Dear Putinians, it is not NATO’s fault that Putin wants to eat Ukraine
Are you still convinced that Russia is a war for NATO? That is why this belief is wrong. The in-depth analysis by Enzo Reale for Atlantico Quotidiano
On the morning of February 26, just 48 hours after the war against Ukraine began, some Russian media connected to the Kremlin (including RIA Novosti and Sputnik ) publishedan article celebrating the lightning victory of Russian troops.
The title left no room for interpretation: "The offensive of Russia and the new world".
It was a kind of collective editorial probably destined to be released simultaneously in the country after the capitulation of the government of Kiev. In the following hours the piece was removed but it is still possible to find it online on some sites.
It is an extraordinary document in its own way for two reasons: the first is that it demonstrates Moscow's conviction of winning easily over an opponent who should have melted like snow in the sun in the face of the Russian advance; the second – which we will focus on now – is that, although it is not an official declaration coming from the power apparatus, it confirms and reaffirms point by point the nationalist ideology of Greater Russia that underlies the reconquest operation of Ukraine.
In the article, signed by Petr Akopov, the dissolution of the government of Kiev, the control of the Ukrainian territory, the end of the state sovereignty of the country and the solution of the “Ukrainian question” are identified as the objectives of the invasion. NATO is nominated only once, confirming the fact that the pretext of expansion – with which Western realists and Putinians explain and in fact justify the Kremlin's actions – represents a collateral factor in the regime's vision.
It was already clear, however, in the speech in which Putin recognized the independence of the separatist republics of Donbass, which in a few days had become a cornerstone of Russian revisionist revanchism. In that proclamation the dictator dedicated only a few passages to NATO in the final part, reserving the rest of the dissertation for the historical reasons which, according to him, required the return of Ukraine to Russia. But the editorial undertakes to clarify this point unequivocally.
"The question of national security – the article reads – that is, the creation of an outpost of the West to put pressure on us is only the second" of the "fundamental reasons" for the Russian intervention. "The first is the complex of a divided people, of national humiliation, when the Russian house first lost part of its foundation (Kiev), and then was forced to deal with the existence of two states, not one, but two peoples ": the reference is to the collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years ago, a few lines previously defined as" the tragedy of 1991, this terrible catastrophe of our history ".
It therefore fell to Vladimir Putin the honor and the burden of "returning Ukraine, or rather bringing it back to Russia" and he – as a leader – took on "the historical responsibility" of "not leaving future generations solution of the Ukrainian question ". Read well, the solution (definitive, of course) of the Ukrainian question. Thanks to this mission, which Putin gave himself and carried out (always keep in mind that the editorial was written as if everything had already happened), Russia was able to restore its unity and "its historical fullness, bringing together the Russian world, the Russian people, in its entirety of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians ”.
Are you still convinced that it is a war for NATO?
Let's keep reading then. “Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up on Kiev?”, The author asks rhetorically before launching the thrust on the European integration process that would only take place thanks to German unification, interpreted as a courtesy of Moscow ("albeit not very intelligent", he adds by way of gloss). Trying to free Ukraine from Russian influence was "the height of geopolitical ingratitude and stupidity", as was not understanding that "Russia was returning", as Putin warned in his 2007 Munich speech. But "now this problem has disappeared: Ukraine has returned to Russia ”.
The focus of the editorial then shifts to future relations with the West and to economic sanctions, evidently expected. Here returns the lashing and shamelessly provocative judgment on Western behavior, already expressed by Medvedev in the Security Council: “In trying to punish us, the West thinks that bilateral relations are of vital importance for us. But this has not been the case for a long time ", accompanied by the same threat already reiterated by Putin on two occasions – first in the declaration of war and then with the raising of the nuclear alert level -" for the West an intensification of the confrontation would entail costs huge, and the main ones would not be cheap at all ".
The reasoning continues by leveraging the Western division, a must in Putinian rhetoric. The search for European autonomy (the article was written before the battery of sanctions decided by Brussels) is countered by the need of the "Anglo-Saxons" to keep the European continent "under control". Even though the West now seems to unite against Russia (but also China), the editorial warns, "the European project – derailed by the Anglo-Saxons – will simply collapse in the medium term". The conclusion is triumphant, as the Ukrainian campaign was intended to be: "Russia has not only challenged the West, it has shown that the era of Western global domination can be considered completely and definitively over".
You can catch your breath. It is the Rosetta stone of Moscow's intentions and goals.
Need more to elucidate the nature of the threat? Putin has clearly explained it to us on several occasions, starting with last July's essay on "historical unity between Russians and Ukrainians", a veritable manual of revisionism prodromal to action. But there was no one listening and, if there was, he preferred to ignore it.
With the Moscow troops encircling Kiev and the main population centers of the country, with the intensification of the bombings and the war offensive, the geopolitical analyzes of the eve only engaged on the objective factors of the behavior of international actors have collapsed like paper houses. The words of dictators are almost never pure rhetorical exercises, as often happens in democratic contexts, especially when they claim to outline a real doctrine. Normally the initiatives of authoritarian regimes are consistent with the ideological premises that anticipate them, as the history of the twentieth century should have taught.
The July essay, the proclamation of recognition of the separatist republics, the announcement of the invasion and the collective editorial just analyzed are not simple documents of a geopolitical nature (no, it is not NATO) but a real declaration of war on Western liberal system, of which Ukraine is currently the first tragic battlefield. Not a conflict for "national security" or "to protect" the Russian ethnic group in Ukraine therefore, as Putinian propaganda stated before the attack, but an ideological war of conquest like few others have seen in recent history. "We do not need history but sacred legends", said Vladimir Medinsky, former minister of culture and today head of the delegation sent from Moscow to "negotiate" with Zelensky.
The current situation is the result of the progressive sclerosis of the Putin system, which has transformed from a potentially modernizing force to a neo-imperial project, a concept that has forcefully entered public discourse after the annexation of Crimea and has now risen to state dogma. A project probably not shared by the elites of the country but today totally in the hands of his father-master, who reigns undisputed in the midst of a climate of silence and constant manipulation. A vision that promises to condemn the Russian people to isolation and irrelevance, in an internal and international context in which the only thing that matters is the survival of the regime and of those who claim to embody its manifest destiny.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cari-putiniani-non-e-colpa-della-nato-se-putin-vuole-papparsi-lucraina/ on Sat, 05 Mar 2022 07:39:05 +0000.