The Western “elites” are very active at the moment plugging the line that when Putin “invaded” Ukraine in February 2022 he wanted to take over the whole country and “erase Ukraine from the map as an independent country”. [1] This lie (they must know it is not true, the initial force was nowhere near enough to occupy the whole country) has been deployed throughout the conflict in order to bolster the case for pouring in arms. It is also used to obscure, from their own populations, the simple fact that the primary motivation on the part of the Russians for their military action in Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine joining NATO.
However; this lie now has a new utility. It looks like the Western elites are anticipating a negotiated settlement in the near future and are already preparing their messaging in relation to that. * The line that “Putin wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine” is being pre-emptively deployed to enable Western elites to claim that a negotiated settlement which leaves Ukraine outside NATO and surrendering large chunks of the East to Russia is a “victory” for the West. They need this because the reality; that any final deal that Kiev gets will be the same or worse than could have been got in March 2022 without all this terrible loss of life, is something that they need to hide from their publics. They are already getting ready to cover up their responsibility for god knows how much senseless loss of life. Probably, so they can do it again.
* – Mearsheimer argues that due to the ubiquitous failure in the US policy elite to get to grips with the Russian point of view and how they see Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat and how they insist that the war can only end with a permanent agreement that cedes territory to them, the new US administration is unlikely to be able to negotiate an end to the war. Thus, he argues, this is likely to end on the battlefield, with a Russian victory. He places this tentatively sometime in the middle of 2015.
Blinken’s sly argument
I just want to engage with this, from Blinken’s speech at the OSCE:
First, he [Lavrov] speaks of the indivisibility of security. That’s right, but it cannot be and must not be a one-way street, good for Russia but not Ukraine. But let’s not fool ourselves and let’s not allow him or anyone else to fool us. This is not about and has never been about Russia’s security. This is about Mr. Putin’s imperial project to erase Ukraine from the map.
The argument floated here is that Russia may have security concerns in relation to Ukraine in NATO but Ukraine has security concerns in relation to Russia which entitle them to, for example, join NATO. He doesn’t take this argument too far for obvious reasons; he doesn’t want to acknowledge any substance to Russian concerns about Ukraine joining NATO at all. But it is a sly argument nonetheless as the aim is to diminish the Russian argument about Ukraine joining NATO. The premise to this argument (floated but not made) is that Ukraine and Russia are countries of equal status. This, though he doesn’t admit it, is one of the sore points of this whole situation. Russia sees herself as a Great Power. Like other Great Powers, for example the US, Russia believes they have a “right” (obligation to themselves) to block, if they can, potential threats arising on their borders. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it seems, the US has been determined to see Russia as regular country, not a Great Power. So, as here, Russia and Ukraine are simply bracketed together. Just this, the US aim to “knock Russia out of the ranks of the Great Powers”, is, as Mearsheimer points out, one of the causes of this war. Here, Blinken is short-circuiting a whole reality, simply talking as if the US aim, to knock Russia out of the ranks of the Great Powers, had already been realised. In this he simply negates all Russian concerns. Not seeing, apparently, that this is the problem.
Even if, though, we accepted that Russia is not a Great Power, the argument still fails. Ukraine has live border disputes with Russia. There are millions of ethnic Russians in Ukraine and also “fellow-travellers”, Ukrainians who are aligned with Russia culturally, who are, perhaps not to the extent depicted in the Russian narrative, but nonetheless, in real ways, at risk of persecution from an extreme Ukrainian nationalist regime in Kiev. The regime in Kiev is linked to and partly under the control of right-wing paramilitaries who are fervently anti Russian. Even many moderates associated with the regime believe they are fighting a colonial war of independence against Russia. Were Ukraine to join NATO there would be a real risk that hotheads in Ukraine would make some kind of attack on Russia with the aim of drawing Russian into attacking Ukraine and thereby obliging NATO to come to their aid and fight Russia. It is entirely rational of Russia to try to prevent this, at all costs. This applies whether Russia is seen as a Great Power, or not. Another way in which the stated equivalence is false even on its own terms is that Ukraine was not under any threat from Russia until they started moving closer to joining NATO while at the same time attacking ethnic Russians in Donbas.
Blinken then provides some cherry-picked quotes to try to back his absurd narrative about “Imperial project to erase Ukraine from the map”. He can’t quote from Putin’s well-known essay about Ukraine from 2021, because it is clear from that, that Putin does indeed envisage a separate and independent Ukraine. Putin’s view of the historical unity of Ukrainian and Russian people’s is not inconsistent with his, also frequently stated point, that Ukraine can exist as a partner for Russia and indeed do so as a member of the EU.
Notes
- For example; in Times Radio. “Putin has been (already) defeated | Lord Richards” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2RNWsaw5lE&t=15s Here is Blinken telling the same lie, at the OSCE meeting in Malta: https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-at-the-osce-ministerial-council-meeting-plenary-session/