I'm not around that much anymore, but I'm going to drop in a Russia/Ukraine war explainer I wrote about 5 weeks ago for Facebook followers. It's a conflict where Putin's motivations are very hard to understand if you're not deeply enmeshed in studying the culture or the region. It's also important to understand that there might not be a level of loss that would get him to back down. We're outside the realm of rationality here.
A too-long explainer on Russia/Ukraine (seriously, buckle in):
About four and a half years ago, I had a sneaking suspicion that understanding Russian was going to be important to decoding world events in the near future. I thought I might be overreacting to interference in the US election. But after an impeachment centered on Ukraine, another general election where business in Ukraine was a key issue, and now a seemingly imminent land war in Europe - I think I might have actually underestimated the urgency. Russia is everywhere and omnipresent. It's the straw stirring the drink of international affairs. My Ukrainian friends laugh when I tell them, in America, I'm often the local expert on their country; but it's true. When the baseline level of knowledge is near zero, having half a clue looks like wisdom.
So here goes half a clue on the news of the day: Most conflicts can be described in a linear way. First this happened, then this, and and so on. The Russian-Ukraine conflict is different because it is not a fight about any one thing or any one event. It's more like a toxic divorce. There's a million reasons it's happening. Their friends have seen it coming for a long time. The emotional fault lines are numerous, but the real battle grounds are completely irresolvable.
Russia doesn't know who it is without Ukraine and isn't gonna let it leave no matter what. Ukraine is ready to start a new life but isn't really fully capable of standing on its own yet. The ruptures in those unstable situations lead to lots of fights that don't make sense and the actual timing of the conflicts can feel random. Spouses will fight over a nice lamp; Russia and Ukraine are bickering over whether its evil to require donut shops in Kyiv to have signage in Ukrainian. The fight is really about "why don't you love me anymore?" That's all it's ever about. The lamp donuts don't matter.
So why Ukraine? And why now? We'll start with the first one: what's so important about Ukraine.
The truth is that Russian history doesn't make any sense if Ukraine and Russia are different countries and different peoples. Russian identity is rooted in Ukraine and Kyiv specifically. Why are they called the Russians? Because they claim to be the inheritors of the legacy of the Kievan Rus', a medieval dynasty closely tied to most of the important features of Russian culture. They are not the Moscow Rus' or the Petersburg Rus'. Those places didn't exist yet. Kyiv is the historical center of the entire history of the Russian people and its role in the founding myth of Russia is the stuff of literal mythology.
The earliest history of the Slavic people is called "The Tale of Bygone Years." It's lavishly illustrated by a 12th Century monk and really not much different from a story book designed to teach Slavic people who they are. The centrality of Kyiv is the single largest motif of this foundational book, called the "Primary Chronicle." Vladimir Putin referenced it in his article this summer on the historical relationship between Ukraine and Russia and even directly quoted from one of the Chronicle's most famous characters, Oleg the Prophet: "Let Kyiv be the mother of all Russian cities."
Kyiv touches every part of Russian culture. Russians are Orthodox Christians because Vladimir the Great, the grand prince of Kyiv, in the 10th Century and the handsome man below, decided it was important that all the Rus' get on the same monotheistic page so they could stop arguing with each other about which pagan God was best. A wise and forceful executive, he took the job of picking a State religion seriously. He interviewed some rabbis, but circumcision was a no-go, and he thought the loss of Jerusalem was evidence God had given up on them. Vladimir wanted to pick a winner. He consulted with some Muslims but the Islamic prohibition on alcohol was unworkable. Reportedly, Vladimir said "Drinking is the joy of the Rus'." Now I'm sure you can see why the Russians are sure he's one of theirs. End of the day, Vladimir picked Christianity and, in the most Russian move of all time, used soldiers to drive the entire city's population into the Dnieper river for a forcible baptism. Ta-da! Now we all believe in Christ.
So Russians owe their name, their historical legacy, and their thousand year commitment to Christianity to Kyiv. In the present day, it's extremely hard psychologically to square that with the actual people from Kyiv saying, "well actually, we aren't Russian at all. We're Ukrainian." Russians have never really been able to accept this. There's a multi-century history of attempts to erase Ukrainian language and identity precisely to eliminate any distinction between how Ukrainians understand their history and how Moscow sees it. It's also the reason the fiercest symbols of Ukrainian independence aren't soldiers or warriors - they are history professors and poets. The father of Modern Ukraine is a guy who wrote a ten volume history of the Ukrainian people - effectively saving that history from state sanctioned erasure. In that sense, this fight is about existential identity. Russia literally has no past without Ukraine, and keeps trying to make Ukraine forget that it has ever known anything else. It's a multi-century fight about maiden names.
There's also a political component to this identity crisis today. Russia is not a democracy but it pretends to be one internally. They actually call the Russian political process "managed democracy" and argue that there are fundamental incompatibilities between Western representative democratic processes and the Slavic identity centered in modern day Russia. The argument for keeping democratic reform down is truly that "it could never work here; not with these people."
To that extent, the existence of the Ukrainian project is a problem for the entire Russian political order. Russia has told its citizens for generations that there is no fundamental difference between the Russian and Ukrainian people or culture because Kyiv is the "mother of all Russian cities." But, in the post Soviet era, Ukraine has been, slowly and fitfully, working its way towards a real democracy. And it's working. The people want it and life there is getting better. As an American, when I have conversations with Russians or Ukrainians in their own country there is one palpable difference: Ukrainians have hope. Russians don't. Ukrainians seem to believe that life can and will improve. There's an optimism borne of the belief that they are collectively investing towards something worth having.
To Russia that hope is a threat. Because if democracy works in Ukraine, and Ukraine and Russia are the same, then there's no reason democracy couldn't work in Russia too. A free and independent Ukraine actually IS an existential threat to Putin's government. Not because Ukraine would attack Moscow with guns or bombs - but because it undermines the very basis of Putin holding power for so long without real elections. A successful Ukraine would make people in Russia want something different too. That can't be allowed.
Which brings us back to this being a toxic divorce. Why Ukraine? Because Russia doesn't know who it is without Ukraine, and will do anything to stop it from walking through that door one final time. Without Ukraine, Putin's Russia might actually be nothing. That's what the conflict is "about."
Which brings us to the next question: Why now? Admittedly this is harder to explain. Russia watchers can never really nail down the Kremlin's decision making or even if an overall strategy exists at all. That said, my best guesses come from following closely the writings of a group called the Valdai Discussion Club, which is a Moscow based think tank with ties to the Kremlin. Their members have been all over Russian newspapers and TV lately. Their arguments are revealing and the tone is alarming.
First up, there is definitely a hawkish tone to the domestic political discussion. All "patriotic Russians" are in favor of invading Ukraine. Anyone who questions it or wants to pump the brakes, fearing that a conflict might get out of hand, is essentially being accused of cowardice inside the country. Some politicians have been accused of believing Russia is too weak to win the conflict (while of course their opponents are strong for hyping it). Some of the crazier elements are circulating old maps where Finland and most of Lithuania and Poland were inside Russia's borders and arguing that Russia is entitled to go back to those borders. This week, a Duma member suggested launching a nuclear missile at the US test site in Nevada to demonstrate Russian seriousness. This reminds me, in some sense, of the run up to the Iraq war in America where it reached a point of fact free inevitability. Russian politicians and media are so far down the process of starting this conflict, it's hard to imagine what could make them stop. If they pull back at this point, it amounts to a national embarrassment. Russia may end up going to war simply because it has claimed it will so many times that it would be too embarrassing to back down. The ultimate reasons might be that dumb.
The second reason is more ideological. Russians have a long standing inferiority complex about the West that cycles between: (1) completely resisting any modernization as a betrayal of Russian culture, and (2) bitter resentment that the forces of modernity have left Russia behind in living standards. This is a cycle with multiple epochs across several centuries. It's part of the founding story of St. Petersburg, the port of Odessa, and even inside key plot lines of Anna Karenina. Like everyone with an inferiority complex, Russia is very bitter whenever it perceives that someone else thinks they are better than Russia. You want to piss a Russian off? Tell them that Americans won World War II. You wanna take it to the next level? Tell them that Communism ended because Ronald Reagan gave a speech. Complaints about Western arrogance are a stereotype because they are true. It's perpetually stuck in Russia's craw. And they are always looking for a way to prove you can't look down on them.
The other pathology of the cultural inferiority complex is perpetual victimhood. Russia never sees itself as an aggressor. It is always forced to take action because of external forces beyond its control - usually the arrogant and hypocritical West. If you've seen headlines about Russia threatening to put nuclear weapons in Cuba or Venezuela - this thought process is what drives that threat. "If the United States won't commit to never letting Ukraine join its alliance because Ukraine can shape its own destiny, then it should have no problem with Cuba and Venezuela choosing to allow us to base missiles in their countries." For Russians, that this smacks of escalation and an expression of two different kinds of values at play is literally invisible. It is only about, and only ever about, the West getting to play by one set of rules that it then says Russia isn't "good enough" to share in. Russia, forever virginal and pure, is just trying to be taken seriously.
And that gets us to the last piece: opportunism. Rightly or wrongly, there is a belief in the Valdai group that carving up the globe through violence or the threat of violence is simply the way the world works and always has worked. The post-cold war era represented an exception to that trend rather than the rule, and was only manageable through the United States being at the head of a unipolar hegemonic global order. The prevailing sentiment in Russia is that that period of history is now over. The United States can't even govern itself and is in domestic chaos. Why would Russia choose to continue to behave as if the United States is capable of playing global cop? Russia may be choosing to use this conflict as the moment to announce that the United States is no longer the power broker in Eastern Europe. Russia is.
So why now? Because everyone going through a divorce is emotionally unstable and makes some rash short sighted choices - especially when the divorce is about your ex trying to get with your long time rival who's hotter, younger, and acts like he's better than you.
This is getting out of hand. I honestly don't see a way off this train. I hope I'm wrong.
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