The Russian president has long denied the right of Ukrainians and their country to exist, so the war crimes of the Russian military are now fully in line with his position.
Despite detailed warnings about Vladimir Putin's plans to wage a full-scale war against Ukraine, many have denied the possibility of a Russian invasion until the last moment. And so the fighting continues for the second month. But this reluctance to believe in reality persists and prevents the international community from realizing the gravity of the situation in Ukraine.
As Western politicians and commentators continue to discuss possible concessions and compromises, few in Moscow have the same illusions. Putin's entourage understands that he considers the conflict a “holy war” and has long since reached a point of no return. The Russian ruler will not agree to anything other than full obedience to Ukraine or its destruction. Peter Dickinson, an expert on the Atlantic Council, writes about this in his article.
The appalling scale of Putin's goals in Ukraine may well seem inconceivable to outside rational observers. But they make sense if we look through the prism of toxic views of the world of the Russian autocrat. Throughout his rule, Putin was guided by a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the post-Soviet decline and an irresistible desire to return Russia to superpower status. Far from wanting to build the USSR, he became interested in traditional Russian nationalism and dreamed of reviving the autocratic tsarist empire.
Putin views the collapse of the Soviet Union as “the demise of historic Russia.” He often complained that in post-Soviet times, millions of Russians were cut off from their homeland. Russia has allegedly lost its legitimate historical centers. These bitter feelings have made Putin obsessed with Ukraine, whose very existence has embodied the so-called injustice of the world order since 1991. Putin is not the first Russian ruler to deny Ukraine's right to exist. On the contrary, the denial of Ukraine is a stable belief that has persisted for hundreds of years of Russian history and is still widespread in Russia. But few were as passionate about this doctrine of denial as Putin. He made it clear that the end of Ukrainian independence is a sacred mission that will determine his place in history.
The current war is only the most recent and dramatic stage of his long-term campaign. Putin made his first attempt to end Ukraine's independence in 2004, when he personally went to Kyiv to campaign for a pro-Russian presidential candidate. But this audacious intervention angered millions of even apolitical Ukrainians, which resulted in the beginning of the “Orange Revolution”. In the following years, Ukraine built its democracy and began a historic rapprochement with the West. This irritated Putin and further convinced him of the need to resume Russian control over the country. Fearing mass protests throughout Central Europe in the 1980s and pushing the Soviet empire to disintegrate, he believed that Ukraine's democratic awakening was a conspiracy and a direct threat to his authoritarian regime. When new democratic protests erupted in Ukraine decades later, Putin occupied Crimea and launched a war in the Donbas.
The Russian autocrat does not keep his obsession with Ukraine a secret. He tried again and again to explain why he believed in the coincidence and error of Ukrainian statehood. In July 2021, he wrote a whole essay of 7,000 words entitled “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In it, he insisted that the Ukrainians were indeed Russians. And no separate Ukrainian identity seems to exist.
The author believes that the longer the war lasts, the greater the Russian atrocities. The Russian war years were prepared for them not to perceive Ukrainians as human beings. The death of their comrades-in-arms radicalizes them. Therefore, they will see less of the difference between civilians and combatants. In turn, Ukraine's refusal to surrender and continue to resist will be used to justify harsh repression. All the conditions for the recurrence of war crimes, comparable to the worst acts of the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, have already been created.
Can Putin be stopped? The first step must be to acknowledge the reality of his crushing intentions.
“When Putin says that there is no Ukrainian nation and no Ukrainian state, he means that he is going to destroy both the Ukrainian nation and the Ukrainian state. Yet they understand that, don't they? ”Yale University historian Timothy Snyder said recently.
To stop Putin, he must be defeated. Everything else will put an end to the war and give Russia time to prepare for a new attempt to destroy Ukraine. For the international community, this means declaring a full-scale economic war against Russia and at the same time greatly increasing arms supplies to the Ukrainian army.
In the first four weeks of the war, the APU proved that they were equal to the Russian invaders. Despite the fact that Putin's army has an advantage in terms of the number of fighters and military equipment, the Russian army is becoming increasingly demoralized. And her command is incompetent. But the Ukrainian defenders are fighting extremely skillfully and persistently. As a result, Russia failed to achieve any of its key military goals and suffered catastrophic losses. If the right weapons are provided in the right numbers, Ukraine can win this war.
Russia should be bled to bankruptcy. The international sanctions imposed since the beginning of the war have been unprecedented in many respects, but remain insufficient. It is important to understand that Putin is ready to endure great economic more to achieve his historic goal of destroying Ukraine. Instead of trying to contain the Kremlin, the goal should be to completely isolate Russia from the global economy and deprive it of the income it needs to wage war. To do this, Western leaders need to accept that their countries will also have to pay a high price. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has warned that a ban on imports of Russian energy will lead to a recession in Europe. He must also understand that the alternative is genocide on the European continent.
In recent years, accusations of genocide have lost their force due to political abuses, particularly by Putin himself. However, this is still the most serious accusation. In the event of war in Ukraine, reservations about the impending genocide are more than justified, if you look only at the most carefree rhetoric of the Russian leader. Putin himself has repeatedly said that he does not recognize Ukraine's right to exist. The war crimes committed by the Russian army on Ukrainian territory fully correspond to the terrible logic of his words. If Putin does not suffer a final defeat in Ukraine, he will destroy it. If the West stands aside and watches this happen, the world will never be the same.
