Atlantic Council By Peter Dickinson 3/23/2022
Despite detailed advance warnings of Vladimir Putin’s plans for a major war in Ukraine, many observers remained in denial until the very last minute over the possibility of a full-scale Russian invasion. With the war now entering its second month, this sense of disbelief lingers on and is now preventing the international community from grasping the full gravity of the situation in Ukraine.
While Western politicians and commentators continue to discuss off-ramps and compromise settlements, few in Moscow are under any such illusions. Those close to Putin understand that he views the current conflict as a holy war and has long since passed the point of no return. The Russian ruler will settle for nothing less than the complete subjugation of Ukraine or the country’s destruction.
The terrifying scale of Putin’s war aims in Ukraine may seem unthinkable to most rational outside observers, but they make perfect sense when viewed through the prism of his toxic worldview.
Throughout his reign, Putin has been driven by a deep-seated resentment of Russia’s post-Soviet decline and a burning desire to revive the country’s superpower status. Far from wishing to reestablish the USSR, he embraces traditional Russian nationalism and dreams of recreating the autocratic empire of the Czars.
Putin sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the demise of historical Russia” and has frequently complained that the post-Soviet settlement cut millions of Russians off from their motherland while robbing Russia of its rightful heartlands. This sense of grievance has fueled Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, a country whose entire existence has come to represent the alleged injustice of the post-1991 world order.
Putin is not the first Russian ruler to deny Ukraine’s right to exist. On the contrary, Ukraine denial is a common thread running through Russian history that stretches back hundreds of years and remains widespread in today’s Russia. However, few have ever embraced this doctrine of denial as fervently as Putin, who has made clear that ending Ukrainian independence is a sacred mission which will define his place in history.
The current war is merely the latest and most dramatic stage in this long-term campaign. Putin’s first bid to end Ukrainian independence came in 2004 and saw him personally visit Kyiv on the eve of the country’s presidential election to campaign for the pro-Kremlin candidate. This hubristic intervention backfired disastrously, enraging millions of otherwise apolitical Ukrainians and helping to spark mass pro-democracy protests that came to be known as the Orange Revolution.
Ukraine’s embrace of democracy and historic turn towards the West in the years following the Orange Revolution infuriated Putin and further convinced him of the need to reassert Russian control over the country. Haunted by the people power uprisings that swept through Central Europe in the late 1980s and triggered the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, he saw Ukraine’s democratic awakening as a Western plot and a direct threat to his own authoritarian regime.
More:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/vladimir-putins-ukraine-war-can-end-in-only-two-ways-genocide-or-defeat/
