TELESCOPING THE VISION OF THE WAR IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

On 24 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” to support the Russian-controlled breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose military forces had been fighting Ukraine in the Donbas conflict. He said the goal was to “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin espoused irredentist views, challenged Ukraine’s right to statehood, that Ukraine was governed by neo-Nazis who persecuted the ethnic Russian minority. Minutes later, Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched along a northern.

Front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from the Donbas.

Till these days the war they're still going on and it’s getting worse every day.

This war surprised many people, as it was the first major war in Europe for decades. But Russia and Ukraine have had a difficult relationship for centuries. To understand what’s happening now, you have to dig into 1,300 years of history.

A sight for the relationship between Russia and Ukraine before

Ukraine and Russia are two countries that border each other in Eastern Europe.

They trace their beginnings to the same medieval kingdom, called Kyivan Rus. It was founded in the 800s by a group of Vikings, the Varangian, who came from Northern Europe to rule over the local people. Kyivan Rus spanned what is now Russia and Ukraine, and its people, the Slavs, are the ancestors of today’s Russians and Ukrainians. Its capital was the city of Kyiv–the same Kyiv that is now the capital of Ukraine. Moscow, the capital of today’s Russia, was also part of the Kyivan Rus.

The other countries of the former Soviet Union, not just Ukraine, are simply geographical neighbors, rather than “little brothers” in an extended family run from Moscow. For Russia to succeed in its relations with these countries, it needs to learn the lessons of Ukraine.

The Ukraine crisis put Russian foreign policy on a severe test. For more than two decades prior to it, Russia did not take its largest post-Soviet neighbor very seriously. It preferred to deal with a range of pressing specific issues rather than the country behind them. Ukraine was first reduced to the issue of the transfer of the Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia, then to the division of the Black Sea Fleet, and finally to the gas transit to Europe. Ukraine itself, with its complexities and problems, fell through the cracks.

Russians often idealize the history of their relations with Ukraine, which was seen as an extension of Russia itself, linked to it by a multitude of age-old and seemingly unbreakable bonds.

The common Russian view portrays Ukraine’s independence as something unnatural and pernicious, and striving for it as a betrayal not only of Russia’s but also of Ukraine’s own interests. The emphasis in the Russian narrative has always been placed on what is shared, on what brings the Eastern Slavic peoples together, such as common faith and common history, with far less attention being paid to their differences. Thus, Ukrainian nationalism was summarily defined as an enemy rather than a product of historical development.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people.” Even if it would be difficult indeed to distinguish between any number of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, this view does not include many Ukrainians who do not want to look and sound like Russians, and it certainly excludes Ukrainian elites, wherever in the country they come from, who insist that Ukraine is not Russia, in the words of the supposedly most “pro-Russian” second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma.

Many in Moscow viewed Ukraine’s 2004–2005 “Orange Revolution” primarily in terms of a new political technology of “color revolutions” launched by Americans in order to expand their geopolitical influence. It was also interpreted as a dress rehearsal of a potential regime change in Moscow. Purely Ukrainian roots of the revolution were dismissed as secondary. The failure of the “Orange” leaders to deliver on their promises only produced schadenfreude and complacency in Moscow.

The Ukraine crisis is usually seen as an act of final liberation of the second largest former Soviet republic from imperial Russia. The significance of the reverse effect, of Russia finally drawing the border between itself and Ukraine, is often overlooked. Yet its importance is huge.

It closed the books on the post-imperial period in Russia’s recent history, which still held out hopes for some sort of meaningful reintegration of the former Soviet republics around the Russian Federation. Instead, the separation from Ukraine and the breakdown in relations with the West have ushered in a wholly new era in which the Russian Federation asserts itself as a self-standing multiethnic nation-state in the middle of the mega-continent of Greater Eurasia.

In this setting, the other countries of the former Soviet Union, not just Ukraine, are simply geographical neighbors, rather than “little brothers” in an extended family run from Moscow. For Russia to succeed in its relations with these countries, it needs to learn the lessons of Ukraine.

The Ukraine crisis put Russian foreign policy on a severe test. For more than two decades prior to it, Russia did not take its largest post-Soviet neighbor very seriously. It preferred to deal with a range of pressing specific issues rather than the country behind them. Ukraine was first reduced to the issue of the transfer of the Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia, then to the division of the Black Sea Fleet, and finally to the gas transit to Europe. Ukraine itself, with its complexities and problems, fell through the cracks.

Russians often idealize the history of their relations with Ukraine, which was seen as an extension of Russia itself, linked to it by a multitude of age-old and seemingly unbreakable bonds: an unalienable part of the “Russian world.” What they miss is the implications of the different paths that the development of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian nations took as a result of the first of the three spending a quarter millennium under the “Mongol yoke,” and then rising to shake it off and build an empire of its own, and the two others being absorbed at the same time into eastern European states before being incorporated into the Russian empire.

The common Russian view portrays Ukraine’s independence as something unnatural and pernicious, and striving for it as a betrayal not only of Russia’s but also of Ukraine’s own interests. The emphasis in the Russian narrative has always been placed on what is shared, on what brings the Eastern Slavic peoples together, such as common faith and common history, with far less attention being paid to their differences. Thus, Ukrainian nationalism was summarily defined as an enemy rather than a product of historical development.

Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people.” Even if it would be difficult indeed to distinguish between any number of Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians, this view does not include many Ukrainians who do not want to look and sound like Russians, and it certainly excludes Ukrainian elites, wherever in the country they come from, who insist that Ukraine is not Russia, in the words of the supposedly most “pro-Russian” second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma.

Many in Moscow viewed Ukraine’s 2004–2005 “Orange Revolution” primarily in terms of a new political technology of “color revolutions” launched by Americans in order to expand their geopolitical influence. It was also interpreted as a dress rehearsal of a potential regime change in Moscow. Purely Ukrainian roots of the revolution were dismissed as secondary. The failure of the “Orange” leaders to deliver on their promises only produced schadenfreude and complacency in Moscow.

Rather than waking up to the challenge and working with political, business, and society forces in Ukraine, all the way to the regional level, to build a strong constituency for an independent Ukraine that would be friendly to Russia, the Kremlin continued to play with corrupt Ukrainian politicians. Many in Moscow interpreted the 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych, the loser of the 2004 race, as Ukraine’s president, as a revenge for the past setback, and a down payment on the future integration of Ukraine into a unified economic, political, and strategic space shared with Russia. That Yanukovych only cared for his own family interest and was cynically exploiting Moscow’s dreams—as well as Europe’s hopes—was conveniently ignored.

Vladimir Putin made Ukraine’s integration with Russia a centerpiece of the foreign policy program as he prepared to return to the Russian presidency in 2012. It even would be fair to say that the success of Putin’s entire Eurasian integration project depended on Kiev aligning itself, economically as well as politically, with Moscow. To achieve that, the Kremlin worked hard, but exclusively with Yanukovych and his government. Yet the Ukrainian president or his oligarchical allies wanted that their game was milking both Russia and the West for their own benefit.

The start of the war

Russia’s use of military force to seize control over Crimea and to intervene in Donbass was accompanied by talk of uniting a “Russian world” as a distinct civilizational community. This approach, however justified it might have been with regard to many shared elements of culture, was completely inappropriate for economics or politics. As a result, the concept of the “Russian world” has gone up in flames of Donbass.

Since then, the strong bond of both countries has disbanded.

As many centuries ago, Russia is parting ways with Ukraine.

Russia has set a course on asserting itself as an independent major power vis-à-vis others, such as the European Union and China.

But despite of the conflict between both countries Russia and Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people.”

The current war

In February 2022, President Vladimir Putin again said that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. He sees Ukrainians and Russians as brother nations and says that because Russia is the older brother, it should get to be in charge.

Most Ukrainians disagree. They have been inspired by the words of their president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He told Putin that Ukrainians want peace, but that if they need to, they will defend their country’s independence.

President Vladimir Putin invaded, and this time his plan is “to denazify” Ukraine and bring it back under Moscow’s wing.

He has focused his efforts on disseminating the narrative that the eastern regions of Ukraine are ethnically and linguistically Russian and its population is mostly pro-Russian or directly Russian, but now he must prove it and try to ensure that the inhabitants of those regions.

Russia insists that it has no intention of attacking Ukraine and accuses the U.S. and NATO of stoking the tension by refusing to accept Moscow’s demands for “security guarantees” from the Western alliance.

He said Ukraine was an exception, saying “it is being used by third countries to create threats towards Russia.”

President Vladimir Putin’s words speak for themselves: What he is aiming for in Ukraine is the restoration of Russia.

In Russia, the people had no say about whether to invade. Many are protesting against it. Many families have both Russian and Ukrainians members. Because of this, a lot of people on both sides of the border do not want to fight a war against each other.

As the wars going on many people compared the situation in Ukraine between Afghanistan and Iraq which ends up really badly.

Around the time former President George W. Bush announced the U.S. would invade Iraq in 2003.

Thousands of American soldiers died fighting in Iraq. Approximately 177,000 national military and police from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraqi, and Syria allies have died. Western allies have also borne high human costs.

Official Pentagon numbers do not include the many troops who return home and kill themselves as a result of psychological wounds such as PTSD. Over 30,177 service members and veterans of the post-9/11 wars have committed suicide–over four times as many as have died in combat.

Today, Iraq continues to be politically unstable and is not any closer to becoming a democracy than it was before the invasion.

While Iraq continues to be unstable because of the invasion of U. S.

Afghanistan also suffered the most.

On October 7, 2001, the President announced that the United States had begun a military action in Afghanistan.

Since then, more than 775,000 U.S. troops have deployed to Afghanistan, many repeatedly. Of those, 2,300 died there and 20,589 were wounded in action, according to Defense Department figures.

Sadly, In August 2021, the United States withdrew the last of its troops from Afghanistan, ending its military presence there after nearly 20 years.

One year after the collapse of the country, the mass terror that has taken over Afghanistan has caused more than 1,000 confirmed deaths, while thousands of people have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured, accused of non-existent crimes and sentenced to death by the Taliban. Some of them have simply disappeared without a trace.

According to reports published by international organizations and secret interviews with Afghans on the ground over the past few months, it is confirmed that schools, universities and workplaces for women have been closed down and that freedom of expression is now closed to them.

The people of Afghanistan are very critical of the international community. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been displaced to neighbouring countries and to Europe without any real assistance, and often even without food. Countries such as Iran and Pakistan are now closing their borders on them.

Again, the comparison with the aid given to Ukrainian refugees is glaring. European countries, and others, have opened their doors wide and provided incredible support to the victims of this war, which is as unjust as the war waged by the Taliban on the legitimate people of Afghanistan. Whether it is transportation, accommodation, administrative or medical assistance, rapid integration into the education system and all other essential areas, Ukrainian expatriates have been supported by the international community.

Someone born in Afghanistan and Iraq. The catastrophic events are still uppermost in their mind.

The tools are different, but the effect is the same: supply just enough firepower to keep the Bear tied down and bleeding, but not enough to kill him, and, God forbid, end the war that is so profitable.