Russia Will Not Be Appeased
Recent History Shows that the Problem with Ukraine is Russian Imperialism
Guest post by David M. Klinger
Ukrainians and Ukrainian
The best way to understand modern Ukraine – and, indeed, one of the ways I got to know it – is to hear the story of a good friend of mine, Anya from Novoazovsk. To reach Novoazoavsk, you can take the M14 highway from Russia along the north coast of the Black Sea, and it is the first town across the border in Ukraine. It is exactly the sort of place where you’d expect the Kremlin narratives of the oppressed Russian minority to live the strongest.
But, this only appears to be so from a great distance: zoom in and you won’t see much of the modernist Soviet city planning that dominates the coal cities of the Donets Coal Basin. Novoazovsk has a much older design, laid out in the neat and wide square grid of a typical Ukrainian Cossack stanitsa, a design you can see across the chernozem-filled steppe from the Dniester River to deep into the Kuban. The modern history of this area of the world begins in the time when this was the dyke pole – the wild fields – and was largely uninhabited after the Russian Empire took the steppe from the Turkic nomads that roamed across it during the Middle Ages. It was slowly settled by East Slavic people from the west, and the language they spoke was Ukrainian.
All this to say that when I asked Anya, after she had told me that she almost exclusively uses Russian in her everyday life, whether she can speak Ukrainian, she acted like I had asked if she had two arms and two legs. “Of course I speak Ukrainian, it’s my native language.” And indeed, squint a little closer at the famous language map from the 2001 census, and you’ll notice the majority of Russian-identifying areas do not form a clean east-west divide. Rather, they correspond to the areas of significant resettlement during the Soviet period as various coal mining towns rose to the drumbeat of a succession of five year plans. Their residents were imported from the RSFS, that is to say, from Russia, and they spoke Russian. During the period of 1926 to 1939, when Ukraine was ravaged by the Holodomor and the population of the entire country rose only 16%, Donetsk exploded from 100,000 to almost 500,000 people. But these immigrants arrived in a land that was almost entirely Ukrainian speaking. The one exception was Crimea: after World War II most of the native Tatars were accused of collaboration with the Nazis, packaged into boxcars and shipped to Siberia. Most never saw their homes again, and in 1991 it was recognized as a genocide by the newly liberalized Russian government. Nevertheless, Crimea grew in population, and most of its new inhabitants were Russians.
Meanwhile, the majority of the population continued to speak Ukrainian throughout the country, despite years of language repression and stigmatization under Soviet rule. Fast forward to post-Soviet Ukraine and these divides had been smudged by the passage of time. Intermarriage, migration, language exposure, and decades of Soviet policies resulted in widespread diglossia between Ukrainian – more or less seen as the language of the country bumpkins – and Russian – the language of the cosmopolitan elite. In practice, huge swaths of the country spoke surzhyk, a word which literally means the mixing of grains so they can no longer be differentiated, and figuratively means the mixing of Ukrainian with Russian.
The point is, the idea of Ukrainian as an alien language forced on Russians in eastern Ukraine is completely absurd – the language laws specified that Ukrainian would be the main language of instruction in schools, and that it would be offered, alongside Russian, in official communications. Most Ukrainians in the east already could speak Ukrainian, and everyone could understand it. To say they weren’t a political flashpoint is an understatement, it was a complete non-issue. Nobody had any comprehension problems (except poorly prepared FSB agents), and nobody cared what language you spoke in private business. The most pressing issue for most Ukrainians was what to do with their economic future. And this is where conflicts with Russia really began.
Post-Soviet Russian Colonialism and Ukrainian Oligarchs
The negative effects of the period of economic “Shock Therapy” in the 1990s are well documented, but the most important practical result for the future of the Ukrainian state was the consolidation of Soviet state companies into the hands of a few oligarchs, just as in Russia. The Soviet era integrations between Ukraine and Russia maintained intact, and, for the most part, so did the Soviet flow of wealth: from the colonial periphery – i.e. Ukraine – into the imperial center – i.e. Moscow. But, instead of enriching the Soviet state that could (theoretically at least) redistribute it back to everyone, the profits simply ended in the pockets of the functionaries who were lucky enough to seize control of the newly privatized businesses. Ukrainian oligarchs skimmed off the top and got fabulously wealthy on the way – but with one catch: their businesses in Ukraine remained just as dependent on Russian buyers as the Soviet structure that preceded them had been. In other words, these oligarchs, exemplified by shining exemplars of humanity Dmytro Firtash, Viktor Medvedchuk, Vitaliy Khomutynnik, and Pavel Fuks (among others), acted as an extension of the network of corrupt wealthy oligarchs in Russia but were entirely beholden to Russian interests. Inevitably, they ended up getting involved in politics, pushing Ukraine towards Russia to keep the wealth flowing back to Moscow, knowing that their cut was entirely conditional on listening to whatever orders they were given.
It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which post-independence Ukraine was integrated with Russia. When I asked Anya if she’d ever been abroad she replied – “No, but I’ve been to Russia twice.” Apparently, this was no contradiction for her. But it’s also difficult to overstate the extent to which the Ukrainian public saw Russia as a firm symbol of corruption, economic stagnation, and the continuation of the Soviet system. The new economic reality wasn’t associated with nefarious western neoliberal reform, but with Russia: Ukrainians saw their wealth continue to leave the country, but this time to enrich foreign oligarchs in Russia who directed their politicians like puppets to keep the status quo at any cost. At the same time, the West became associated with the opposite – the ending of corruption, prosperity, and true liberalization. Ukrainians watched as other former eastern bloc nations integrated themselves west, rather than east, and slowly shed their past and become wealthier and less corrupt.
This resentment boiled over for the first time in 2000, during the administration of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. This was not a fight over NATO, nor even a fight over joining the EU. It began rather luridly with the kasetnyy skandal, in which Kuchma was caught on tape ordering the kidnapping of a Georgian-Ukrainian journalist, Georgiy Gongadze.
Gongadze specialized in muckraking about the oligarchs and their political connections. He pioneered internet journalism in Ukrainian to sidestep censorship of the official news. Three months before his disappearance, he had been forced into hiding because of harassment by the SBU, the security service of Ukraine. Two months after his disappearance, his body was found doused in acid and decapitated. Forensic analysis showed that this had occurred while Gongadze was still alive. This spawned the first mass protests in Ukraine, the Ukraiina bez Kuchmy protests demanding the removal of Kuchma.
The protests were an utter failure, crushed by the government and propagandized as disgruntled anarchist hooligans trying to destroy Ukraine’s stability. The opposition members in the Rada (Ukraine’s parliament), including the reform-minded prime minister Viktor Yushchenko, refused to publicly support the protests.
Twin Revolutions
Kuchma ended his term with his popularity in the gutter, and the 2004 election ultimately became a contest between Yushchenko, who by now had staked out a position firmly opposed to the corrupt oligarchs, and Viktor Yanukovych, who had succeeded Yushchenko as Prime Minister. Yanukovych was the former Governor of Donetsk, and maintained a huge base of popularity in the eastern half of Ukraine. The election was nasty. At one point, Yushchenko was poisoned, almost certainly by the Russian security services. After massive discrepancies between the exit polls, which showed a clear Yushchenko win, and the official results, with a narrow Yanukovych win, huge protests broke out in Kyiv, alleging voter fraud. The Supreme Court agreed and a recount was held, which Yushchenko won handily.
This was the Orange Revolution, but, unfortunately Yushchenko proved much better at organizing protests than governing. Despite rhetoric about fighting corruption, his coalition was plagued with their own accusations of corruption, as well as with endless infighting. Only a year into the Presidency, he fired his own Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, and appointed Yanukovych, of all people, as Prime Minister. Allegations of working for Russian oligarchs swirled around pretty much everyone, and practically every year was beset by political crises. Yushchenko’s popularity dropped to an impressively low 4%.
In the subsequent election of 2010, Yushchenko fell to a distant fifth place and the runoff was between Yanukovych (again) and Tymoshenko. Yanukovych’s image was more or less unchanged – a corrupt former bureaucrat and ardent defender of the status quo, but Tymoshenko was also enmeshed in scandals with various Ukrainian and Russian gas oligarchs. In addition, Tymoshenko was seen as a conniving Ukrainian populist with no real morals who was willing to take any route she could find to power. Turnout fell almost 10% and Yanukovych won narrowly. There were no protests.
Like the Yushchenko presidency, the Yanukovych presidency was chaotic. He initiated a series of politically motivated arrests, including against Tymoshenko. The one bright spot for many Ukrainians was the slow march of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement through the many levels of EU and Ukrainian bureaucracy. The Association Agreement would reduce tariffs and trade barriers between Ukraine and the EU, as well as allowing for visa free-travel. This would, however, force Russia and its intermediary Ukrainian oligarchs to compete with the EU. Russian leaders were fully aware that they massively benefited from buying Ukrainian resources cheaply, and that the EU would easily outbid them. But ironically, the main barrier for its passage was opposition within the EU. EU officials expressed concern about the state of Ukrainian democracy and required Ukraine to meet conditions, including the release of Tymoshenko, before the agreement would be ratified. EU officials participated in symbolic gestures, including boycotting the UEFA Euro 2012 championship (which was held in Ukraine), and EU ascension remained an extremely remote prospect.
Regardless, in late 2013, the cabinet unanimously endorsed the Association Agreement, but the Rada stalled on passing the democratic reforms the EU demanded or on releasing Tymoshenko. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, announced that Russia had no comment on the proceedings, and was ready to engage in trilateral negotiations. Protests began to gather in Kyiv, demanding that Yanukovych sign the agreement and pass the reforms. A week later, Yanukovych suspended negotiations with the EU and announced that Russia had pressured him into delaying. The EU, increasingly frustrated, denounced the meddling of a third power – that is, Russia – in Ukraine’s economic negotiations.
The mood on the street grew increasingly angry as well, and protests swelled across Ukraine, eventually devolving into street fighting. After three months, in February 2014, Yanukovych gave in and signed an agreement acquiescing all power to the opposition. He immediately fled to Russia, and in his absence, was impeached by a unanimous vote of a quorum of 328 members of the Rada (out of 450 total members) – crucially this was only possible because the pro-Russian Party of Regions fractured spectacularly, many MPs switching sides to join the protestors and others implying heavily that they supported the Association Agreement. These events are often called Euromaidan, a portmanteau of Euro and Maidan Square, the central square of Kyiv where the largest protests took place. But in Ukraine, it’s usually referred to as the Revolution of Dignity.
The motivations of those who protested for reform have been litigated incessantly in the western press, but what’s more interesting is the sociological background of those who supported Yanukovych and repudiated the protests. Russian propaganda portrays them as loyalists to Moscow, Russian citizens in exile, adrift in a hostile country that mistreats them and demands their loyalty. But here I think the attitude of Anya towards the government is extremely enlightening. Even on the eve of the reinvasion by Russia in 2022, Anya was loath to criticize Yanukovych. Did she deny that he was corrupt? No, not at all. But he was theircorrupt official, a Donetsk native who could be trusted to shepherd the best outcome for his native parts of Ukraine. Anya’s worldview is deeply pessimistic and extremely cynical. There is no escape from the cycle of corruption; the best outcome is to find someone who would at least advocate for their interests. Opposition to the reform protestors wasn’t an opposition to reform per se, rather a complete disbelief in the existence of reform. The view from Donetsk was conservative, but in a way that Americans have a hard time understanding: conservative like Brezhnev, not like Reagan. The Soviet Union may be gone, but it was hard for people to imagine a world beyond the system it created. Change was terrifying, and they had little faith it would lead to any improvement. But this same conservatism manifested in an opposition for independence or for joining Russia – any outcome that was not the continuation of the status quo was undesirable.
Twin Invasions
In the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity, before Yanukovych had even fled, and against the advice of his Security Council, Putin made an impulsive decision to seize the moment and try to seize Ukraine.
In Crimea, his gambit was an unqualified success. Russian soldiers without insignias occupied Crimean government buildings and took over with practically no resistance, helped along by the fact that Russia already had military facilities, retained from the Soviet Union, on the peninsula.
In the rest of Ukraine, however, it was far from a fait accompli. In Kharkiv, for instance, Russians bussed across the border tried to seize control of the government. Hilariously, they first stormed the opera house, thinking it was the city hall, found no support among the Ukrainian anti-Euromaidan protesters across the city, and were easily arrested by Ukrainian Security Forces. In Odessa, the world’s most pathetic psyop occurred, where an anonymous internet group claiming to represent the anti-Maidan protesters declared independence, only to be immediately refuted by the actual anti-Maidan protesters, who had made no such declaration.
In Luhansk and Donetsk, Russian regular troops entered and enforced what the protestors wouldn’t – the creation of a rump state wholly dependent on Russia. Led by Russian FSB agent and ultranationalist Igor Girkin, the military’s battle for control was much harder than they expected. Ukraine’s military was in an extremely poor state, but newly organized ad-hoc paramilitaries were formed to counter the invasion. Russia’s intervention had managed to unite the disparate sides of Ukrainian civil society in the east against the new threat of invasion. It was at this time that the infamous Azov Battalion was formed in Mariupol by right-wing Ukrainian extremists (who all happened to be Russophones) and led by neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky, a failed political candidate turned militant. In a foreshadowing of things to come, the Russian military badly underestimated the will of Ukrainians to fight back, and were barely able to advance beyond the suburbs of the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Azov, supported by the Ukrainians who had just months before been protesting the Maidan revolution, fiercely defended Mariupol.
Generally, the people who foiled the attempted Russian invasion in 2014 – which, as indicated by their attempts in Kharkiv and Odessa, had much more far reaching goals than the half of Luhansk and Donetsk they successfully carved off – were the same people that Putin claimed to be protecting, the lost sheep of the Russian world, stuck in Ukraine. If Biletsky, whose far-right ultranationalist ideology hardly differed from Girkin in substance, if not on the specifics, had joined up with the Russian army, undoubtedly Putin would have honored him with a medal (this is not as absurd as it sounds, until as late as 2011 Biletsky advocated for a union between Russia and Ukraine). This lack of enthusiasm was noted by the invaders at the time – Girkin even appealed publicly for Russian volunteers to join him after the Ukrainians in Donetsk proved completely unwilling to join. The invasion of Ukraine in 2014 failed precisely because it lacked the widespread popular support that Putin believed it had. Support for anti-Maidan protests did not translate into a desire to become a puppet of Russia, and the same people who had just been protesting Euromaidan a few months prior had now been actively turned into Ukrainian patriots in the face of Russian aggression against their homes.
What Russia had done, in essence, was shake away the idea that the continuation of the status quo was possible. Nothing would ever be the same. Like anyone else who could, Anya fled to Mariupol at this time, where she settled permanently, crossing the ceasefire line a few times a year to visit her parents. The rest of Ukraine swelled with refugees like her, and public opinion of Russia tanked. The pro-Russian parties, who won their political power largely on their ability to continue the status quo, were decimated in the next parliamentary elections, losing an impressive 188 seats and retaining less than 10% of the Rada. Petro Poroshenko, one of the few oligarchs whose businesses were largely westward oriented, ran for President and won handily in the first round, winning the plurality of the vote practically everywhere and winning outright majorities over wide swaths of the country. Politically, Ukraine was more united than it had been since independence, and regional political differences almost entirely disappeared.
Unfortunately for the hopeful reformers, political consensus did not automatically translate into political solutions, and Ukraine remained mired in corruption and infighting. Poroshenko failed to win reelection in 2019 after a scandal broke implicating his political allies in a scheme to use the Ukrainian state defense industry to launder money. This time, Ukrainians elected a complete political outsider, a Ukrainian-Jewish former comedian from the industrial (and largely Russophone) city of Kryvyi Rih, Volodomyr Zelenskyy, again on promises of reform and the end of corruption. But public perceptions of Zelenskyy, too, deteriorated rapidly after his election, as he spent time and energy accusing his political enemies of various forms of treason and cooperation with Russia, even as rumors of an impending invasion loomed.
All the while, the newly-declared Luhansk Democratic Republic and Donetsk Democratic Republic (LDR/DNR) turned into anarchic gangster states. Anya’s description of the area is that Russia improved nothing and made everything worse. All problems with the area – typical of impoverished industrial areas around the world – were exacerbated, and those who could leave, did. Anyone caught with sentiments that might suggest that Russian intervention was a bad idea would be unceremoniously disappeared, perhaps to be tortured and publicly humiliated. The situation in Crimea was only marginally better, and human rights abuses abounded, particularly directed at the remaining native Tatars who bore the brunt of Russian racism. Russia signed the (now infamous) Minsk accords but refused to follow through with their own agreements, repeatedly violating the ceasefire agreements and refusing to give up control of the border.
Meanwhile, on the Ukrainian side something remarkable happened: substantial reform within the army. Largely unnoticed by the west, or (if noticed) simply credited to Western aid and training, the Ukrainian Armed Forces transformed from a ragtag force needing help from neo-Nazi paramilitaries to a formidable fighting force that resisted the self-proclaimed second best army in the world hundreds of times longer than was expected of them by their erstwhile allies.
The case of Azov is illustrative: they were integrated into the army, depoliticized, their original founders kicked out, and the Nazi-tainted wolfsangel (ꑭ) reinterpreted as an ancient symbol for “Нацїї Ідея” (“National Idea). Biletskiy’s far right Svoboda party won a grand total of 1 seat in the 2019 election while Ukrainian Jews joined his old regiment and made themselves homemade patches that combine the original neo-Nazi symbols with the word “Azov” in Hebrew. In my personal experience, these symbols are too obscure for most Ukrainians to even recognize. Ask them if they’re related to Nazism and they’ll inevitably reply, “Of course not. They are the symbols of Azov. That’s Russian propaganda. I would never support anti-Semitism.” In short, while Biletskiy hoped to use the admiration that Azov won during the defense of Mariupol in 2014 to radicalize Ukraine into fascism, the opposite actually happened. Ukraine capitalized on the social accolades won by Azov while simultaneously denazifying the regiment and rejecting Biletskiy and his goons. Meanwhile, actual antisemitism is so unpopular in Ukraine that as early as 2015, Biletskiy frantically backpedaled when asked about his neo-Nazism.
But even if Western pundits misunderstood Ukraine, they were veritable Ukrainian experts compared to the delusions fermenting in the fevered mind of Vladimir Vladimirovich, self-styled Czar of Russia. In an essay he posted on the Kremlin homepage (apparently now his personal blog) in the summer of 2021, he laid out the logic that would later form the intellectual backing of the renewed invasion. Ukrainians are confused Russians, deluded by the Ukrainian nationalists to hate their mother country and to create an “anti-Russia”, and it is the imperative of Russia to reverse this brainwashing. He seems to believe that millions of Ukrainians are secretly sympathetic to Russia, only prevented from taking up arms against their government by the totality of the oppression. He would soon find out how wrong he was.
And so, in February 2022, Russia, fueled by Putin’s mad ramblings, renewed their invasion of Ukraine. On the eve of their attempted blitzkrieg, I asked Anya, in Russian, if Mariupol was Ukrainian. Of course, she replied, also in Russian, and sent me pictures of hundreds of residents of her city standing in front of the theater, waving Ukrainian flags. Three months later, this city would be in ruins, destroyed for the sake of the “Russian world”, the theater flattened by Russian bombs with hundreds of children in it, and Anya would be a refugee and would swear to never speak Russian again. If there wasn’t an anti-Russia then, there is now, and Putin helped create it.
Delusions of Peace
In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees by Russia, America, and the UK that they would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Professor John Mearsheimer, a prominent Realist and professional contrarian, said this was a bad idea because Russia’s word alone couldn’t be trusted. Prophetic words, and especially ironic since the same Mearsheimer would declare, 30 years later, that assurances of neutrality alone would be enough to safeguard the borders of Ukraine. That’s a funny thing to say, given that in 2010, Ukraine had passed a law effectively banning itself from joining NATO and enshrining neutrality, and that did nothing to stop Russia from seizing Crimea and invading Donetsk and Luhansk. It was only after this initial invasion that Ukraine repealed the law and renewed its push to join NATO.
Ukrainian attitudes towards NATO swung back and forth. The would-be reformer Yushchenko participated in the 2008 Bucharest Summit, declared Ukraine’s intention to join, and had that intention accepted by NATO, despite protests by France and Germany. But this wasn’t particularly popular within Ukraine, and didn’t help Yushchenko’s ailing political career. And indeed, enshrining neutrality was essentially the first thing Yanukovych did after coming into power, and he probably didn’t need much prodding from Russia to do so. It was more or less what people in Ukraine wanted, especially after Ukrainians saw Russia invade the other NATO aspirant in the 2008 Bucharest Summit, Georgia. But, this gave us a little natural experiment in how Russia responded to neighbors: Georgia tried to ally with NATO and was invaded, whereas Ukraine declared neutrality and was also invaded. That’s when Ukrainian attitudes began to shift in favor of NATO ascension. But even by the eve of the renewed invasion in 2022, over 40% disagreed or expressed uncertainty about joining NATO.
The two dimensions that mattered most, then, were economic and psychological. It is crucially important that the initial Russian invasion was not prompted by any push towards NATO, but rather the EU Association Agreement, which enrages Russian leaders as a dual threat. Economically, European integration would have ended the economic colonialism inherited from the Soviet Union,
as Ukrainians would be able to sell their products to European buyers. Psychologically, it could dash Putin’s dreams of a “Union State” of the East Slavic nations, since he hoped to use an economic union to form a political union (a suggestion that even Yanukovych rejected, on the eve of Euromaidan).
Putin’s obsession with his place in history books is well documented, but his chauvinistic pride of Russia’s place in the center of a great Empire is more or less universal within Russia. The idea of Ukraine not wanting to join Russia spits on this – it’s why Putin had to make up incoherent narratives about how the temporarily confused Russians in Ukraine will rise up and support his army when he invades. Many Russians cannot cope with the psychological repercussions of discovering that Ukrainians have no interest in being a “fraternal nation”.
These motives don’t mean that Russia isn’t serious when it repudiates NATO expansion. NATO is a threat to Russia insofar as it thwarts these economic and sociological impetuses for Russian dominance. NATO is objectively anti-imperialist, in the sense that anywhere NATO expands, Russia may not extend its imperialist ambitions. Russia’s motives for wanting Ukraine to enshrine neutrality is not to prevent a NATO invasion (which the Russian security establishment has always thought was so unlikely it’s essentially fiction), it’s so that Russia has the option of invading, as it did in 2014. If Ukraine joined NATO, it would no longer be on its own in facing the Russian military, and would be free to pursue its own interests.
This can be corroborated by observing another natural experiment: the contrast between Ukraine and the Baltic states. Russian narratives towards the Baltic states are almost identical to Russian narratives towards Ukraine, complete with accusations of Nazism and of state-sponsored Russophobia and persecution of the Russian minorities. But Russia has never made any attempt to invade the Baltics, or even to ferment the creation of a breakaway rump state that would surely have little genuine popular support from Baltic Russians. The difference between the Baltic states and Ukraine is that the former are in NATO and the latter is not.
Declarations of neutrality have not proved nearly as effective a deterrent. And a declaration of neutrality for Ukraine will do no more to end this war than the 2010 law enshrining Ukrainian neutrality did to prevent it. The war will end when Ukraine permanently defeats Russian aggression in their country, or when Russia subjugates Ukraine back into a passive rump state. There is no other solution.
Cover photo: Zelenskyy with EU representatives in 2019, from 7/8/2019 DW article “Ukraine’s Zelenskiy proposes peace talks with Putin”.