Russian President Vladimir Putin has made his decision. He brought the war to the Ukraine. This is a defining moment for Europe. For the first time since the Balkan wars of the 1990s, confined to the area of a disintegrating Yugoslavia, the continent is once again facing the bombing of cities and the ground advance of tank divisions. Only this time it is a nuclear superpower that has started the conflict.
(Read here: Russian army approaches Kiev to ‘behead’ the government, according to the US)
(Due to the public interest that the events between Russia and Ukraine arouse, all of our coverage of that invasion and related actions will be freely accessible to all readers of TIME)
By ordering an invasion, Putin is showing blatant disregard for international treaties and the law of nations. There has been no comparable event in Europe since the time of Hitler. According to Putin’s latest statements, Ukraine has no right to exist as a sovereign state – despite the fact that it is a member of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe; and despite the fact that Russia itself (under the mandate of Boris Yeltsin) has recognized the country’s independence.
Now Putin claims that Ukraine is an inseparable part of Russia. What most Ukrainians think is irrelevant to him; the only thing that matters is the greatness of Russia and its international position. But make no mistake: Putin wants more than just Ukraine. His war has to do with the entire European system, which is based above all on the inviolability of borders. By trying to redraw the map by force, he hopes to reverse the European project and reestablish Russia as the pre-eminent power, at least in Eastern Europe. With the humiliations of the 1990s erased, Russia will once again be a world power, on a par with the United States and China.
(You may be interested in: ‘Death Lists’: Why are Ukrainians blocking Facebook?)
According to Putin, Ukraine has no state tradition and has become a mere instrument of US and NATO expansionism, posing a threat to Russia’s security. In a rare speech given the day before his troops stormed the border, Putin went so far as to claim that Ukraine is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, when the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Ukraine – which was home to the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world at the time – handed over its nuclear weapons to Russia with the active diplomatic support of the “evil” states. Joined.
Putin is showing
a brazen disregard for international treaties and the law of nations
Ukraine did so because it had received “guarantees” of its territorial integrity, as stated in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees of December 5, 1994. This document was signed by the guarantor powers: the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia, along with Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan (the latter two gave up the small nuclear arsenals they had inherited from the USSR).
Compared to historical facts, Putin’s statements make no sense. His main objective, clearly, is to give his own population a justification for invading Ukraine. Putin knows that if ordinary Russians were given a choice between a war to dominate Eastern Europe and a better and more prosperous life at home, they would prefer the latter. As has happened so many times in Russian history, citizens are being robbed of their future at the hands of their rulers.
Russia’s rise as a world power in the 19th and 20th centuries resulted in numerous tragedies, not only for the neighbors it gradually subjugated and absorbed, but also for its own people. Current Chinese leaders, in particular, should keep this story in mind, considering that Imperial Russia took more territory from China than from any other country.
What Putin doesn’t seem to realize is that Russia’s longstanding policy of dominating foreign peoples in its sphere of influence has other countries focused on how to escape the geopolitical prison of the Kremlin at the earliest opportunity, ensuring NATO protection. . The Alliance’s eastward expansion after 1989 attests to this dynamic. Ukraine wants to join NATO not because NATO intends to attack Russia, but because Russia has increasingly shown its intention to attack Ukraine. And now she has.
(In other news: Biden: ‘We will defend every last inch of NATO’)
While the Asian giant has achieved economic and technological modernization, Putin has earmarked export earnings for the army, once again deceiving the Russian people
It is worth remembering that in the 1990s Russian propaganda accused the West of harboring all kinds of evil plans. None of these plots were carried out at that time, when Russia was in ruins, because there never was such a western plan. The accusations were nothing more than nonsense created to instill fear.
The Russian imperial project has always been characterized by a mix of internal poverty, brutal oppression, flowery paranoia and aspirations for world power. And yet it has proven exceptionally resistant to modernization, not only under the Tsars and then under Lenin and Stalin, but also under Putin.
It is enough to compare the economy of Russia with that of China. Both are authoritarian systems, and yet China’s per capita income has grown strongly, while Russia’s quality of life has declined.
In historical terms, Putin is taking Russia back into the 19th century, in search of a greatness of yesteryear, while China is moving forward to become the defining superpower of the 21st century. While the Asian giant has achieved unprecedented economic and technological modernization, Putin has earmarked the proceeds from Russia’s energy exports for the military, once again deceiving the Russian people, depriving them of their future.
Ukraine has tried to escape from this endless cycle of poverty, oppression and imperial ambition with its increasingly pronounced orientation towards Europe. A well-functioning European-style liberal democracy in Ukraine would endanger Putin’s authoritarian rule. The Russian people would ask themselves and their leaders: “Why not us?”
Putin would not have a good answer to give them, and he knows it. That is why Russia is in Ukraine today.Joshka Fischer
Project Syndicate
Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, was leader of the German Green Party for almost 20 years
#Russias #Stolen #Future