Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 28 – Many Western
policies are based on the notion that Vladimir Putin will change course once he
sees that the costs of his invasion of Ukraine far exceed any possible
benefits, but such an approach is based on the false assumption that the
Kremlin leader is a rational actor.
In fact, Russian analyst Dmitry
Oreshkin argues, Putin is anything but a rational actor and instead is trapped
in a set of assumptions about the nature of the world, many of them inherited
from his Soviet past, that make it more likely he will continue to expand the
war however much his or his country’s interests as understood by others will suffer.
Putin and his entourage, the analyst
continues, still are under the power of “an incurable Soviet mythology which
arises from ignorance” of the way the world is, and that drives much of what he
and they do (nvua.net/publications/siloviki-vokrug-putina-govoryat-chto-rossiyskaya-armiya-silnee-ukrainskoy-i-eto-nado-ispolzovat-rossiyskiy-politolog-31334.html).
He and then believe, Oreshkin says,
in the Stalinist notion that “the bigger the land, the richer the territory”
rather than recognizing that size and wealth are not necessarily the same thing
and that additional territory may in fact entail additional and unwelcome costs
rather than benefits.
But Putin, those around him, and
increasingly thanks to Moscow’s propaganda many in the Russian population
believe as Stalin did and thus the others view the current Kremlin leader as someone
who is addressing and thus helping to overcome the wound to their pride that
they suffered as a result of the demise of the USSR.
From this perspective, “others have
cut off our land, and NATO is surrounding us.” And Putin is “using this Soviet
mantra to boost his rating,” but as he does so, he is running into “really
existing limitations which are not considered in this mantra and which cannot
be considered because it – the mantra – is something invented.”
“If Putin were rational and lived in
a contemporary system of values,” Oreshkin says, the Kremlin leader would have
long ago recognized that he and Russia have no need for a Donetsk “republic”
and that having one would only put new burdens on Russia, burdens that it is
not easily able to bear.
Even now, deciding to sacrifice the
Donbas would be “a rational choice,” the analyst continues, “but it would be a
catastrophic loss for him because in that event he would begin to be viewed as
a traitor.” As a result and against all rational logic, Putin has thus been “forced
to play the role of the ingatherer of Russian lands.”
He is quite willing to play this
role, but his own policies are working against it. By invading Ukraine, he is
driving all the rest of what might be a Russian world into opposition – even
including Belarus. “In this sense,” Oreshkin says, “Putin is a loser, but he
will devote all his efforts in order that people in Russia will not understand
this. Therefore, he will present himself as a victor,” whatever his real
losses.
That is one of Putin’s failures. The
second has the same roots and involves the contradiction between the ingatherer
of Russian lands and the actual lack of the resources that would be necessary
for him to play that role. Related to
that is that he must navigate between appearing macho at home while not
appearing too macho for the West’s tastes in Ukraine.
Putin also is in trouble because of
his “personal problems” which impose a particular and false view of the
world. “As a chekist, he cannot allow
that something happens on the earth in a natural way.” He believes that it is
always “organized by one or another group” and “therefore, he really thinks
that the Americans made the Maidan.”
This is not so much paranoia as some
may think but rather a limitation in Putin’s ability to think about the world,
Oreshkin says. “He simply cannot
understand that people would like to live in a country where elections are
honest, where the authorities steal a little less, and where tax payers can
exert a little more influence on the politics of their country.”
Instead, he “sees his function as
one of the leaders of an influence group to oppose other influence groups which
in his understanding are eating away at Russian sovereignty which he conceives
as the sovereignty of his influence group” and not that of the Russian people
as a whole.
As a result, “he does not understand
who is sovereign in Ukraine. He thinks that it is Obama, just as many
[Russians] do. What can he do in this situation? He is required to oppose these
influence groups which took territory away from the Soviet Union.”
At the same time, Putin “does
understand” that Russia is falling ever further behind the West economically
and that he “cannot offer Ukraine a more effective economic model, while the EU
can. He can only offer Ukraine a discount on the price of gas or in the
opposite case shut it off. That is all he can do.”
Only in war can he maintain the
competitiveness of the Soviet past. In a direct clash with Ukraine
economically, Russia will fall behind in two or three years; but militarily, it
is still stronger. In that circumstance,
Putin cannot allow Ukrainians to have a better standard of living or stability
not only because of Ukraine but also because of Russia as well.
Putin thus wants to ensure that
Ukraine cannot become a member of Western institutions like the EU and NATO,
and he sees the only way to do that is to continue to generate instability in
Ukraine via military means. He certainly cannot offer Ukrainians something
better than the West can.
He will thus be compelled to
continue to fight even though the Russian army is not in a position to take
Kyiv except at costs Russians won’t pay, however wonderful the Russian army is
in the eyes of Putin’s military advisors.
But because he sees no way out for himself but to go on as now, he will
find himself caught in an extremely unwelcome and unnecessary war.
What Putin is doing and will do, Oreshkin
concludes, is “nothing new” for Moscow.
The Russian analyst points to the way in which the Russian government
used the Karabakh conflict in the 1990s. At that time, the conflict bubbled
along when nothing was at stake for Moscow and then exploded when Moscow was
concerned about an oil or gas pipeline.
“Today,” Oreshkin says, “Eastern Ukraine
is going to fill the very same function” that Karabakh did then.
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