single obstacle to a sustainable peace in Europe. Even if the invasion of Ukraine ends in military failure, the underlying problem of Russian imperialism will remain until Russians are forced to confront their country’s long history of imperial aggression. This will likely be a painful process, but it is unavoidable if Russia is to eventually emerge as a modern state and reintegrate into the wider community of nations.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and author of the recently published “Fascism and Genocide. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians.”

#AtlanticDebrief – Where is Europe headed politically? | A Debrief from Jon Henley

jbatchik — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 13:02:39 +0000

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To what extent are we witnessing the rise of the far-right in Europe? What is driving European voters to support far-right candidates? As we gear up for the European Parliament elections next year, what do these political shifts mean for the European project as a whole?

On this episode of #AtlanticDebrief, Rachel Rizzo sits down with Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, to discuss to what extent the far-right is becoming more politically mainstream in Europe today.

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Why Putin’s Russia cannot accept its borders

Glenn Chafetz, John Sipher — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 23:37:48 +0000

To understand Russia’s current obsession with Ukraine, it is important to recognize that Russia was never a state in the common usage of the term. Unlike the modern Turkish state that emerged from the Ottoman Empire, or Great Britain, which acquired and lost an empire, Russia never had an identity separate from empire. As British historian Geoffrey Hosking observed, “Britain had an empire, but Russia was an empire.”

The Kremlin’s preferred narrative of Russia rising from present-day Ukraine (“Kyivan Rus”) is a Moscow-concocted fairy tale. The officially endorsed 1000-year history of Russia is a self-created and self-perpetuated myth that generations of Russian dictators have promoted to justify their external expansion and internal repression.

Instead, what we think of today as Russia started out as a loose collection of independent city states that included Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk, Tver, and Moscow, the last of which attained particular significance toward the end of Mongol rule a little over 500 years ago. Kyiv was no more a part of Russia then than it is now. There was no common language, no common administration, and no joint identity. Indeed, it would be centuries before the rulers of Muscovy attempted to assert their dominance over Kyiv and the lands of today’s Ukraine.

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It was the era of Mongol rule and not the Kyivan Rus inheritance that paved the way for the rise of the Russian Empire. Under Ivan III (“The Great”), Muscovy established itself as the strongest of the city states to emerge from the Mongol period. Ivan called himself “Tsar of all Rus,” but he was actually more like the mayor of Greater Moscow. It was Ivan who started the expansion of Muscovy, initiating the so-called “gathering of Russian lands.” His expansionist vision has been embraced by virtually every subsequent ruler of Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation.

Ivan III’s quest to acquire new territories, often under the guise of “reuniting the lands of the ancient Rus,” continues to this day and has had a profound impact on world history. As Historian Stephen Kotkin has noted, “Beginning with the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century, Russia managed to expand at an average rate of fifty square miles per day for hundreds of years, eventually covering one-sixth of the earth’s landmass.”

Few of the peoples inhabiting the lands Ivan III and his successors claimed saw themselves as Russian, at least not before they were “gathered.” At the time of Ivan III’s death, Muscovy covered less than a fifth of the area of today’s Russia; notably, it did not include the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasus, or all of Siberia. Crimea, about which Vladimir Putin rhapsodizes, was not part of the Russian Empire until Catherine II took it from the Crimean Khans in 1783.

If Putin is concerned with righting historical wrongs, he should give Crimea back to the Crimean Tatars. He won’t do this, of course, because the dynamic of imperial conquest and Russification is a key component of legitimacy for Putin, as it has been for almost all of Russia’s rulers (Yeltsin and Gorbachev partially excepted). Russia expands because its rulers need an external threat to justify their autocracy. This was as true for the Soviet period as it had been for Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.

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Putin’s Russia laments the loss of imperial glory, and has never come to terms with its repressive past. The security-expansion paradox driving Russia’s foreign and domestic policies is a vicious cycle that all empires experience to one extent or another. Acquisition creates threats inside the newly acquired territories and on the expanding borders of the growing empire. Expansion demands inward Russification and repression, and further outward expansion. As Catherine the Great famously said, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”

This dynamic can end in two ways: Either through external containment or internal democratization. The latter has proved problematic for the Russian people, and is not something Russia’s neighbors should count on happening any time soon. The former has worked before, during the Cold War.

Modern Russia remains an empire and does not see itself as a Great Power unless it dominates its neighbors. Consequently, Russia will continue to threaten, attack, and absorb its neighbors until the West acts collectively to contain it.

Russia and its apologists will complain that containment ignores Russia’s legitimate security concerns. This is a canard because Russia’s security concerns constantly expand. In reality, Russian leaders have absolutely nothing to worry about if they return to their country’s internationally recognized 1991 borders. The West has always respected these borders; it is Russia that has not. Until modern Russia moves beyond its deeply ingrained imperial identity, this is unlikely to change.

Glenn Chafetz has more than 30 years of experience in government, academia, and the private sector. He is now director of 2430 Group, a non-profit that helps defend the US private sector from state sponsored threats. John Sipher worked for the CIA’s Clandestine Service for 28 years. He is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment.

Russia is targeting Ukrainian national identity with attacks on heritage sites

Mercedes Sapuppo — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 20:04:15 +0000

In the early hours of July 23, a Russian missile struck and partially destroyed the Transfiguration Cathedral in Ukrainian Black Sea port Odesa. It was the latest in a long line of attacks on Ukraine’s cultural heritage that many believe reflect the Kremlin’s overriding goal of eradicating Ukrainian identity along with Ukrainian statehood.

The attack on the Transfiguration Cathedral was seen as particularly shocking as the damaged building is the city’s largest church and sits in the heart of Odesa’s UNESCO-listed historic center. However, the incident was far from unprecedented. Days later, Russian forces shelled St. Catherine’s Cathedral in Kherson, which ranks as another of southern Ukraine’s most prominent Orthodox landmarks.

In late July, UNESCO officials confirmed they have now officially verified damage to 274 Ukrainian heritage sites since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion almost eighteen months ago. The list includes 117 religious sites, 27 museums, 98 buildings of historical or artistic interest, 19 monuments, and 12 libraries. Other available data suggests UNESCO’s figures may actually be conservative. In January 2023, researchers from the Smithsonian Institution’s Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab claimed to have already identified almost 1,600 cases of damage to heritage sites in Ukraine.

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Since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has consistently targeted pillars of Ukrainian art, history, and society. Numerous Ukrainian and international commentators claim these attacks on Ukrainian heritage sites are part of a deliberate Russian campaign to eliminate symbols of Ukrainian national identity.

These arguments are supported by Vladimir Putin’s own frequent denials of Ukraine’s historical legitimacy and his insistence that Ukrainians are in fact Russians (“one people”). Nor is Putin alone in questioning Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent nation. Over the past eighteen months, genocidal anti-Ukrainian narratives have become a routine daily feature of Russia’s heavily censored and carefully choreographed state TV.

The genocidal rhetoric coming out of Moscow provides critical context for the attacks on heritage sites currently taking place across Ukraine. According to the director of Ukraine’s Maidan Museum, Ihor Poshyvailo, Russia’s ongoing invasion is best understood as a “heritage war.” He argues that the invasion unleashed by Vladimir Putin should not be viewed as a traditional war over territory or as a military campaign with limited political goals, but instead as “a war against our historical memory. Against our identity. Against our culture. And, of course, against our future.”

This sentiment has been echoed by Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, a prominent figure in Ukrainian cultural circles and the current director of Kyiv’s popular Mystetskiy Arsenal visual arts museum. “This Russian war in Ukraine is very tightly connected to culture,” she commented in April 2023. “The basic assumption which lies beneath this assault is that Ukraine should not exist as a separate phenomenon with its own political agency. Any Ukrainian otherness from Russia should be erased. It is genocidal in its objectives and in its action, as we have already seen. Culture is at the very core of this war.”

Member of the European Parliament Sabine Verheyen, who chairs the European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee, is one of a number of international figures to level similar accusations against the Kremlin. “Russia is trying to destroy not only Ukrainian cultural heritage, but also national uniqueness, tradition, and ultimately, the Ukrainian right to exist,” she stated in late 2022.

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High-profile targets of Russian attacks have included the Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum in Kyiv region, which housed a collection of paintings by revered Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko, who famously inspired Picasso. The museum was destroyed by the Russian army during the very first days of the invasion in February 2022.

Russian forces have also targeted a range of national monuments crucial to securing historical and cultural memory, including the Drobitsky Yar Holocaust Memorial in eastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which was shelled in March 2022. The attack prompted Ukraine’s Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center to tweet: “Russia continues to attack not only the civilian population of Ukraine but also the places of remembrance.”

In late July 2023, a Russian airstrike hit a school in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region that houses a research center dedicated to the man-made Stalin era famine known as the Holodomor, which has been recognized by more than 30 countries as an act of genocide against Ukraine. Modern Russia continues to deny that the artificial famine was a deliberate attempt to target Ukrainians.

Ukraine’s literary treasures have also been frequently targeted. The Russian military has bombed libraries across the country, with dozens reportedly destroyed completely and more than 150 left severely damaged. One high-profile victim was the Rare Book Library at Kharkiv’s Karazin University, which housed more than 60,000 historic books and manuscripts.

Ukrainians have responded to the existential challenges of the Russian invasion by demonstrating remarkable resilience. This is as true in the cultural world as it is on the military and economic fronts. Nevertheless, greater international engagement is needed to provide the material and organizational backing necessary to protect and repair Ukraine’s heritage sites. Ultimately, the best way to safeguard Ukrainian culture and national identity is by providing the country with the arms it needs to defeat Russia. Until that happens, the steady destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage will continue.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

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The Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally been a strong supporter of the secular authorities in Russia. This was true for centuries during the era of the Russian Empire. It was also the case after Stalin revived and reorganized the Russian Orthodox Church in 1943 following 25 years of brutal Soviet persecution. Similarly, in more recent times the Church has been instrumental in promoting Vladimir Putin’s dream of restoring the Russian Empire. In 2012, Patriarch Kirill addressed Putin personally as the savior of modern Russia and compared his reign to a “miracle of God.”

The support of the Russian Orthodox Church has grown as the invasion of Ukraine has progressed, with Patriarch Kirill becoming one of the war’s most prominent promoters. In his sermons, he has accused “foreign forces” of trying to divide Russia and Ukraine, which he often describes as “one people.” These thinly veiled attempts to blame the war on the Western world while denying Ukraine’s right to an independent national identity closely echo the Kremlin’s own imperialistic talking points.

Patriarch Kirill has continued to defend the invasion despite mounting evidence of Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine. He has remained unmoved by the atrocities uncovered in liberated towns such as Bucha, or the seemingly endless accounts of mass killings, sexual violence, torture chambers, child abductions, and forced deportations throughout Russian-occupied Ukraine. He is silent regarding the constant missile and drone assaults against civilian targets including homes, apartment buildings, shopping centers, churches, hospitals, schools, and grain storage facilities.

Instead, Patriarch Kirill has indicated that the Russian Orthodox Church may even be willing to overlook such crimes. “The Church realizes that if someone, driven by a sense of duty and the need to honor his oath, stays loyal to his vocation and dies while carrying out his military duty, then he is without any doubt doing a deed that is equal to sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for others. And therefore, we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed,” Kirill stated in a September 2022 sermon.

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While Patriarch Kirill’s efforts to justify the invasion of Ukraine have garnered considerable international attention, his stance is far from exceptional and appears to be broadly representative of the mood in today’s Russia. Indeed, Russian aggression against Ukraine is not the result of plans determined by President Putin alone; nor is Patriarch Kirill the only establishment figure to publicly back the invasion. On the contrary, levels of support, or at least acquiescence, among the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian society as a whole remain scandalously high.

Not one of the approximately 400 Russian Orthodox Church bishops in Russia has spoken out against the war. The Russian Orthodox Church clergy is a huge body including more than 40,000 full-time clerics, priests, and deacons internationally. Only approximately 300 members of the clergy signed a joint public statement criticizing the war, with many of the signatories based outside of Russia. Moreover, 700 university rectors have signed a public statement supporting the war.

While opinion polls in totalitarian societies must be treated with a high degree of skepticism, the available data indicates that Russian public support for the invasion of Ukraine has remained consistently higher than 70% for the past eighteen months, according to Russia’s only internationally respected independent pollster, the Levada Center. The contribution of the Russian Orthodox Church to this pro-war consensus has been considerable and is damning.

Russian theologian Sergei Chapnin, who formerly served as deputy editor-in-chief of the Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House and is now based at the Orthodox Christian Study Center of Fordham University, has been highly critical of what he sees as the hypocrisy of the Russian Orthodox Church bishops. In an open letter published in February 2023, he reproached them for being “embittered castle-builders swilling the cocktail of imperial myth, resentment, and unbelievably primitive eschatology. You stand by a man [Patriarch Kirill] who justifies war crimes and has betrayed the Church. You repeat his words, retell his criminal arguments.”

In a January 2023 sermon, Patriarch Kirill predicted the Russian invasion would leave the Russian Orthodox Church triumphant in Ukraine and warned: “there will be no trace left of the schismatics because they are fulfilling the devil’s evil bidding of eroding Orthodoxy on Kyivan land.” This chilling prophesy is unlikely to be fulfilled. While Kirill attempts to justify imperial aggression, Ukrainians are demonstrating their own spiritual values through solidarity. Despite the horrors of the Russian invasion, Ukrainians of all faiths and walks of life remain united. They are driven by a commitment to freedom that is the opposite of the intolerance preached by Kirill.

Borys Gudziak is Metropolitan Archbishop of Philadelphia of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the United States, Head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and President of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.

The ensuing military stalemate laid the basis for a 1991 UN-mediated settlement plan, which established a cease-fire and a UN buffer zone along the sand berm; called for a self-determination referendum; and set up a mission, MINURSO, to monitor the cease-fire and organize the referendum. The vote never took place due to Moroccan objections. Subsequent negotiations failed to achieve a breakthrough, even though the two sides continued to abide by the cease-fire. In 2007, under pressure from France and the United States, Morocco proposed an autonomy plan that would provide for a degree of self-government for Western Sahara under its sovereignty. The Polisario rejected it out of hand for denying the Sahrawi population’s right to self-determination.

The conflict remained frozen until a series of events in 2019-2021 reignited hostilities, spreading tensions through the wider region. Starting in 2019, Rabat convinced a number of Arab and African governments to open consulates in Morocco-controlled Western Sahara, signaling their recognition of Rabat’s sovereignty over the territory. In November 2020, the 1991 cease-fire collapsed when Morocco seized a section of the UN buffer zone to clear a blockade of a key route by Polisario activists and in response the Front resumed its attacks against Morocco in Western Sahara. Tensions escalated further in December 2020 when the Donald Trump administration extended US recognition to Morocco’s control of Western Sahara, and again in August 2021, when Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with Morocco, partly over the latter’s unilateral moves in Western Sahara.

A low-intensity conflict

The intensity of the hostilities over Western Sahara during the conflict’s latest round has remained fairly limited, mainly due to a military imbalance in favor of Rabat. Since the end of the cease-fire in 2020, the Polisario has been able to do little more than fire at the Moroccan sand berm in a series of hit-and-run attacks. Yet the vast majority of its attacks are confined to a northeastern section of the former UN buffer zone inside Western Sahara, suggesting that the group is unable to carry out attacks in the rest of the territory. The Front largely demobilized after the 1991 cease-fire, maintaining only minimal forces; it then lost one of its main arms suppliers, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi, in 2011, leaving it mostly dependent on outdated equipment. Morocco, from its side, can deploy technologically advanced weapons, including drones, which have granted it air superiority.

The most destabilizing incidents have come from alleged Moroccan attacks on Algerian and Mauritanian civilian convoys. These have threatened to widen the conflict to the rest of the region. In November 2021, an alleged Moroccan drone strike in Polisario-controlled Western Sahara resulted in the deaths of three Algerian truck drivers en route to Mauritania. The incident prompted the Algerian presidency to publicly pin the blame on Rabat and vow retaliation. A second such incident occurred in April 2022, when Algeria accused the Moroccan air force of killing another three people in an attack on a civilian truck convoy near the Mauritanian border.

More recently, an attack inside Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara has highlighted the potential for further military escalation. On May 20, an alleged bomb attack reportedly targeted a segment of a 100-kilometer conveyor belt used by Morocco to export phosphates from a mine located deep within Western Sahara to the coast. Moroccan and pro-Polisario media outlets refrained from reporting on this incident, but the pro-Polisario nongovernmental organization Western Sahara Resource Watch released a series of videos supporting the claim that the incident had happened. If the incident did in fact take place, it would mark the first such attack in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara since the cease-fire’s collapse. While the fact that neither side publicized the alleged event suggests a shared interest in avoiding an escalation at this stage, this kind of attack hints at the possibility of a new, more dangerous phase in the conflict, should diplomacy fail to contain tensions.

The UN Security Council’s hesitations and de Mistura’s role

Divisions and inaction marked the UN Security Council’s initial response to the restart of the conflict in 2020. The council remained inactive for weeks after the cease-fire collapsed due to deep divisions within its ranks between pro-Polisario (such as Russia among the permanent members, as well as several African and Latin American countries) and pro-Morocco member states (such as France and many Arab and West African governments). Pro-Polisario members wanted the council to publicly put more pressure on Rabat, while pro-Morocco states supported the kingdom’s reluctance to allow any form of international scrutiny of the conflict.

All attempts to push the council to discuss and take a position failed. When Germany requested consultations on the matter in December 2020, Rabat suspended diplomatic ties in retaliation. In April 2021, the United States tried to push the council to take a stance on the need to avoid an escalation and appoint a new UN envoy, but this initiative crashed on a roadblock thrown up by India, which acted on Morocco’s behalf. This move was enough to block the US initiative, as Washington realized that the costs of overcoming New Delhi’s objection would far outweigh the initiative’s benefits.

Faced with a paralyzed Security Council, the Joe Biden administration tried to ease hostilities in Western Sahara. It pushed for the appointment of Staffan de Mistura as the new UN envoy, overcoming Rabat’s initial rejection. Yet, it refrained from clarifying its position on former President Trump’s decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, in an apparent attempt to avoid antagonizing either side.

The Security Council’s divisions and widening gap between Morocco and the Polisario meant that de Mistura had to operate within a very tight policy space. Following the collapse of the cease-fire, the two sides presented diverging views regarding the format and substance of future negotiations. For Rabat, the only way to return to talks was to resume the 2019 roundtable format, which included Algeria, Mauritania, and the Polisario, and to discuss acceptance of its 2007 autonomy plan. The roundtable format was a short-lived negotiating arrangement introduced in 2019 by former UN envoy Horst Kohler, who resigned after only two negotiating sessions for personal reasons, leaving the position vacant until de Mistura’s appointment. The Moroccans view the Polisario as an Algerian proxy and contend that only a grand bargain with Algeria and Mauritania can end the conflict. From its side, the Polisario insists on direct bilateral talks with Morocco to set the terms for a self-determination referendum.

De Mistura embarked on rebuilding ties with regional actors through the use of constructive ambiguity. By prioritizing direct bilateral consultations and keeping a relatively low profile, he gradually expanded his scope of action. His use of the phrasing “all concerned” to avoid precisely describing who should be involved in future negotiations, and invitation to Morocco and the Polisario Front to move beyond their current positions, provided a basis for moving forward. In particular, the “all concerned” language allowed him to sidestep the issue of who should be involved in diplomatic efforts related to Western Sahara by addressing all the parties with a stake in this conflict, whether as direct parties or regional observers. Through such constructive ambiguity, he was able to avoid defining exactly which actors should be involved and which plan should be the basis for negotiations. In October 2022, the Security Council adopted amendments to its annual resolution on Western Sahara that echoed the envoy’s wording, thus providing him with much-needed backing and placing pressure on the parties to engage with him.

Washington’s role

The Biden administration has started playing a somewhat more assertive role in efforts to revive UN-brokered negotiations. Over the past months, US officials have engaged with all parties involved, aiming to contain regional tensions and rebuild the UN framework for Western Sahara. Washington’s unique position as the only external actor capable of engaging with all stakeholders makes it a critical interlocutor.

Other external actors have struggled to have any impact. France has strengthened its relations with Algeria over the past months, to the detriment of its traditionally close ties with Morocco. Two events in particular contributed to the deterioration. In January 2023, President Emmanuel Macron met with Algerian Chief of Staff Said Chengriha in Paris; and Morocco accused French members of the European Parliament of backing, if not championing, a resolutioncondemning Moroccan violations of press freedom. For its part, in 2022 Spain publicly endorsed the 2007 Moroccan autonomy plan as “the most serious, realistic and credible basis” to solve the conflict, angering the Polisario and Algeria. Germany also expressed its support for the Moroccan plan, having mended its ties with Rabat. And Morocco sees Russia, which is preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, as too close to Algeria’s and the Polisario’s stancesto be a credible mediator.

Despite its privileged position, Washington has been reluctant to invest significant political capital in ending the conflict, considering it a low-priority issue. Instead of applying pressure, the administration has tried to build confidence among all the main stakeholders by leveraging their desire for strong ties with the United States. To this end, the Biden administration has worked to establish closer economic and security ties with Algeria, maintained relations with Morocco, and offered the Polisario the prospect of an expanded diplomatic relationship. But its reluctance to make a bigger push for negotiations could hamper the UN envoy’s efforts.

Indeed, Morocco has yet to modify its position. Moroccan diplomats continue to engage with the UN envoy, but refuse to abandon the 2019 roundtable format or negotiate beyond their autonomy plan. The Polisario remains open to discussing the envoy’s proposals, but skeptical of the current circumstances for negotiations due to a lack of international attention toward the conflict and a weak negotiating position.

Israel’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara

Despite the temporary lull in tensions, Israel’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara has further exacerbated regional tensions. The Moroccan media celebrated the July 17 announcement as another diplomatic victory for the kingdom. The move did not go unchallenged. Three days later, the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned it as “a blatant violation of international law.”

Israel’s step may have bolstered Morocco’s efforts to formalize its control over the territory but is unlikely to inject real momentum in its strategy to secure international support for its claim. International media highlighted how the move strengthens the dominant narrative that Rabat has the upper hand in this conflict, but Israel’s controversial role in the region suggests that few other states will follow its example.

Supporting a fragile path back to negotiations

The Western Sahara conflict continues to present significant challenges to regional stability, but recent diplomatic efforts offer hope for progress. With some modest backing from the Security Council, de Mistura has managed to open some limited space to pursue a political solution. To ensure that the UN envoy’s efforts to revive talks have any chance of success, Washington should engage more proactively as a relatively impartial broker by extracting concessions from both sides to create a climate more conducive to resuming negotiations. As a first confidence-building step, the United States could ask Rabat to release at least some of the Sahrawi activists who have been detained since protests in Gdeim Izik in 2010 and grant the UN envoy unrestricted access to Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. On the other side, it should encourage the Polisario to unilaterally suspend its military operations against Morocco. Such steps, if successful, could be enough to lay the basis for a resumption of negotiations.

Riccardo Fabiani is the project director of the North Africa program at the International Crisis Group

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Ukraine is finally freeing itself from centuries of Russian imperialism

Taras Kuzio — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 20:07:23 +0000

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the very different developmental paths the two countries have chosen following the collapse of the USSR three decades ago. Although Vladimir Putin continues to promote Soviet-era propaganda depicting Russia and Ukraine as “one people,” it is obvious to independent observers that the divide between the neighboring nations has never been wider. Since 1991, Ukrainians have done much to shake off the shadows of authoritarian empire and regain their agency; in contrast, Russian society remains firmly trapped in the imperial past.

There are a number of key factors behind Ukraine’s post-Soviet transformation from totalitarian society to a more recognizably European identity. At the grass roots level, Ukraine has experienced three revolutionary protest movements that have empowered the public and redefined the relationship between the state and society. The 1990 Granite Revolution, 2004 Orange Revolution, and 2014 Euromaidan Revolution all championed the fundamental democratic principles of individual human rights and the rule of law. Nothing comparable has taken place in Russia, hence the passivity and almost complete lack of agency that characterizes modern Russian society.

Ukraine has also experienced an extended period of democratization. With the exception of the 2004 presidential vote, every single Ukrainian election since 1991 has been recognized by international watchdogs as free and fair. The consolidation of Ukraine’s democratic culture has been supported by the country’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations, with both the EU and NATO setting reform benchmarks that have helped to build a genuinely durable democracy. Unlike Ukraine, Russia struggled to establish a credible democratic system during the early post-Soviet period and is now once more a dictatorship.

Since regaining independence in 1991, Ukraine has slowly but steadily sought to distance itself from the country’s imperial inheritance by removing symbols of the totalitarian past. Beginning in the early 1990s with policies that were often enacted at the local level, this process gained momentum following the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution and the 2015 adoption of decommunization laws, which brought Ukraine closer into line with similar legislation already in place in the three Baltic states and much of Central Europe.

Under Putin, Russia has moved in the opposite direction. The Putin regime has built modern Russian national identity around the quasi-religious veneration of the Soviet role in World War II, and has actively rehabilitated Stalin. While most Ukrainians hold negative views of the Soviet dictator, a majority of Russians regard him positively. Crucially, Ukraine’s anti-totalitarian legislation targets both the Soviet and Nazi regimes, while Russia has criminalized any attempts to compare the two. Ukraine’s laws equating Nazi and Soviet crimes reflect resolutions adopted earlier by European bodies including the European Union, the OSCE, and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

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In response to the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022, Ukraine’s decommunization drive has broadened to embrace derussification in a more general sense. This focus on the legacy of the Russian Empire in Ukraine was perhaps long overdue. After all, Putin himself has spoken openly of the continuity between the Czarist and Soviet empires, which he and many others in modern Russia regard as different chapters in the same imperial history. Indeed, in a December 2021 documentary, Putin specifically lamented the fall of the USSR as “the disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union.”

With Russian troops now waging a genocidal war in Ukraine and Putin declaring occupied Ukrainian lands to be “forever Russian,” Ukrainians have responded by seeking to remove all symbols of Russian imperialism from their country. Place names have been changed and statues of Russian generals, politicians, and literary figures have been dismantled. The most striking example of this process was the removal of a major monument honoring eighteenth century Russian Empress Catherine the Great from the heart of Ukrainian Black Sea port Odesa, a city which had formerly been viewed as a bastion of pro-Russian sentiment in independent Ukraine.

The societal shift away from Russian influence in wartime Ukraine is also immediately apparent at street level. In protest at Putin’s weaponization of the Russian language, many Ukrainians have chosen to switch from Russian to Ukrainian in their daily lives. Ukrainian radio stations no longer play Russian pop music, while Ukrainian TV channels have stopped broadcasting the Russian dramas, comedy shows, and soap operas that once dominated the country’s broadcasting schedules. Even the Russia-aligned branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has scrambled to distance itself from Moscow.

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Ukraine’s rejection of the authoritarian past and embrace of democratic values helps explain why the country has been able to resist Russian military aggression so successfully. The vibrant civil society and dynamic culture of volunteerism that have evolved in Ukraine over the past three decades have played key roles in the fightback against Russia’s invasion.

The differences between modern Russia and Ukraine are also very much in evidence along the front lines of the war. The Russian army is still dominated by rigid hierarchies that stifle battlefield initiative, and is marked by a culture of submissive deference to authority characterized by frequent video addresses by soldiers appealing personally to Putin. In contrast, the Ukrainian military displays high degrees of mobility and adaptability that reflect the comparative freedoms of modern Ukrainian society. A Russian officer from the Czarist or Soviet eras would feel instantly at home in Putin’s army, but he would find that he had very little in common with his Ukrainian counterparts.

The momentous events of the past eighteen months have confirmed the historic shifts of the previous three decades. It is now beyond any reasonable doubt that Ukrainians have decisively rejected the imperial past and have instead chosen a European future. By the time Russia’s full-scale invasion began, a majority of Ukrainians had already become confident in their ability to shape their own future and no longer clung to the paternalistic comforts of the authoritarian era.

A May 2023 poll by the Razumkov Center found that a record 87% of Ukrainians rejected the restoration of the Soviet Union. This number is likely to climb even higher as any lingering nostalgia for the authoritarian past fades away amid a mounting catalog of Russian war crimes and the passing of the last fully-fledged generation of Soviet Ukrainians. If Putin hoped his invasion of Ukraine would signal the dawn of a new Russian Empire, he could not have been more mistaken.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His latest book is “Genocide and Fascism. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians.”

Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children may qualify as genocide

Vladyslav Havrylov — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 20:46:13 +0000

South African officials confirmed on July 19 that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend next month’s BRICS summit in Johannesburg amid fears that he may face arrest in connection with a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court over his alleged role in the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. Putin’s decision to stay away from the summit is a very public humiliation for the Russian dictator that highlights the challenges created by the ICC war crimes charges against him. These problems are likely to escalate further as the fate of abducted Ukrainian children continues to attract international attention. Indeed, some have argued that the abductions qualify as genocide.

Russia appears to recognize the scale of the damage being done to the country’s international standing by the scandal surrounding the mass abduction of Ukrainian children, and has responded by attempting to portray these deportations as humanitarian measures designed to protect Ukrainian children caught up in the war zone. During a June visit to St. Petersburg by a delegation of African leaders, Putin claimed that Ukrainian children had been transferred to Russia legally in order “to save their lives and health.”

Russian efforts to justify the deportations on humanitarian grounds are undermined by widespread evidence of indoctrination programs designed to pressure children into abandoning their Ukrainian identity and adopting Russian nationality. If Ukrainian children are being taken to Russia purely for their own safety, why is it necessary to brainwash them with Kremlin propaganda and turn them into Russian citizens?

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The available evidence indicates that Russian efforts to indoctrinate abducted Ukrainian children are both systematic and extensive. A February 2023 report published by the Yale School of Public Health identified a large-scale Russian initiative to re-educate thousands of abducted Ukrainian children via a network of more than 40 camps and facilities stretching from Russian-occupied Crimea to Siberia. “This is not one rogue camp, this is not one rogue mayor or governor,” said Yale Humanitarian Research Lab executive director Nathaniel Raymond. “This is a massive logistical undertaking that does not happen by accident.”

In mid-July 2023, the UK imposed sanctions on a number of Russians tied to the abduction of Ukrainian children. British officials said the deportations were designed to “erase Ukrainian cultural and national identity” via the relocation of Ukrainian children to a network of re-education camps. “In his chilling program of forced child deportation, and the hate-filled propaganda spewed by his lackeys, we see Putin’s true intention: to wipe Ukraine from the map,” commented British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

It is not known how many children are involved in Russia’s abduction program. Ukrainian officials say they have identified almost 20,000 victims, but some fear the true total number may be far higher. Efforts to rescue Ukrainian children taken to Russia are now gaining momentum, but so far only a few hundred have been returned to Ukraine. Many have provided first-hand accounts of indoctrination efforts including daily recitals of the Russian national anthem and punishments for expressions of Ukrainian patriotism.

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The warrant for Putin’s arrest issued by the ICC in March 2023 identifies the “unlawful deportation of children” as a war crime. Some have argued that the methodical nature of the deportations and accompanying “re-education” mean Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children may actually qualify as an act of genocide. Article two of the UN’s 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any one of five acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” The large-scale deportation and indoctrination of Ukrainian children appears to be in line with the fifth act, which is defined as “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

There are signs of growing international awareness regarding the potentially genocidal nature of Russia’s mass abductions. In a move welcomed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution in April 2023 officially recognizing the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia as “genocide.” PACE Deputy Paulo Pisco said the mass deportations of Ukrainian children were organized in a systematic way with the aim of “annihilating every link to and feature of their Ukrainian identity.”

More recently, US Congressman Joe Wilson, who chairs the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, told a hearing dedicated to the plight of Ukrainian children that Russia’s mass abductions qualified as an act of genocide. “Russia has been kidnapping Ukrainian children to Russia or Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine and forcibly russifying them,” he noted. “This is a war crime and I believe amounts to genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.”

Many in Ukraine have echoed these accusations. During a March 2023 interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Ukrainian Nobel laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk described the abduction of Ukrainian children as a component of “the genocidal policy which Russia has imposed against Ukraine.” One month earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the UN Human Rights Council in Switzerland that Moscow’s policy of forced deportations amounted to genocide. “The most chilling crime is that Russia steals Ukrainian children,” he said. “This is a genocidal crime.”

There currently appears to be little prospect of Vladimir Putin or any other senior Kremlin officials facing justice for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children. At the same time, it is also clear that outrage over the deportations has deepened Russia’s isolation and helped consolidate international opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. Putin is no doubt acutely aware that his travel plans now hinge on the likelihood of being arrested for war crimes, while members of the Russian establishment must also recognize that they will be tarnished by association for as long as Putin remains in the Kremlin.

Vladyslav Havrylov is a research fellow with the Georgetown University Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues and a researcher at the Ukrainian project “Where Are Our People.”

The similarity between the imperial and Soviet views is unmistakable, albeit with one dissonant nuance: Soviet nationality policy, while doing all it could to erase Ukrainian national identity, at the same time officially recognized the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic as a state entity and Ukrainians as a separate nationality. Putin has been highly critical of Lenin for this approach, and has claimed the Bolshevik leader was personally responsible for “creating” Ukraine. This line of thinking reached what may be seen as its logical conclusion with Putin’s insistence that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” By denying the existence of a separate Ukrainian national identity, Putin brought the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood into question and set the stage for the current war.

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Russian misconceptions about Ukraine are in part due to the simplistic notion that ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine, as well as those who express an affinity for Russian culture or share Russia’s antagonism toward the EU, NATO, and the West in general, all fall within the same “pro-Russian” category. Likewise, Many Russians have been all too ready to assume that any Ukrainian expressing nostalgia for the Soviet era is waiting to be “liberated” by Moscow. These misconceptions have been echoed by numerous commentators in the West, who have similarly treated evidence of favorable Ukrainian attitudes toward modern Russia or the Soviet past as indications of a desire for some form of Russian reunion.

In reality, being “pro-Russian” is understood one way in Ukrainian cities like Donetsk, Kramatorsk, or Mariupol, and quite differently in Moscow, Omsk, or Tomsk. During the initial stages of Russian aggression against Ukraine in April 2014, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted a wide-ranging poll in the eight southeastern Ukrainian provinces (excluding Crimea) targeted by the Kremlin. This revealed that 70 percent of respondents were against separation from Ukraine and unification with Russia, while just 15 percent were in favor.

If separation from Ukraine was not on their wish list, what did they in fact want? A relative majority of 45 percent preferred the decentralization of power and greater rights for their region; another 25 percent favored a federated Ukraine, while only 19 percent were happy with the existing relationship with Kyiv. Other surveys conducted at around the same time yielded similar findings.

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Unsurprisingly, Russia’s full-scale invasion has further shaped Ukrainian attitudes toward issues of national identity. Today, the people of Ukraine are more consolidated as a political nation than at any time since regaining independence more than thirty years ago. According to the Razumkov Centre, 94 percent of respondents in a May 2023 survey expressed pride in their Ukrainian citizenship; 74 percent expressed feelings of patriotism and love for their country; and 71 percent were ready to come to its defense, either with weapons in hand or as participants in volunteer support groups.

Meanwhile, negative attitudes toward Russia and Russian citizens have skyrocketed. At the end of 2019, only 20 percent of Ukrainians held negative attitudes toward Russians; six months after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion in September 2022, 80 percent of respondents asserted that they would not allow Russians into Ukraine. In terms of attitudes toward Russia, the turnaround has been even more drastic. In early February 2022, about a week before the Russian invasion, 34 percent of Ukrainians held positive views of Russia. That number dropped to just two percent three months later, with 92 percent saying they viewed the country in a negative light.

With the war clearly going badly for the Kremlin, there could now be a glimmer of hope for some reality-based adjustments to Russian illusions about Ukraine. Russian MP Konstanin Zatulin, who is well known for championing the plight of Russian “compatriots” abroad and promoting aggressive policies toward Ukraine, has recently questioned the wisdom of denying Ukrainian identity. “I would be happy if there was no Ukraine, but if we continue to constantly repeat that there is no Ukraine and no Ukrainians,” this will only strengthen their resistance on the battlefield, he noted at a June 2023 forum in Moscow.

Zatulin’s comments hint at growing recognition in Russia that widely held beliefs about Ukraine’s indivisibility from Russia are both inaccurate and unhelpful. However, resistance to the entire notion of Ukrainian statehood is so deeply ingrained in Russian society that it may take generations before the attitudes underpinning the current war are no longer dominant.

Roman Solchanyk is author of “Ukraine and Russia: The Post-Soviet Transition” (2001). He has previously served as a senior analyst at the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute and the RAND Corporation.

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Nobody will have failed to notice that while Putin has continued to talk tough, he failed to crush the Wagner uprising and instead struck some kind of deal with Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin and his mutinous troops. Putin demonstrated a readiness to compromise despite the fact that Wagner fighters reportedly shot down a number of Russian aircraft and killed numerous Russian airmen. This indicated an apparent lack of concern for the lives of Russian servicemen at a time when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have already been killed as a result of Putin’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine.

The brief Wagner uprising also revealed a remarkable shortage of Russian military strength and fighting spirit on the home front. Wagner troops were able to seize one of Russia’s largest cities, Rostov-on-Don, without a fight. Perhaps even more significantly, they were cheered and supported by crowds of locals. Wagner forces then advanced to within 200 kilometers of Moscow virtually unopposed before choosing to turn back.

Meanwhile, there was no surge in street-level or elite support for Putin. Instead, pro-war propagandists fell largely silent as rumors swirled of establishment figures fleeing Moscow. For a brief period, Russia looked to be leaderless and defenseless. The immediate danger has now passed, but these stunning developments have changed attitudes toward Putin and his regime in fundamental ways.

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It would appear that history repeats itself. Just as in 1990 very few foresaw the looming collapse of the USSR, Russia now once again looks suddenly fragile. Unsurprisingly, this is regarded as good news in Ukraine, where any sign of Russian instability is welcomed. Attitudes elsewhere are not so clear-cut. Many international observers are openly alarmed by the potential demise of the Russian Federation in its current form. They worry about the fate of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, and also question the legitimacy of the many new states that could potentially emerge from the wreckage of Putin’s Russia.

These concerns mirror attitudes during the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. Indeed, it is often forgotten that US President George Bush H. W. Bush came to Kyiv in the weeks before Ukraine’s August 1991 declaration of independence to argue against such a move in his “Chicken Kiev” speech. Many of today’s leaders share these fears over the potential disintegration of Russia. Nevertheless, the Wagner revolt has demonstrated that the Putin regime may well collapse due to its own internal weaknesses, regardless of the Western world’s wishes.

Elements of the international community, including in the West, also cling to the idea of reaching some kind of compromise and returning to business as usual with Russia. While it is obvious to almost everyone in Ukraine and in nearby countries including Poland and the Baltic states that Russia will only stop when it is decisively defeated, there are still many observers elsewhere who believe they can turn back the clock to 2021 or even 2013. They fondly recall a time when Vladimir Putin was the respected leader of a economically strong nation at the heart of global affairs, and dream of returning to this state of affairs. Such thinking is dangerously delusional.

In reality, there can be no way back to international respectability for Putin. As a result of the disastrous invasion of Ukraine, he will be an enemy of the entire Western world for as long as he remains in power. Crucially for the future of his regime, Putin is also clearly no longer able to guarantee domestic security or protect the interests of the Russian elite on the international stage.

As the international community assesses the fallout from the Wagner revolt, it no longer makes sense to be afraid of a new Russian collapse. On the contrary, the time has come to begin preparing for the possibility of a post-Putin Russia. Western policymakers should now be thinking seriously about how to make any future transition as smooth as possible. This means preparing for the emergence of a democratic Russia, and also exploring what a breakup of the current Russian Federation into a number of smaller states would mean for international security.

When similar processes were underway in the early 1990s, the international community prioritized stability above all else, paving the way for the eventual rise of a revisionist Russia under Putin. This time, a new Russian collapse should be managed in order to bring about a sustainable shift toward democracy. The experience of the past three decades has demonstrated that this is the only way to secure a durable peace. Today’s Western leaders must learn from the mistakes of their predecessors in order to avoid repeating them.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a member of the Ukrainian parliament with the European Solidarity party.

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