Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 25 – Aleksandr
Sytin, an historian who quit the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies
because of its imperialist and anti-Western views, says that despite widespread
support for Vladimir Putin, no one in Russia “will die” for the Kremlin leader and
those who are prepared to die now in Ukraine are a greater threat to Russia
than anyone imagines.
On the one hand, he says, many in
the elite feel themselves to be “the new nobility,” as the title of a book by
Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan puts it, and they will be loyal only until the
money runs out, something he suggests is true of the Russian population more
broadly as well (svoboda.org/content/article/26810300.html).
And on the other, Sytin suggests,
those who are prepared to die in Ukraine are not dying for Putin as people did
for Stalin but rather because they are people who because of their life
experiences including in particular participation in other conflicts do not fit
in and see violence as their only way of life.
Such people “are going [to Ukraine]
to die but not for Putin. Among them … are many who have a very, very critical
attitude toward the Putin regime, albeit from opposite side of Europe and the
United States.” They “accuse it of indecisiveness,” and “these people for
Russia and perhaps for Europe are more dangerous than the current regime.”
As long as Putin is attacking, they
will be with him, even egging him on; but if he ever stops, they will be
furious, Sytin suggests.
In many ways, these Russians
resemble those who have been fighting on the side of the Islamic State and who
are now returning to Europe, he continues. “A social stratum of people has
appeared in the world which is interested in permanent war, which cannot do
anything else and doesn’t want to.”
“France has just encountered this
problem, but Russia will inevitably encounter it as well,” Sytin says. Perhaps this will occur not throughout
Russia, but it is almost certain to occur in places like Rostov Oblast “which
is filled with national contradictions.”
And this has important consequences which are not being widely
considered.
Sytin says that he understands
perfectly well that it is “in the traditions of European thought to see the hand
of the Kremlin in everything just as in Moscow it is customary to see the hand
of the State Department in everything.” But this is not so in general and it is
not so in Ukraine at least not in every case.
What is happening in the Donbas, he
suggests, is at one level like what happened in Crimea. Some of the forces
there are fighting for Moscow because they believe Moscow when its
propagandists say it is fighting for the same things that they want, but they
are rapidly discovering that Moscow isn’t really fighting for those or for them.
Moscow is not prepared to annex the
Donbas to Russia, he says, because that would create problems for Russia
without helping it to achieve its most important goals – keeping Ukraine out of
the European Union and out of NATO. And
that is best achieved by a continuing conflict, not by resolving it in favor of
one side or the other.
The reason for that, Sytin says, is
that Moscow understands that neither the EU nor NATO “will take in a country
which has unresolved conflicts” with its neighbors. Both alliances have said
so. “And therefore Russia is interested in having this conflict continue”
rather than ending it. Some pro-Russian
fighters clearly are beginning to recognize that.
What they and others who are “not
prepared to die for Putin” will do next will thus determine the outcome not
only in Ukraine but in Russia as well.
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