People are keen for ways to understand and explain the situation in Ukraine. You could do a lot worse than read the speech Putin made when he launched the war on February 24^th.

Putin is at his most convincing when he is condemning the western leaders. He mentions Libya, Syria, Iraq:

We have to remind of these facts, as some Western colleagues do not like to remember those events, and when we talk about it, they prefer to point not to the norms of international law, but to the circumstances that they interpret as they see fit.

He is at his least convincing when justifying his own actions:

And for our country, this is ultimately a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a people.

The destiny of the Russian people depended on a full-scale invasion and regime change of Ukraine? Yeah right.

Denazification?

At one moment he defends the operation as a means to defend the separatist ‘People’s Republics’ in the east. The next moment he speaks of demilitarising and ‘denazification’ of Ukraine.

Putin, if he is a sincere anti-fascist, might have started with ‘denazification’ of Russia’s war effort in Syria, where members of neo-Nazi organisation Rusich operate in the mercenary Wagner Group.

But the irony runs deeper. By reducing Ukraine to a warzone, Putin creates the possibility of Ukraine becoming a greenhouse for paramilitary, insurgent, mercenary and terrorist groups of all kinds. If the war is a long one, like in Syria, this is almost a certainty. This would offer new avenues of advance for Ukrainian fascism (which is a real and dangerous force).

In Iraq the chaos of invasion, war and insurgency led to the rise of Isis/Da’esh. We should consider what monsters could emerge from the ruins of Ukraine.

But the ‘denazification’ argument is window dressing in the speech. There is greater stress on the question of Russian security. This is a stronger argument, because NATO, with its bases in Eastern Europe, poses a potential threat to civilians in Russia. In this way the position is different from Iraq, where the ‘threat’ was completely fabricated.

Security

Though I was very young, I was in the anti-war movement at the time of the Iraq War. At the time we did not know for certain that the threat was fabricated. Speaking for myself, I opposed the invasion because – regardless of whether the intel was real or not – I rejected the idea behind it, that the US somehow had the right to bomb and invade Iraq just because there was some potential future threat to US security. The same toxic idea is at the heart of Putin’s speech on Ukraine. The ‘security’ of the stronger party is so important that it has the right to reduce its weaker neighbour to rubble just to head off potential threats.

On paper, a ‘neutral’ Ukrainian regime would be a guarantee of security for people in Russia.

In reality, by launching an obscene war of aggression the Russian state has made the situation far more dangerous, first and foremost for the people of Ukraine but in the long run for the people of Russia too.

There is a deep-seated anti-war sentiment in the US and Western Europe.[i] Since the disaster of the Iraq war, the US government has held back on launching anything on a similar scale. To attempt another war of that kind would create too much instability at home and in the ranks.

The best guarantee of security for people in Russia is not a ‘neutral’ regime planted at gunpoint in Kiev. It is the fact that working, poor and middle-income people in the west have absolutely no interest in going to war against working, poor and middle-income people in Russia.  

But this invasion has done much to cut across that sentiment. Leo Varadkar, Tánaiste (deputy Prime Minister) of Ireland, has called Putin ‘the Hitler of the 21^st Century.’ That is just as historically illiterate as Putin’s claim that he is ‘denazifying’ Ukraine.[ii] Of course, English-speaking politicians and columnists will bleat about appeasement and Neville Chamberlain literally every time there’s an international stand-off of any kind. Usually the vast majority of people will pay little attention to their grandstanding. But now people see on their screens and newspapers what’s happening in Ukraine. People will be more inclined to listen to the politicians and their pathetic Winston Churchill impressions.

In short, this invasion has made it more challenging to make the case against NATO aggression. People in Western Europe and the US will still, I predict, refuse to be dragged into war. But the mood is very different from a week ago. We cannot predict how the mood will be after months and possibly years of ruined cities, refugees and atrocities.

Strategy of Russian ruling class

But what is the rationale of the Russian ruling class? How does this wild, reckless move make any sense from a strategic point of view?

First off, Putin and his (apparently very small) circle of confidantes don’t care about the prospect for an anti-war movement in Western Europe or North America. They are cynical. This attack has got little to do with security and nothing to do with denazification. My understanding of it at this point is as follows.

Over the last year or so the Russian state has helped to defeat protest movements in Belarus and in Kazakhstan. It bailed out the tyrants in charge of those countries, and in return gained influence. The case of Belarus was significant because the Belarus front appears to have proved crucial for the advance on Kyiv. Victory in Syria is also a factor; the Russian military is much weaker than that of the US, but the Russian military has actually been winning wars. The Russian ruling class is at a relative peak in terms of power and influence.

While the actions of the NATO leaders are those of people who have time on their side, the actions of Putin suggest a desperate sense that whatever advantage he enjoys can only be temporary, and must be exploited to the full.[iii] Exploiting it at the negotiating table did not work, so he is exploiting it on the battlefield – with horrific consequences for the people of Ukraine.

To refer to Iraq again, when the US invaded that country I marched against the war. But it never entered my head to call for Russia, China or Iran to intervene – to send troops to Baghdad, to bomb New York, or anything of the kind. Obviously that would have made the situation far worse. Likewise any call for NATO ‘boots on the ground’ is dangerous.

On both sides, these are sick and cynical power games. The anti-war protestors in Russia have faced arrest in their thousands, just to show the world that their reactionary politicians do not represent them. A principled anti-war movement in Western Europe and North America, opposing the warmongers of all sides, must take inspiration from them.

[i] It may not always seem that way because western governments are always finding ways around the will of their own people to bomb and to engineer coups. They have used their vast resources and unaccountability to continue interfering in other countries in spite of the anti-war sentiment. But another war on the scale of Iraq or Afghanistan has been off the table for a long time.

[ii] In 1938 Britain and France gave Hitler everything he wanted, while in 2021 Putin’s enemies gave him absolutely nothing. Hitler was a fascist, a relative political outsider with dreams of world domination. Putin has been an apparatchik and politician within the Soviet then Russian state for many decades.

[iii] What about China? It is my assessment that, for the moment, the Chinese ruling class have more to gain from peace than from war, and will support the Russian regime economically while acting as a restraining influence. For example, they are helping the Russian leaders to weather the storm of sanctions. Note that I said ‘for the moment.’ If this war escalates and proves to be prolonged, the Chinese leaders might decide that war is upon them whether they like it or not, and that it is time to intervene.

Conversely, if it turns out to be a short war, the Chinese government have no reason to commit. It could be a short war if a) the Ukrainian ‘conventional’ resistance is crushed in a matter of weeks or b) if the Russian military suffers heavy casualties, makes slow progress, suffers from low morale. Recent indications favour B. It is almost certain that the Russian state has arrested more anti-war protestors at home (4,300 at the time of writing) than they have captured Ukrainian soldiers.