by Konstantinos K
Vladimir Putin has characterized the fall and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. Indeed, Perestroika and Glasnost, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, a reformer that rose to the leadership of the Soviet Empire, becoming the General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 eventually led to the expiration of the Soviet experiment A few years pass by and the Berlin wall falls as a cauldron of demonstrations and dissatisfaction with the illiberal regimes of Eastern Europe explodes. Gorbachev does not act repressively or even attempting to restore order in the face of the coming anarchy. Instead, he lets change manifest itself and that is the very moment that the death of the Soviet Union is spelt out. To many, Gorbachev is a hero that effectively put an end to the strenuous, expensive, and dangerous great-power politics game the two superpowers had found themselves in. In 1991, the Soviet flag is lowered from the Kremlin’s top for the last time. The Cold War is over and despite dissenting views (Kennan, 1992) the West, led by the US, appeared to have won, introducing what became known as the unipolar moment, whose last moments we are probably still living, since the US still retains nowadays its superpower dominancy and remains unchallenged as a potential rival, China, is on the rise.
It is no surprise that Russia’s authoritarian and 21st century Czar, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, does not share the view that Gorbachev should be hailed as some form of hero. He allowed the collapse of the bipolar system, the fall of the economically challenged USSR and laid the seeds for the Pax Americana, which many have been warning that its death is near (Layne, 2012). Putin, having been openly critical of Gorbatchev’s handling of the tenuous 90s, appears to have a vision of his own for Russia, one that appeals on the majesty of both is Czarist and Soviet past, in stark contrast to its current standing on the global chessboard. The most accurate way to describe Putin’s foreign policy for the Russian Federation is to view Russia as a “grievance state”. Anchored on a sense of “lost glory”, found in the military prowess of the Soviet Union, flying proudly the banner of “civilizational purity” that is based on the fundamental rejection of liberalism, a national identity fueled by constant fear and obsession of external threats and a deep longing to return to traditionally Russian lands (Eastern Ukraine, Crimea etc.) (DemDigest, 2019). That is the 21st Russia of Vladimir Putin in a nutshell. Being an official state ideology in Russia transcends both the state’s public rhetoric domestically and internationally but also constitutes the driving force of Russian foreign policy. The 2014 invasion of Crimea, an excellent lesson in hybrid and unorthodox warfare that has since been studied closely by the West, was merely the materialization of Putin’s foreign policy doctrines. Not anticipated by Europe or the US, Russia’s “little green men” walked across the border and effectively annexed Crimea that is now de facto a part of the Russian Federation. Putin’s state often pays lip service to international law, but in practice, it is completely disregarded in the context of the anarchy and lack of world governance that characterizes the global system. Is Putin, then, a realist? Absolutely. And he doesn’t miss an opportunity to remind us so.
So how does the grievance of Russia for its long-lost glory translate into practice when it comes to Eastern Ukraine? On the 11th of May of 2014, Russian separatists held referendums in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk, declaring their independence from the mainland and the establishment of two autonomous, yet unrecognized ever since by Ukraine and the West, Republics. An armed conflict soon begins, and Ukrainian security forces find themselves fighting against well-armed separatists, backed and coordinated by Russia (BBC, 2015). Following the already tested and proven successful plan of Crimea, all Russian soldiers and personnel present in Luhansk and Donetsk do not wear any uniform or insignia. Technically, they do not exist. Soldiers of virtually no nation and no tactical army. Faceless, gun-toting little green men walking the flat plains of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine A silent invasion and large-scale infiltration were taking place in broad daylight. Although, Russia has staunchly denied all charges there have been many instances and excessive evidence that point in the other direction. On 23-24th of August, a dozen heavily armed paratroopers made their presence in an eastern Ukrainian village. Their “modus operandi” fitted the description of the “little green men” that took over Crimea, earlier that year. With no identifiable insignia and wearing white armbands, they were only betrayed by their Russian accents and food rations with writing in Russian. Their vehicles were marked with white circles. In a nearby village, a similar incident had been taking place and Ukrainian forces ultimately captured ten Russian soldiers. The Russian defence ministry, in the wake of those unfortunate developments, announced that the men were indeed Russian paratroopers who accidentally found themselves across the border during an exercise on the Russian side (Tsvetkova, 2014). A blatant lie as it may have been, it showcased that the Russian officials still denied Russian involvement in Eastern Ukraine, just as they had done in Crimea. Ukrainian officials had earlier in June accused Russian armed forces of sending in a convoy of tanks across the border, entering Eastern Ukraine to assist the rebels (Zinets and Heritage, 2014). No matter the official statements and press releases coming from the Kremlin, it had become evident to all parties involved the kind of game Russia was playing – and continues to play – in Eastern Ukraine.
“NATO must be prepared for little green men,” those “armed soldiers without insignia that create unrest, occupy government buildings, incite the population,” […]“Once the green men are there,” General Breedlove warned, “a revolution happens quickly” […] “What we see in Russia now in this hybrid approach to war, is the use of all the tools that they have to reach into a nation and cause instability.” (Haines, 2016).
• Haines quoting remarks made by US General Philip M. Breedlove.
So far there have been at least two series of peace talks that have produced two sets of peace deals to halt the war in Eastern Ukraine. Minsk I and Minsk II, however, has not resulted in a total halt of all hostilities in the frontlines of Eastern Ukraine. It is telling that within a year of the adoption of Minks II, more than 400 Ukrainian troops had died in 2016 and Russia was still actively supporting the rebel forces while reinforcing their frontlines (Babb, 2016). While there is no end in sight for Putin’s protracted war in Eastern Ukraine, the EU has accused the Kremlin of attempting to integrate the unrecognized republics in Donbas and Luhansk into the Russian Federation as more than half a million Ukrainian citizens in the rebel-held provinces have been given Russian citizenship (Dickinson, 2021). Is this a sign of Putin’s endgame in Ukraine? It might be too early to tell yet but is important to point out that Russia’s military adventurism in the region has not remained totally unanswered. The Ukrainian crisis in its entirety has resulted in the imposition of three rounds of sanctions upon Russia, with the first round involving the freezing of assets and travel bans by the Obama administration (Holland and Mason, 2014). EU, Canada, the Ukraine and others followed suit while the two rounds of economic sanctions that followed had a significant weakening effect on the Russian economy. Can those measures, however, be enough to counter the “New Generation Warfare” (Balasevicious, 2017:17) that Russia has so successfully practised on the easternmost outskirts of Europe? Can the economic sanctions put a halt on the “little green men” starting to walk again and invading Ukraine? While having intensified the spectrum and level of the economic challenges Russia was already facing before the Ukrainian crisis, it still seems very unlikely that Putin’s ambitions and grievances will simply fade away in the wake of economic adversity at home.
The West’s biggest mistake in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis was undoubtedly its weak and toothless response in the face of Russian aggression and the direst security crisis in Europe since the Cold War. Preventing the “little green men” from silently invading Crimea and operating in Eastern Ukraine had been the West’s most crucial failure in securing its interests in eastern Europe and ensuring Ukraine’s territorial integrity. As a result of their incapacity to thwart Russian aggression and expansionism in Ukraine, Russia has successfully translated its rhetoric on how “Ukraine is not even a state!” into action, resulting in a de facto on the field for the architect of Putin’s Ukraine policy, former personal advisor to the President, Vladislav Surkov (Düben, 2020). Is there an antidote to Russia’s “silent invasion” of Crimea? American political scientist and prominent realist, John Mearsheimer, the US is merely reaping what it sowed. NATO enlargement that brought NATO troops closer to Moscow than ever before attempts to draw Ukraine closer to the EU and western camp, the ousting of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President, just prior to the invasion, were all reasons for concern. Putin watched Ukraine being transformed into a western stronghold in Russian’s backdoor that is the East European Plain, a regional bloc of immense geopolitical value for Russia historically since it has too often been used as a path to the Russian heartland by historical figures such a Napoleon and Hitler – that both notably failed. Mearsheimer regards Russia’s incursion into Crimea to have been a predictable and natural reaction to the hybris that characterized the West’s “liberal delusions” (Mearsheimer, 2014:1) And it is exactly that failure of the West to see that a storm was coming that allowed Russia to achieve such an unprecedented victory, employing the hybrid warfare in Ukraine. What does the future, therefore, hold for the conflict? Will the US ultimately respond similarly by boosting military aid to Ukraine and have proxy forces to operate against the Russia-backed rebels in Donbas and Luhansk? Or will it proceed with tightening the sanctions regime and attempt to make the Ukrainian conflict unsustainable for the Russian Federation? It currently seems that the latter solution has gained ground, but the careful onlooker should not reach any hastened conclusions just yet. The conflict still remains unresolved, and the Ukrainian people are certainly the ones who have suffered the most from the lack of American prognosis and Russian aggression.
Bibliography:
Babb, C. (2014) Pentagon: Despite Minsk II, More Than 400 Ukraine Troops Killed. VOA News. https://www.voanews.com/europe/pentagon-despite-minsk-ii-more-400-ukraine-troops-killed
Balasevicious, T. (2017) Looking for Little Green Men: Understanding Russia’s Employment of Hybrid Warfare. Canadian Military Journal. Vol. 17. Number 3. Summer 2017.
BBC (2015) Ukraine crisis in maps. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27308526
Democracy Digest (2019) Ideological ‘grievance state’: Five Faces of Russia’s Soft Power. Democracy Digest. https://www.demdigest.org/ideological-grievance-state-five-faces-of-russias-soft-power/
Dickinson, P. (2021) Putin’s Ukraine War: EU warns Russia is “de facto integrating” occupied east. Atlantic Council. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-ukraine-war-eu-warns-russia-is-de-facto-integrating-occupied-east/
Duben, B., A. (2020) “There is no Ukraine”: Fact-Checking the Kremlin’s Version of Ukrainian History. LSE. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lseih/2020/07/01/there-is-no-ukraine-fact-checking-the-kremlins-version-of-ukrainian-history/
Haines, J., R. (2016) How, Why, and When Russia Will Deploy Little Green Men – and Why the US Cannot. Foreign Policy Research Institute. https://www.fpri.org/article/2016/03/how-why-and-when-russia-will-deploy-little-green-men-and-why-the-us-cannot/
Holland, S., Mason, J. (2014) UPDATE 4-Obama warns on Crimea, orders sanctions over Russian moves in Ukraine. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-obama-idUSL1N0M30XQ20140306
Kennan, G., F. (1992) The G.O.P. Won the Cold War? Ridiculous. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/28/opinion/the-gop-won-the-cold-war-ridiculous.html
Layne, C. (2012) The End of Pax Americana: How Western Decline Became Inevitable. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/04/the-end-of-pax-americana-how-western-decline-became-inevitable/256388/
Mearsheimer, J. (2014) Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin. Foreign Affairs. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault
Tsvetkova, M. (2014) 'Men in green' raise suspicions of east Ukrainian villagers. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-fighters-idUSKBN0GQ1X520140826
Zinets, N., Heritage, T. (2014) Ukraine accuses Russia of letting rebels bring in tanks. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-tanks-idUSKBN0EN1KS20140612
Add comment
Comments