Dr. Bradley Woodworth’s opinion letter was originally published in the Hartford Courant on March 16, 2022
More talks between Russian and Ukrainian representatives began on Monday, the day after Russian missiles hit a Ukrainian military site near the border with Poland, killing 35 people. Rockets also rained down on residential districts of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
It is non-military targets that for over a week the Russian military has focused on. Other towns and cities have experienced extensive artillery attacks aimed directly at civilian targets. We do not know how many civilians have been killed, but it is believed at least 1,000. The number of Ukrainian fighters killed is not known. Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post the number of Russian war dead is estimated to be between 2,000 and 4,000.
This violence is happening because one person wants it. Vladimir Putin, the autocratic, if not now dictatorial president of Russia, was convinced that his military would be able to carry out a rapid strike against the Ukrainian state, remove its president and other top officials, and install Russian puppets who would then turn Ukraine’s orientation away from the west and back to the east, to Moscow. Clearly, Putin had received extremely poor intelligence about the likely success of the planned mission. In fact, the chief of the FSB section charged with collecting intelligence in Ukraine before the invasion, as well as his deputy, have both been placed under house arrest.
Putin’s destructive terror is now aimed against the people of Ukraine, regardless of whether their native language is Russian or Ukrainian. Yes, Putin’s army is killing Russians too. Russian is the dominant language in the cities of northeastern and southeastern Ukraine that have been heavily bombed: Kharkiv, Sumy, Mariupol, Mykolaiv and Dnipro. (The language people use in daily life in these cities does not necessarily correspond to what they consider as their ethnicity.) The targeting of civilians and artillery fire directed at residential neighborhoods, hospitals, schools and local government buildings is deliberate retaliation by Putin against all the people of Ukraine for collectively opposing his vision for a future relationship between Russia and Ukraine.
One can understand a hesitancy to delve into Putin’s thinking. He denies the right of the people of Ukraine to determine their own future. There is no way to justify or explain his rejection of this – something that modern states defend as a fundamental human right. But what is behind Putin’s reasoning? Putin sees as his legacy returning Russia to its status as an empire led by Moscow. Justification for this he sees in Russia’s long history, extending back centuries.
In many ways, Ukraine is central to this imperial identity. If you open a textbook on the history of Russia and one on the history of Ukraine, beginning no later than the ninth century into the 14th century (800s to 1300s) the content is basically the same – the story of the consolidation of eastern Slavs, with a religion that came from the Byzantine Empire (eastern part of the Roman Empire) – Eastern Orthodox Christianity. There weren’t yet “Russians” or “Ukrainians” in these centuries, just like the nations of western Europe did not exist in their modern form.
In the 17th century, when Moscow had become the strongest state in these lands, the eastern part of what is Ukraine today was brought under its control. Most of what is western Ukraine – which had been part of Poland – was taken into the empire in the last third of the 18th century. For all of the 19th century and then most of the 20th century, Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire – which after World War I became the Soviet Union. The rest of what today is Ukraine was brought into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic after World War II. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine (and 13 other so-called Soviet republics) became independent states – new countries. For Putin, this shared history justifies his demand that Ukraine be under Russia’s control.
It is likely that for Putin – as much as he likes to emphasize that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people – a single whole” – what he wants most is to stop Ukraine from moving more toward Western and Central Europe in its national orientation. His greatest concern is that Ukraine will enter NATO. Ukraine has been moving decisively away from an association with Russia and looking toward Western Europe, including wanting to become a member of the European Union. Putin responded to this with military action, annexing the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and unleashing war in several regions in eastern Ukraine – regions that in February he proposed should be recognized as independent states. At a televised session of Russia’s Security Council to discuss the plan, Putin’s director of foreign intelligence was so nervous he stuttered and was visibly flustered under Putin’s baleful eye.
For Putin, the seizure of Ukraine is the first step in restoring Russia to a position of global dominance. Putin does not respect the post-World War II order, in which the sovereignty of states is held in respect. Putin does not see the international politics in terms of individual states that make up the world community, and whose citizens get to make up their own minds about their country’s overall direction. Instead, he sees power in the world in the hands of several large countries – Russia, China, India, the United States. Everything else is just spheres of their influence. Europe, for instance, is in Putin’s eyes merely an extension of American power. Not incidentally, Stalin saw Europe in the same light after World War II.
What is happening in Eastern Europe is perhaps the most fraught, dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. We do not know how this current crisis will end. Will there be a long, drawn-out war in Ukraine, with Russian troops battling insurgents for months if not years? Will Ukraine soon be forced to capitulate to Russia to avoid more killing, conceding territory and a promise not to join the EU and NATO? Or will Putin somehow be ousted in Russia?
Undoubtedly, the historical path of Europe will be changed after this war. Europe and the United States will work to rebuild Ukraine, and the Ukrainians now forever will see themselves as part of the Western and Central European family of nations. What will happen to Russia is harder to predict. Russians will have to come to terms with, and try to find a way to compensate for the crimes committed in their name by their state, similar to what Germans have done after World War II. That is a task that will face Russians alive today for the rest of their lives as well as generations to come.
Bradley D. Woodworth is an associate professor of history at the University of New Haven and an affiliate of the Yale REEES Program