Putin’s War in Ukraine More like Soviet Crushing of Prague Spring than Russian Wars in Chechnya, de Waal Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 6 – As Putin’s war in Ukraine has ground on, many analysts have sought to find analogies in Russian history that help to provide an understanding of what is going on. One popular one now is to compare Ukraine with Stalin’s Winter War in 1939-1940. Another is to compare it with post-Soviet Russian wars against Chechnya.

            The first captures the common hubris of the aggressor and the heroic resistance of those whose country was being invaded. The second focuses on the common massive destruction of life and property by the invader and the ways in which the conflict inevitably bled back into Russian life and made any return to the past impossible.

            But Thomas de Waal, a British specialist on Chechnya, says that while that conflict has a lot in common with what is happening in Ukraine now, a far better analogy is between Ukraine in 2022 and the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968 as both involved the suppression of one state by another.

            In an interview with Chechen specialist Mairbek Vachagayev for the Kavkazr portal, de Waal says that despite that conclusion, the Russian invasion of Chechnya has much to say about the war in Ukraine both in terms of wh the war happened and how it affected Russia afterwards (kavkazr.com/a/voyny-rossii-v-chechne-i-ukraine-estj-li-shodstvo/31788584.html).

            Among the commonalities between the Chechen and Ukrainian campaign he points to are the following:

·       In both, the political leadership of the country being invaded immediately gained the support of its population even among those who earlier had been opposed to it.

·       Both conflicts highlighted “the fatal weakness of the Russian regime,” the ability of one ruler to make decisions without being constrained by the checks and balances of others or being held to account.

·       And both reflected “one and the same trend in Russian politics,” a belief in the importance of maintaining or restoring an imperial state.

But at the same time, there are important differences between Chechnya and Ukraine, differences that arise from far more than just the international recognition of the latter and its enormous size:

·       In the case of Chechnya, the international community almost unanimously considered Chechnya as part of Russia and so while it condemned Russian brutality, it did not seek to block Russian actions or impose serious punishment on Moscow for what it did, opening the way to more such actions.

·       During the Chechen war and subsequent Russian actions in Georgia and Ukraine in 2014, the West believed that compromise was possible. Now, “no compromise resolution is visible.” Russia must either win or lose, and that changes the nature of the conflict for both sides.

·       And finally, in part because of that, de Waal concludes, “Russia after this war will have to begin from square one” not only in terms of its relations with its neighbors and the international community but internally as well.