I’ll explain Putin’s crazy theories about Ukraine. Word of prof russo
What thinks Andrei Kolesnikov, researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, on Putin's thought and actions. Nona Mikhelidze's interview for Affarinternazionali
Andrei Kolesnikov is a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, a research institute that closed shortly after the start of the Russian war against Ukraine. Kolesnikov's research focuses on the main trends shaping Russian domestic politics, with a particular focus on ideological changes within Russian society. The podcast of the interview by Nona Mikhelidze, senior researcher at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, is available here .
Thanks Andrei for accepting our invitation. Let me ask you directly: what is the main reason why President Putin started the large-scale war against Ukraine?
I see no rational reason. Rather, it is his personal idea of the world order. The West has not recognized him as an equal for several decades and Putin has decided to start rebuilding the world for himself. To do this, he needed extraordinary actions, like this war. And I believe that mobilizing the masses in support of him is also an important, but secondary objective, because the main objective is to create, recreate, remake the world according to its rules, according to its vision of the world. All of this seems irrational and horrible for the 21st century; but he is a person of the mid-twentieth century and that's why he did this. And speaking of rational issues, I would say that, I don't know if he wanted to or not, but he strengthened his personalistic power, inside Russia. By the Russians it got stronger, and by the Russians I mean not only the public, but also the elite.
While assuming that Russia has invaded Ukraine, there is still a great deal of debate here in Italy about who should be blamed in this war. One hypothesis is that Ukraine's intention to join NATO or, more generally, NATO's eastward expansion since 1999 was the motivation that prompted President Putin to invade Ukraine. There are also other groups of experts who believe that this assertive foreign policy actually has something to do with Putin's domestic policy and is more related to the strengthening of authoritarianism in Russia. What do you think?
It is more about the authoritarian nature of the Russian regime. It may not be so visible from the West, but since 2012, when Putin returned to power, and since 2014, when he annexed Crimea, it has provoked an unprecedented wave of, shall we say, quasi-patriotism. Then, from 2020, when he had almost finished his presidential term and canceled the democratic conquests of Russia, he built a full-fledged authoritarian regime, even with elements of totalitarianism, in terms of mobilizing the people, trying to make the people expressed himself more in support of this regime with the harsh repression not only of the political opposition, but also of civil society as such. Therefore, NATO is not a real reason, it is an artificial reason. Everyone understands that NATO was not a threat to Russia at all.
Putin believes that Ukraine has always been his territory, that it belongs to him and that the West should move away from it. And after years of stalemate, because with the Minsk negotiations he simply imitated peaceful activity, negotiating activity, he decided to take resolute steps to achieve his personal goal of making Ukraine part of Russia. And, once again, in this sense, the European Union, NATO, the United States of America are simply artificial reasons for this conflict. Putin simply pursued his own goals.
When he says he wanted to make Ukraine part of Russia, what exactly does he mean? I mean, part of the Russian Federation, or was there any plans to create a confederation between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine?
We can speak in terms of territories, legality, legal borders, something like that, but he thinks in ideological, philosophical terms, like " Russkiy Mir", "the Russian world". And in this sense, at least the east center, the south of Ukraine, these territories of the Russian world, perhaps in the form of a buffer state, perhaps in the form of a quasi-legal territory of Russia, it doesn't matter. He just wants to control the territory. In this sense, he simply wants to recreate, to some extent, the Russian empire. Putin is primarily imperialist, not Russian nationalist. For him it is important to recreate justice, to give back the territories. And right now it is achieving this goal. When he occupied, for example, the territories of the Kherson region, the areas in the Zaparojia region, he meant that it was not an occupation, but a liberation of these territories. Yes, that wasn't his goal initially. He only meant Donetsk and Luhansk, but in this situation, if the Russian army has taken these territories, it is a good reason to keep them under Russian control. Perhaps, according to him, they could be independent territories. They could be territories that are part of Russia. This is a secondary issue for him, the most important story is the control over these territories.
So, following his logic, Putin should be opposed not only to Ukraine's accession to NATO, but also to Ukraine's accession to the EU, because this would imply the loss of all of Ukraine, its geo-economic orbit and geocultural?
Absolutely yes, he is right. This is his interpretation. And in some speeches, Foreign Minister Lavrov said that Ukraine's accession to the European Union is unacceptable for Russia. Thus, we can talk about the subject in cultural and historical terms. For Russia, any kind of membership of Ukraine in a European organization is truly ideologically unacceptable. It is impossible to anchor Ukraine to the West. And remember that in 2014, the main trigger of the Russian aggression and the invasion of Crimea was the fact that Ukraine had decided to sign the association agreements with the European Union. So, in this sense, Putin simply continues the his strategy.
When Putin started the war on February 24, it seemed that his overall goal was to control the whole of Ukraine, which is why he attempted to storm Kyiv. Then we saw that Ukraine managed to defend itself and now Lavrov, a few days ago, said that the priority would be to defend or liberate the Donbass region. But once again, we are seeing the occupation of Kherson, Melitopol and Mariupol. And there are those who argue that the Kremlin is still considering another assault on Kyiev after completing the battle in the Donbass. So, is there an ultimate goal at this stage of the war? Or, if it is decided on the battlefield, what will be the ultimate goal?
Putin keeps repeating that everything goes according to his plan, but no one knows the details of his plan, nor the intermediate stages of this plan. And I would say that Putin's goals are opportunistic, they depend on the current situations, the current situation of the battlefields, the impossible negotiations that have disappeared. The problem is that there is no way for him to go back, because by getting bogged down in war, expanding as territory to occupy, not showing good will, Putin is cutting the way to peace negotiations. This is the main problem. And in that sense, it doesn't have a general goal.
It has only temporary, intermediate goals, and is constantly changing plans. We can follow any use, any word of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Defense, various diplomats, the speaker of the Duma, etc. etc., but only Putin makes the final decisions. And he can stop this war, at any time and even if it is considered by the West or Ukraine as a defeat of Russia, Putin will find the words to describe the defeat as a victory, and it will be accepted, perceived by the majority of the population as a victory. So it all depends on your personal understanding of the current situation.
So, does this mean that there is actually no problem for him to have an exit strategy, as any kind of outcome can be sold as a win?
Yes, yes, absolutely. Let's imagine that tomorrow he wants to stop this war. He can say: “We have liberated almost the entire territory of Donetsk and Luhansk. We have shown our strength. The whole world was against us, but we defended our sovereignty. We have proof that we are strong, that we can live without the West. We are self-sufficient ". He can announce that, for example on the territories of Kherson and Zaporizshia, there will be referendums, or he can suggest to the Ukrainian side to start negotiations on the status of these territories, whatever. So people will say: Ok, this is an acceptable result, this is a good time to stop the war and start living again as before the war, so the West can remove the sanctions because we want to go on vacation to Europe ”. Hence, people are very flexible in terms of their behavior and acceptance of any results of this campaign.
Ok. But what is happening in reality? I mean, is there a real plan to organize in the next few days – or perhaps later, in September – referendums in Kherson to repeat the Donetsk-Luhansk scenario?
It is a possible option, because for the moment, despite our imaginary scenario of ending the war tomorrow, Putin has no intention of doing so in reality. I don't think the Kremlin has a final decision on this issue, because there are very contradictory signals from the Kremlin and from several speakers. The president's press secretary said the Kremlin does not have a decision on the matter, but at the same time here is the old Kremlin mantra that the people of that territory are able, will decide for themselves, where they want to live on the regime's territory. neo-Nazi or in Russia, in freedom and having a lot of ability to develop these territories. Translated from the Kremlin language to normal language, it means that they intend to occupy the territories, imitating the referendum and demonstrating the will of the majority of the population of the territories. So, it means that normal peace talks are quite problematic, because we understand that the Ukrainian side will not be ready to discuss these points… the territories must be liberated from the Russian army, and it could be the first point of these possible peace negotiations.
So you think there is no realistic hope for the negotiations right now?
Yes. And the main problem is Putin himself. He is the main source of problems in a general sense – as in the case of the start of the special operation, of the establishment of the authoritarian regime in Russia – but he is the source of the failure of the negotiation process. He doesn't have any kind of good will, doesn't show his good faith. He acts like a person who simply observes the situation. It was like this during the Istanbul negotiations, when no one observed any kind of Putin's opinion on this issue, whether or not he accepted the points of this agreement, a possible agreement, [as] he remained mute. And that means he wants to continue, maybe he understands the economic risks for Russia. He is not a fool, but at the same time it is much more important for him to continue this process of confirming the strengths of his politics, of himself, of his country, of his Russia.
So everything will be decided on the battlefield, but how informed is Putin really about what happens on the battlefield? Because there have been some rumors that he has all these yes-men and has no real information about the ongoing situation on military operations.
In the pre-war period he repeated several times that the information of the special services is particularly reliable for him. This means that he has had false information for many, many, many years. And it was an intelligence failure. It was a real misunderstanding of what Ukraine is in the current circumstances, what Ukrainian self-identification is, what Ukrainian soul is, Ukrainian conscience, etc. So he made a mistake, but now he continues to insist on his position. Perhaps he is trying to create this artificial world, not only for the Russian population, not only for the internal public, but perhaps for himself as well. It is a kind of vicious circle of disinformation [since] when he was misinformed by his special services.
Then, its propaganda organs misinformed the Russian population. And now all this information atmosphere ruins his own understanding of the current situation on the battlefield and, in general, of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. I think, yes, in general, he is really uninformed. And perhaps he is personally unable to work with information because, he is continuing to behave like a KGB officer, no more but with different prejudices. But, in the current circumstances, it has to work in a modern way with different types of information from different sources. It doesn't have this ability, let's say.
I wanted to return to the original question, which is whether the West could have done something to avoid this war and if, more generally, this war could have been avoided.
I think it was not possible to avoid this war, because the only source of this so-called special operation is Putin himself, and the West has done its best. I would say that all these negotiations, all these attempts to understand Putin's position, Putin's soul, let's say, all these attempts to please Putin have all been in vain. Putin tried to stop but his emotional side was much stronger when he made this horrible decision to start the "special operation". So I can't blame the West in this regard. Putin's problem is Putin himself. Russia's problem is Putin. The history of Russia in recent years is heavily personalized by Putin and we have to admit it.
My last question is: is Putinism possible without Putin?
Yes and no. On the one hand, I fear that even without Putin, Russia will retain the status of an authoritarian state, but at the same time the history of Russia, the history of the Soviet Union show that the disappearance of the leader changes almost everything, even when Stalin has been dead for a day. at the other, his closest allies have begun the liberalization of the regime and the system. So, I believe that in the event that Putin's allies, for example someone like Patrushev, are kept, the liberalization of this regime could be very modest in the early years. But in general this process is inevitable.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/teorie-putin-ucraina-andrei-kolesnikov/ on Sun, 19 Jun 2022 05:10:46 +0000.