Dear reader,
The following piece is the first of three feature articles that reflects on the past 10 months of Russia’s invasion. I hope my notes, analysis, and doses of personal experience will be of interest to my readers. This series of feature articles will only be accessible by paid subscribers. If you have not purchased a paid subscription, a discounted rate is currently on offer till the end of the year. For further details, click here.
Best wishes,
A Singaporean in Moscow.
History Never Ends
In hindsight, everything that has happened this year does not seem so surprising at all. History has its way of fooling us. It makes us think that mistakes and tragedies could have been avoided. But we must sober ourselves a fact: the study of history is never one of what should be but will always be of what was. Historians will look back at 2022 with great fascination. How did so much happen in a short span of time? One can recall the words of a consequential Russian revolutionary who said “sometimes, history needs a push”. This year, history got a shove.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fundamentally changed our world. War, a scale never witnessed in Europe since 1945, has sprung back from the past. Perhaps it would be comforting to see it as some kind of ghost, or even a zombie, but war is a constant condition that latches onto our historical experience. And, maybe, those who are waging a war today do not want to call it what it is - not because it gives them power to forbid doing so - but because they find comfort in detaching themselves from their acts.
Much will be investigated when the smoke from burned buildings die out and when the final gunshot rings through a once green field. Researchers will wait in droves to uncover archives in an attempt to make sense of what decision makers, perhaps long dead, were thinking those years ago. While a full picture can be drawn and redrawn as days and years go by, perhaps we can try - for the sake of history - to look back now before it is too late…
It is a dark Tuesday evening. Specks of snow are falling from the sky. The U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation John Sullivan emerges from the large palatial doors of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Completed in 1953, the towering building is one of the Stalin era’s “seven sisters” scattered throughout Moscow. The vysotka stands tall, proud of its gothic-like accents and neo-imperial art deco appearance. It is the supreme exemplar of Socialist Realist style. Above, shining for all to see, sculpted from the facade of the tower, the Soviet Union’s coat of arms declaring: “Workers of all countries, unite!” But all of this was history.
Ambassador Sullivan left Russia’s Foreign Ministry after handing over Washington’s written response to Moscow’s demands and “red lines”. Leading up to this moment, President Vladimir V. Putin made several demands to his American counterpart, Joseph R. Biden, that Western powers were to withdraw military forces and nuclear weapons from states that joined NATO after 1997, to cease military support of Ukraine, and to guarantee that Ukraine and other regional states will never join NATO. All while amassing about 130,000 troops along Ukraine’s border.
It was a demand that Washington and its NATO allies would never accept. “We stand by the core principle,” said NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, “which is linked to that open door policy that every nation has the right to choose its own path”.
Even a veteran Russian diplomat broke ranks. Boris Bondarev, a diplomat of 20 years, resigned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, recounted in his article for Foreign Affairs the nature of Russia’s “red lines”:
“It was bewildering, filled with provisions that would clearly be unacceptable to the West… I assumed its author was either laying the groundwork for war or had no idea how the United States or Europe worked—or both. I chatted with our delegates during coffee breaks, and they seemed perplexed as well. I asked my supervisor about it, and he, too, was bewildered. No one could understand how we would go to the United States with a document that demanded, among other things, that NATO permanently close its door to new members. Eventually, we learned the document’s origin: it came straight from the Kremlin. It was therefore not to be questioned.”
Already knowing the response from the West, why did Russia press on with its demands? Two convincing explanations come to mind. Either the Kremlin knew that the West would reject its demands, or it had hoped that by drawing their red lines they could drag negotiations and meet Washington somewhere halfway. All the Kremlin needed was some kind - in fact almost any kind - of concession to return to the public and declare on state television channels, “Victory! We got the West to back down!” Washington and its NATO allies had learned from its withheld response after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. It could no longer afford to embolden an insecure regime.
Ukraine in the eyes of the Kremlin
In order to maximize its power, Russia must first consolidate the post-Soviet space, particularly Belarus and Ukraine. These two states share cultural, linguistic, and historical bonds with Russia; they were also core territories of the Russian Empire. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was able to prevent Belarus from gravitating Westward with the signing of the “Treaty on the Union between Belarus and Russia” in 1997. Further agreements were made by the end of 1998 which laid the groundwork for further political, economic and social integration. Ukraine’s future remained ambiguous; however, the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution smothered Russian hopes to bind itself with Ukraine through the Eurasian Economic Union.
Ukraine is important to Russia for many reasons. The independence of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union meant that Russia’s territorial depth shrunk approximately 557 km eastward, a Ukraine with NATO troops was therefore perceived as inimical to the security of Russia. Ukraine was also the breadbasket of the Soviet Union and remains to be for Europe and the world, at present it is estimated that Ukraine produces 10% of the world’s wheat. But above all, from a cultural and historical perspective, Ukraine is the cradle of Russian civilization. The Kievan Rus’ represented the first formulation of an Eastern Slavic State and it was on the banks of the Dniepr where Vladimir the Great Christianized the Eastern Slavic peoples.
To the Kremlin, Ukraine is not only of strategic but cultural and spiritual importance; the idea of Novorossiya (New Russia) was revived from its Tsarist imperial origins after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. For Eastern Slavic nationalists it was paramount to support the revival of this idea, while imperial nationalists were also able to rekindle Tsarist nostalgia hoping to use Ukraine as the beginning of the “rebirth” of Russia. Here it is important to highlight that the revived idea of Novorossiya was not a creation of the Kremlin but rather actors (aforementioned nationalist circles) outside of state authority. But all of this can be condensed in the words of Putin: Russians and Ukrainians are “one people - a single whole”, as stated in his essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”.
Gathering Storm
A diplomatic solution seemed far from reach by late January 2022. Despite attempts to foster dialogue during the summer of ‘21. The Biden-Putin summit in Geneva led to no outcome on Ukraine. The two presidents left Switzerland with agreements to initiate dialogue on nuclear weapons control, cybersecurity, and to return ambassadors to each other. But by October that same year, Russia suspended its mission to NATO which only limited channels for negotiations. In the weeks of November, reports of Russian troop buildup from US government sources were quickly dismissed by the Kremlin. I still remember during that time how confident we all were that Washington was just trying to poke the bear. The truth was, in fact, the other way round.
As 2021 neared its end, Russia was still conducting military drills by the Ukrainian border. It was reported by Reuters on Christmas day that more than 10,000 troops had returned to their bases. Their stay would not be permanent. Now knowing the chain of events that led to January and February 2022, Russia’s actions were clearly an attempt to flex its muscles while trying to extract favorable concessions from the West. With neither side giving any space and Putin having tried all options, war was an order away.
Special thanks to JK for editorial advice.