The Russian intervention creates a new landscape with great dangers and difficulties. Although Western governments and their intelligence services have repeatedly insisted that there was an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is quite clear that this public insistence was more about trying to prevent Russia from taking military action than with a real certainty. This may explain the relative surprise caused by the announcement of a large-scale military operation against Ukraine that went far beyond the mere military reinforcement of the well-recognized “people’s democracies” in Donbas.
After all, the very method that was finally chosen by the Russian side, shows that the design had enough depth. In fact, it turns out that even proposing a total change in the collective security regime in Europe last December was more of an attempt to secure a position than to actually persuade the West into a debate, knowing that the proposals would be rejected. This was followed by the re-escalation of the military presence and an attempt for negotiation, which is now clear that the horizon was always the military involvement and of course then the sequence with the recognition of the “people’s democracies”, the request for “help”, the announcement of the mission. “Peacekeeping force” and finally the decision to fully attack and invade Ukraine.
Why did Russia choose such a big military operation?
The crucial question is why Russia chose to launch such a large-scale military operation, which was certain from the outset that it would bring it into a vertical rift with the West, could hardly be legitimized in the eyes of part of world public opinion and would lead it to try to occupy a large country and force it to “regime change”, especially when there is the very recent painful experience of the Americans themselves in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The only assessment that can be made is that the Russian leadership, that is, this circle of people representing those parts of the former Soviet state apparatus who felt that their country was going through a series of humiliations in the 1990s and therefore needed a state reorganization. and a kind of capitalism that will not lead to the dissolution of the social fabric, estimates that the world has entered a new phase.
In the Russian reading of the state of the world, the West, that is, the countries that recognize American leadership and hegemony, represented by NATO and the US special agreements with countries such as Australia or Japan, are now preparing for military pressure not only against powerful regional powers, such as the pattern in the Iraq war, but also against their “big” rivals, namely Russia initially and China.
In other words, in the eyes of Russia, the first to “cross the Rubicon” were the Westerners, who, according to the Russian reading, orchestrated the overthrow of political conditions in Ukraine and ignited the bloody civil war with the eastern regions.
Let us not forget that in the Russian eyes, the developments in Syria, where she had seen the possible “regime change” as a possibility to cancel her own military presence in the region, also counted.
This means that Russia considered that we are now on a new page in international relations, where there is no image of an “international community” as it could be defined in the post-Soviet years, and where the only way to respond to the possibility of being in the crosshairs of a NATO military pressure was to initially demand “new rules” based on the acceptance of “zones of influence” and “collective security” rules to ensure a balance of power, and in the absence of such guarantees to enforce them by force.
In a way, in the eyes of the Russian leadership, if the West were able to wage large and protracted wars against states that were seen as sponsoring terrorism or destabilizing forces, it could, at the same time, in her eyes it was wrongly created with these borders during the dissolution of the USSR and should at least have remained in a “special relationship” with Russia, similar to the one chosen by Belarus.
The great “gambling” – risk of Russia
However, this is a move with great risk and very big consequences. The main question concerns precisely the process of “regime change” in Ukraine, what Putin described in his speech as “de-Naziization” of Ukraine.
It is clear that Russian operations are aimed at controlling Ukraine’s infrastructure, preventing the Ukrainian armed forces from putting up much resistance, and arresting a number of people and politicians who in the eyes of the Russian government are responsible for a number of crimes, so that A new government can be formed in Ukraine that chooses to be “neutral”, ie it can not be used as a springboard for attacks against Russia.
Having obviously studied the US experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, Russia would obviously like to avoid a prolonged military presence, with all the risk of engaging in an extremely destructive prolonged conflict, or attacks on the civilian population that would create an even greater problem. legalization.
However, experience itself has shown that this is not self-evident. Nor is it easy to see how an internal dynamic could be formed in Ukraine that would move in terms of wider legitimacy in this direction. Obviously in Ukraine, a country far more complex in its history and identity than the current version of Ukrainian nationalism suggests, there are many people who would like a better relationship with Russia, starting with solid Russian-speaking populations in the eastern provinces, while measures taken by the last Ukrainian governments, mainly in the form of an attempt to radically restrict the Russian language and Russian identity (as well as the communist one) had created resentment. At the same time, however, the traumatic experience of military operations will exacerbate anti-Russian sentiment in a significant part of Ukrainian society which, in one way or another, is the tragic victim of cynical political calculations and aspirations on various fronts.
And the weight of such “wounds” is something familiar to the Russian leadership from the similar experiences within the Warsaw Pact, in Hungary and Czechoslovakia (indirectly in Poland where it was also the point where the Soviet leadership avoided the invasion, effectively investing in the coup Jaruzelski).
Russia is also apparently investing in a rapid collapse of Ukraine’s state apparatus and political system that would allow other powers to act as representatives of the need to end operations and negotiate “the next day” with Russia.
But whether, how and especially with what legitimacy from Ukrainian society (which is the element that would make the occupation short), remains at the moment Putin’s biggest risk, and the one that will largely determine the outcome that of the initiative.
The embarrassment of the West
At the same time, the West is in a state of embarrassment. It could be argued that although the US and the EU, in one way or another, supported the choice of successive Ukrainian governments to break with Russia, including the absence of pressure to launch a democratic solution to the existing Ukrainian internal issue in the eastern regions, when Ukraine was faced with the possibility of a military operation, were reduced to the threat of sanctions and did not substantially support the Ukrainian government.
The sanctions themselves have limits. So far, the sanctions are not such that they can “bring to their knees” Russia, which has made great efforts to shield its economy so that it can afford the current costs, while some may retaliate. To the extent that neither the violent complete detachment of Russia from the dollar-dominated international trade sector (a possibility for which Russia says it is prepared) nor the large-scale disruption of Russian energy flows (which in turn is pressure from Moscow), Russia could withstand, given that it is a country with a large industrial, technological and scientific infrastructure.
At the same time, Russia maintains a range of alliances outside the West. The Chinese stance is typical in this regard, especially since Beijing considers this to be the focus in the medium term and has always had the Taiwan issue open. The Chinese side’s statements are cautious, but at the same time it is clear that the Russian company would like to see a positive outcome, as this would ensure that those who invest in a change in the current conditions in relation to Taiwan in the direction of independence are barred. .
Obviously there are those who argue that anyway it will simply accelerate and consolidate a division of the world evident for a long time, a controversy that will increasingly refer to a clash of geopolitical blocs, albeit without the element of clash of social systems that was the element of the first Cold War. And the current rhetoric about the confrontation between “democracies” and “authoritarian regimes” refers to this. Only at the same time does the very development of the situation in Ukraine, where the West is undoubtedly responsible for not pursuing a peaceful solution to both the Ukrainian question and the question of collective security, show the dangers of this strategy.
The difficult road to peace
The crucial question now is how not only will the hostilities end but there will be a comprehensive peace process in a Europe to which, 23 years after the bombings in Yugoslavia, war returns.
The reason is that the immediate need for a ceasefire, a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, in order to signal a more peaceful turn of the page, can only be accompanied by the resolution of the Ukrainian issue ( the end of a civil conflict (essentially) as well as a discussion on how to avoid the transition to a “balance of power” logic that will simply be the nickname for the constant accumulation of conditions for the next “hot” conflict.
