Another great post by Polish analyst Daniel Szeligowski, about “Russian security concerns” related to #NATO and #Ukraine. All following text is Daniel’s, written originally in English, with no quote block for readability.
In early 2014, Ukraine was a neutral country, with a pro-Russian president, and with 70% of Ukraine’s population against NATO membership. Yet Russia violated Ukraine’s neutrality and annexed Crimea, then launched a covert invasion of Ukraine in the east.
Petro Poroshenko won the presidential election in 2014 having promised a settlement with Russia, keeping a special status of the Russian language in Ukraine. He was initially sceptical regarding NATO accession, underlined Ukraine must rely on its own strength to provide security.
Zelensky also won the presidential election promising to compromise with Russia - to stop shooting, sit down with Putin and talk. He was even more sceptical regarding NATO accession. Asked about NATO, he once famously said he never pays anyone a visit if he has not been invited.
Zelensky was ready to drop Ukraine’s NATO membership bid in an exchange for the Russian troops withdrawing from Ukraine, and the talks were held already before 2022. And yet Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In the first weeks of the invasion, Zelensky was yet again ready to drop Ukraine’s NATO bid. But he wanted to obtain international security guarantees. So Putin put forward demands that Russia must be consulted before any aid would be given to Ukraine in the event of aggression.
Both Poroshenko and Zelensky were initially sceptical regarding Ukraine’s accession to NATO. Both wanted to get a deal with Putin. And Putin himself pushed both of them to seek NATO membership out of no other viable alternatives.
Putin has shown no willingness to compromise with Ukraine. His war aims remain maximalist - subjugating Ukraine and changing its regime. He seeks Ukraine’s partition, and will turn what is left of Ukraine into a Russian protectorate. Nothing to do with his “feelings” about NATO.
Regrettably, Russia’s imperial self-conception is that of Russian elites at large, not just Putin. Russian leadership simply cannot reconcile with the existence of a sovereign Ukrainian statehood. So any sustainable Ukrainian-Russian compromise is currently not within reach.
I can only add to this that I don’t think the imperial ideology is the only factor here - Putin’s insistence has strong pragmatic base, as strange as it sounds. The reality is that #Putin failed to deliver any of his social and economic promises he was repeatedly making since 1999.
Russian society as a whole has this interesting feature that they can accept any misery, as long as their closest neighbours are as poor as themselves.
Strong economic growth in Ukraine and EU accession could be actually triggering even for Russian society, and would make them start questioning Putin’s efficiency as a leader.
Putin’s incompetence as a leader in 21st century can only survive when unquestioned - when Putin enjoys exclusive protection from any criticism, his policies are never verified against his promises and his authority presented as some form of sacred entitlement.
By trying to destroy Ukraine Putin is really fighting to sustain the very economic model he created - autocracy, cognitive bias, incompetence and inequality.
@kravietz He has a lot of in common with Hitler, this is just one thing. Neither one of them had the economy that was sustainable in the long run and they both resorted to using wars to cover this up. It's a shame that few people see this.
@doctor_zoidberg @kravietz
Exactly!
> they can accept any misery, as long as their closest neighbours are as poor as themselves
Not only that — the economy was doing more or less fine till 2013, but oil prices started dropping and this would've slowed down the economic growth drastically. At the same time in 2011-2013 people were protesting.
Seeing poor economic performance more people could've joined the protesters, so he had to respond — and short victorious war isn't exactly a new trick.
@doctor_zoidberg @kravietz
As sad as it is to admit, but a lot of people genuinely welcomed the Crimea annexation. Besides — now poor economic performance could be pinned on sanctions! Which as we know weren't even remotely effective.
He tried to repeat the success with Syria, but few were interested in that conflict. At that point people have readjusted to the new economic realities, but suddenly a pandemic broke out, this was a serious problem.
Time for another victorious war?
@doctor_zoidberg @kravietz
Except… he expected it to go exactly it did with Crimea, his intelligence had been lying to him and he miscalculated.
Economy performing poorly under Pooteen is the primary reason — always was, everything else follows. And NATO never had anything at all to do with it — Trump and his advisors demonstrate their utter incompetence even bringing that up, and some European leaders are falling right into KGB trap discussing this instead of implementing what has to be done!
Putin does not understand economy and is always caught up in the middle between the temptation to micromanage, manually solving specific minor issues, which in turn disturb the bigger picture, and securing the interests of his friends, which causes these specific issues in the first place. His approach to the law is exactly the same, but this one is much more representative to the popular Russian culture - everyone wants the law to be harsh when applies to others, but when you’re caught in some legal issue then “it’s different”. Both these factors took Russia exactly to the place where it is today.
@kravietz
That's true — and I think it's a little miracle that he lets the head of Russian Central Bank reign free and still didn't make her step down despite some of his cro… I mean "friends" of course — being displeased with high rate of interest.
But the night is young — I think we'll see this soon. Trump is only about to discover that no one is interested in negotiating NATO membership. Pooteen might agree if all sanctions get lifted, but even GOP is unlikely to support it
@doctor_zoidberg
Putin was trying to manipulating the economy in the past, and still occasionally can’t hold his mouth - e.g. just before the New Year he said something about Central Bank not raising the base rate. But you can clearly see someone is preventing him very decisively from going to deep into the micromanagement, which would cause a disaster and he’s reluctantly seems to be accepting this limitation.
@kravietz
Exactly! Like I said, I'm kinda surprised he still manages to his horses and not break the economy with one decisive blow 😂
But let's give him that — one of the few thing's he's really good at is balancing, keeping different groups at bay by finding the right spot for compromise.
As soon as he gives up and lets one of his advisors with greatest Soviet economic education chime in — it would escalate VERY quickly!
@doctor_zoidberg @kravietz
Few remember that now, but before invading Ukraine, Russian troops were deployed in Kazakhstan in 2022: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kazakh_unrest
> Putin described the intervention as a concerted effort to protect regional allies from what he described as colour revolutions instigated by foreign interference"
Annexing a part of KZ was the alternative, but China told him to get out. He knew that at least some people would support another conflict with UA — so he went that route.