Putin plays for history as Eurasia stamps the flames

Military parade, Red Square with Kremlin in the background, May 2020. Once upon a time photos just like this were essential for any discussion of Russian military risk. After a hiatus, they are back.

The Backdrop – January 2022

The world has stepped back in time. It is 1970s all over again. Last week in Geneva there were talks between Russian and US representatives, followed by more with the OSCE and NATO, after a video chat between Presidents Biden (U.S.) and Putin (Russia). The net result was a round of US State Department warnings on the weekend that Russia was ‘laying the groundwork’ for an attack on Ukraine, and suggestions out of Moscow that maybe some Latin American states would like Russian military support, and ominous warnings all round amidst the comments that Europe was closer to war than its been in generations. US President Joe Biden thinks Russia will ‘move in’ to Ukraine but says there will be a ‘heavy price‘ for that, amidst questions about whether everyone is on the same page.

To help set the scene, and remind everyone of what is in play, all major nations with scope for doing so jointly declared last week that a nuclear war should only be fought in self defence, and would be preferably avoided altogether. Just to throw a curve ball into the mix, Kazakhstan descended into the type of anarchy all of the region’s leaders abhor, and Russian (and other CIS) troops were sent in to help the Kazakh government tone things down. The presence of Russian troops was questioned by the US, even though it was only 5 days, as though Kazakhstan has a range of alternatives when asking friends in to support the government. Imagine the howls of protest if they had asked the Chinese for help.

That’s right. China is also a factor in all this. The same China winging flights over Taiwan will be pretty interested in how the EU and US play Russia in Ukraine, and maybe even impressed by the way Russia got Crimea back inside its borders. And Ukraine is just one of a number of issues – including Belarus, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Georgia, Abkhazia and Ossetia, Belarus, TransDnistria, now Kazakhstan, and the ever febrile Ferghana Valley regions of Central Asia – which could blow up at any moment if everyone isn’t careful. But right here in late January 2022 it is Ukraine and Russia that the US State Department is issuing warnings about, with those warnings being carried across the media of the English speaking world.

Russia wants agreement on a few issues and is rattling the cage with, depending on who you ask, more than 100 thousand troops poised to invade Ukraine. The Russian bear is on the loose and the people of Ukraine had better look out.

That may be the case. But it is far more likely Vladimir Putin is shaping his position before going to the Russian Presidential elections in 2024, and firming up his position with Russians who will vote in that election and beyond. Bombs going off in the Moscow Metro or body bags bringing Russians home from action elsewhere are unlikely to cement that already strong electoral support. What will, is bringing home the bacon on some issues ordinary Russians think is right, while making sure the neighbourhood doesn’t go up in flames.

If Putin can pull this off then he will become arguably the Greatest Russian of all. If he can’t then there may well be some military action, almost certainly something firmer than Ukrainians wearing yellow and blue clothing on their trips to Red Square, but likely a more strategic parting between Russia and the ‘West’ and a firmer turn to China. There is a lot of global implication here.

History’s Greatest Russian leaders

The pantheon of Russian leaders has Peter the Great at the very top.

An initially shaky Tsar who forced Russia to modernise, learned from the nations to Russia’s west about what that entailed, crafted the jewel of St Petersburg on lands which had historically been only marginally Russian, fought and won wars with traditional enemies, and set the path to Eastward expansion which ended beyond the Pacific. He decided that Russia needed production and technologies, and that Russians needed educations, science, systems of communication, and armies which could poke chests. He made it happen. He died of a gangrenous bladder at the age of 52, having had a 25 year shot at making Russia run his way.

‘Peter the Great’, Jean-Marc Nattie, 1717, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

After him comes Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin – Joseph to much of the world.

It wasn’t pretty, and he wasn’t Russian. But Stalin took control of a revolution which ceased being global and became all about making the revolution work in one country, and the country was Russia. He was paranoid, but he took the chaos which had seized power in Russia, and consolidated it into something workable, and which could run a nation state. It was he who decided the Soviet Union (Russia) needed technology, science, systems and armies, all over again. He murdered millions of Russians but he hung in there to not only withstand, but ultimately prevail against Hitler, and subjugate Eastern Europe under firm Moscow control. Stalin laid the the basis for a system of government the rest of the world loathed continuing for 35 years after his demise – in a pool of his own urine, following a stroke after a drinking binge in the early 1950s, at the age of 74 – after just under 30 years calling the shots.

Joseph Stalin circa 1950

The only reason the above is worth mentioning in 2022 is because Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has a vision, and VVP is the current President of Russia.

VVP has been running Russia for 22 years, and will soon be 69. He will win the 2024 Russian Presidential election in a canter at the age of 71, and have another 6 years as President, which will take him through to being President at 77 Years of age. That is disturbingly old for a nation where the average male is lucky if they make it to their late 60s. He will hand over in that term provided the right person is there to hand over to. VVP wants every person in Russia drinking a toast to his bequest and Russian history books slotting him in just above Peter the Great and Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin in terms of delivering memorable outcomes for the Russian people: VVP wants to be the ‘Greatest Russian’.

The only reason any of the above is worth mentioning is because he is highly likely to do precisely that, and that, when all is said and done, is what all the troops, and current talk of war, and the gas price surges in Europe, is all about. VVP is going to make himself a legend with the Russian people by telling the United States and European Union where to get off on heavying Russia, and impose an ‘agreement’ on them which recognises Russia’s ‘rights’.

And all that brings us to the here and now along the Russia-Ukraine border, and the price of gas at the height of the European winter.

VVP – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin

What Russians think of the world they see about them

A lot of quite liberal, tolerant and rational Russians tend to the view the ‘West’ is keen to make sure the ‘West’ can shoot at Russia without Russia shooting anything back, the moment Russia looks like being a hassle for the European Union or the United States. This thought has grown and become more obvious to Russians since the 1990s. And a lot of Russians aren’t very comfortable with that concept.

In the years after promises were supposedly given to Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin about NATO not expanding any closer to Russia, quite a lot of Russians – including plenty who dislike Putin quite intensely – would observe that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is almost solely about having the ability to muscle the Russians. VVP has made a great play of beefing up Russia’s military capability to address what plenty of Russians identify is a ‘threat’ to them stemming from NATO missile placements in particular. In this he is easily able to capitalise on the historical observation that when Russia is military weak, then some of its neighbors get ‘ideas’. For the sizeable numbers of Russians who like a nationalist feel to their politics this is perfectly obvious. When VVP calls this out there will be plenty of fist pumps, of complete agreement, in Mother Russia. When he proposes doing something about it he is building bridges with Russian voters.

A lot of Russians tend to see the world in a similar way to that depicted in this diagram, with a lot of NATO hardware aimed at them. That is, a lot more hardware aimed at them than they aim anywhere.

Ukraine as a factor in the thought processes of Russians

When Russians think about how the rest of the world, which is aiming a lot of military hardware at them, would like Russia to be, they think a lot about Ukraine.

Ukraine is a lot like what Russia might have become if VVP hadn’t been slotted into power by a batch of Oligarchs who thought him beholden to them, and then subsequently made Russia do things his way, rather than theirs. A nation so corrupted by the 1% that nothing in their parliament ever really works for Ukrainians all that well, and where the bureaucracy is equally compromised by corruption, and where every last large business is either owned by an oligarch or being shaken down on a monthly basis by an oligarch. Where journalists are murdered, just for who they inconvenience with their reporting, along with plenty of others looking for change. Where the entire economy is immersed in debt, where investment is feeble, and where an eminently capable people are held captive in relative poverty, ransomed to the miasma and corruption which shapes their strategic hopes. It doesn’t actually matter if much of the preceding few sentences may be true of Russia when seen from London, New York, or even Melbourne, most Russians think it more true of Ukraine. The national debt greater, the investment feebler, the bureaucracy more corrupt, more journalists whacked, more corruption, more poverty, the polity more subordinate to the interests of the Oligarchs – the 1% who generally get a wonderful reception in Europe and the US, buying mansions, football clubs, basketball teams and driving around in nice cars with models on their arms en-route to Monaco or their super yachts.

A large number of Russians think they have had a better deal. When VVP or the Russian administration refer to Ukraine, they are playing for a home audience, where they can point to the scoreboard, first and foremost, and rightly claim that Russia has delivered results where Ukraine hasn’t. Even if those results don’t appear to be all that much to people elsewhere, or the process by which they’ve been achieved a touch dodgy, VVP, the Putin administration, a probable majority of Russians, and even a probable majority of Ukrainians would be thinking they are ‘results’. Very large numbers of people in Russia and Ukraine tend to think that quality of life for ordinary people is better in Russia than it is in Ukraine.

When VVP refers to Ukraine he is, for Russians, reminding them of that they might have been.

The major issues fueling tensions between Russia and Ukraine

There are four major issues between Russia and Ukraine where every mention of the issue firms up VVP’s relationship with the Russian people. They are:-

Crimea,
Eastern Ukraine,
Gas, and
NATO expansion and the prospect of having missiles aimed at Russia positioned in Ukraine.

Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk. Festering sores of the Russia-Ukraine relationship, all once comfortably run within the Soviet Union

Crimea

The first of these is by far the easiest to explain.

Crimea was a stronghold of the Ottoman empire (Turkey) up until the mid 1700s. It was the Russian forces of Peter the Great and his successors who pushed the Turks (and their Crimean Tatar vassals) back into Crimea in the mid 1700s -from where they had historically controlled the Black Sea and inland to the North – leading to the incorporation of Crimea into the Russian empire in 1783. It remained in Russian control for the rest of the Russian empire and became part of Russia in the Soviet Union. It was the Russians who fought the British French and Turks there during the Crimean War, the Russian Whites held out here with British and French support against the Bolsheviks during the Russian civil war, and it was the scene of epic defensive campaigns by both the Soviets and the Germans yet again during World War 2. It has been the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet since the late 1700s, with the Naval Base at Sevastopol the largest employer in the region.

In 1954 Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Leader after Stalin, transferred the Peninsula from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic – a transfer from Russia to Ukraine within the Soviet Union. Nobody has ever articulated the rationale for doing so. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, 35 years later, into Russia and Ukraine, Crimea was with the latter, but there were plenty on all sides asking if it should be. Those doubts continued with a pair of votes suggesting the Crimeans weren’t all that keen on continuing as part of Ukraine and were keen on being part of Russia. That unsettled situation continued right through to the Ukraine Maidan demonstrations of 2014 which booted out former Ukraine President Yanukovych, when, certainly egged on by Russia and Putin, and certainly helped along by Russian troops who shouldn’t have been there, the Crimeans decided they had had enough and voted first for independence from Ukraine and then for annexation by a welcoming Russia.

Most Russians, and most Crimeans, think this is right.

That annexation by/return to Russia has never been recognised by the global community. This became the basis for financial sanctions against Russian entities which continue to this day.

Eastern Ukraine and the Russians therein

The estimated Russian speaking population of Ukraine, 2001. There isnt much difference between the two languages but this map also represents a good guide to the political divide of Ukraine as well – with the North and West of Ukraine more hostile towards Russia than the East and South.

The next major avenue for disharmony between the Ukrainians and Russians are the peoples of particularly the far East of Ukraine, but more generally the very large numbers of people in Ukraine who still consider themselves, in a range of ways, Russian.

The differences and links between Russians and Ukrainians are the subject of whole libraries. As an outsider quite familiar with the peoples and the countries I would observe there is a bit of language – though Russians and Ukrainians tend to understand each other perfectly – and a bit of religion – though working through differences in Orthodox church dogma does get abstruse when applied to real life – and after that it is all economics and politics. The lived experience of most people – from the grimy Krushchevka apartment blocks many live in, to the trains and cars they move about in, the Soviet era infrastructure and public buildings they both share, the trees in the parks, the painted guttering, the foods they eat, the things they drink – is not radically different. With the caveat that the better quality, with better price and more reliable access is probably on the Russian side.

In addition to that are the vast numbers of Ukrainians and Russians who have close contacts on the other side of the border. There are millions of Russians with Ukrainian relatives and friends, the same as there are millions of Ukrainians with Russian relatives and friends. For a bit of historical reference, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leonid Brezhnev and Nikita Krushchev (Soviet leaders from 1954 to 1991) all had one parent from, were born in, or lived in Ukraine for large parts of their lives. Data from September 2021 suggest that the same linguistic map shown above is still in play, with more Ukrainians posting in Russian than in Ukrainian.

The obvious reason for this is the circumstances in which the Ottomans were pushed out of the steppes to the North of the Black Sea. For hundreds of years the Ottomans would send large mobile military forces into the steppes, from Crimea, to round up any villagers. The men would be killed or sold off as slaves, the children would be sent off to become Janissaries, and the women (by far the most valuable loot) entered the households of the more influential or were otherwise sold off as slaves. There are villages in Africa and the Middle East with significant genetic traces of Russia, testament to the practice. This meant that the steppes to the North of Crimea were lightly inhabited until one moved further out of range of the Turks by the Black Sea and in Crimea.

‘Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks’ Ilya Repin, State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, 1891

At this time Ukraine was largely a ‘no mans land’ between the Turks on the Black Sea, the Poles, Swedes and Austrians to the North West closer to the Baltic, and the Russians, further away to the North East, closer to the upper Volga. It was essentially run as a series of Cossack ‘hosts’ located along the Dnepr River and to the West who would effectively take runaways from any of the powers around them and had a rugged individualism which liked giving the fingers to the Ottoman Sultan, though both the Russians and the Poles laid claim to some sort of suzerainty. In the late 1600s a treaty between the Russian rulers and the Cossack Hetman linked them more formally, and in the 1680s a treaty between Russia and Poland handed Russia everything East of the Dnepr (current Eastern Ukraine). To the Turks facing them the Ukrainians and Russians spoke the same language, and were generally allied. In the 1700s it was the Russians moving in from the North East who displaced the Turks on the coast, to the South of those Ukrainians, as well as in Crimea. As the risk of Turkish slaving raids diminished Russian settlers moved in. This is seen in the linguistic map of those who see themselves as Russian speakers – notwithstanding the difference between Russian and Ukrainian is roughly akin to someone from Brisbane speaking English to someone from Glasgow or Milwaukee – with the process helped along by Stalin’s inclination for moving populations he was suspicious of to Central Asia or Siberia, and his reservations about the non Russian inhabitants of Crimea. Those seeing themselves as Russian were heaviest in the East, and spread South West along the coast of the Black Sea. Another gift from Iosif Stalin is the borders of Western Ukraine which include peoples and regions which not that long ago were part of, inter alia, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian empires, which tends to give them a closer affinity to the peoples to their West, and underpins a fiercer dislike of Russia and Russians.

The further East one travels in Ukraine, the more overtly pro-Russian it becomes. In the wake of the Maidan inspired disintegration of the Ukraine State in 2014 two cities – Lugansk and Donetsk – and their surrounding regions took their autonomy into their own hands, and took up arms against whoever was running the show in Kiev. Of course they have been heavily backed with Russian military and financial support. Very large numbers of people in Eastern Ukraine have Russian, as opposed to Ukrainian, passports. Most Russians think supporting people just like them and speaking their language, living lives like theirs, are well worthy of support. VVP is playing a parochial home crowd in supporting Eastern Ukraine and its ongoing dispute with the Ukraine government in Kiev.

The support for the Eastern Ukraine cities by Russia anchors in support for the financial sanctions Russia faces, and is a key part – mainly courtesy of the 2014 shooting down of MH17, a Malaysian airliner en-route from Holland to Malaysia (with a large number of Australians on board) by Russian forces using advanced missile technology – of the effective pariah status Russia has.

Gas

An older map of gas pipelines from Russia to Europe. Ukraine had a stranglehold.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when the Soviet Union discovered it had gas and oil, policymakers rapidly concluded the game plan was to be able to get the gas (in particular) to consumers in Europe, and laid out a pipeline network to make that happen. To the intense chagrin of their Russian descendants that pipeline system sent more than 90% of the gas going into Europe from Russia through Ukraine.

The idea was presumably that Russia and Ukraine were that close that sending all the gas through Ukraine was a safer bet for the Soviet era. Unfortunately as soon as the Soviet Union ended it started to come apart, as the historical bequest to Ukraine from the Soviets was one of the least energy efficient economies on the planet, dependent on Russian gas. Recognising this, Russia and Germany commenced constuction of the Yamal-Europe pipeline in the 1990s to bring gas through Belarus and into Europe through Poland, also historically strongly anti-Russian. Then after the election of Viktor Yushchenko as Ukrainian President in 2004 it all went bad. Over the next ten years there were tense midwinter gas shutdowns nearly every winter, which trashed Russia’s reputation as a supplier in Europe – its largest customer – and has subsequently seen Russia spend billions on building new gas pathways into Europe around Ukraine and Poland – notably the Nord Stream 1 & 2 pipelines directly across the Baltic from Russia to Germany. The politics of getting Nord Stream 1 operational in the face of opposition from a number of European states who liked having a pipeline threat to deal with Russia, was an achievement in itself.

A 2019 diagram showing the magnitude of Russia’s gas importance to Europe, and the importance placed by Russia on not being held to ransom by gas transit across Ukraine. Worth noting that while the EU is dependent on the gas, Russia would certainly notice the revenue cut if it stops.

The essential issue in all this was (and is) that the most lucrative pie to have their fingers in for Ukraine’s Oligarch set is anything to do with either the shipment of Russian gas across Ukraine into Europe, and the attendant ability to influence gas prices and consumption, or ensure supply, in Ukraine. And one fuel type, gas, in one pipeline network, going to two different customers, Ukraine and Europe, with two different prices, opened up some superb arbitrage opportunities. This fuels corruption in Ukraine and provided, and provides still, some mighty fine revenues for the uber rich of Ukraine.

The real issue is that the process of de-USSRing Ukraine was even more rapacious than in Russia, and gave rise to a very select group of Oligarchs who essentially control every last field of economic endeavour and who are legendarily corrupt. There are pro Russian ones and pro Europe ones, but the one factor uniting them is their obvious prioritisation of their own greed first, holding an entire nation to ransom to enable their greed, and their regular use of violence and corruption to maintain their rentier positions over the Ukraine economy. That discourages investment from outside, stifles small business and any form of entrepreneurialism, and keeps Ukrainians poor – poorer than their Russian counterparts.

Ukraine was bequeathed a well developed economy from the Soviet system, with well watered arable land, mineral resources and a solid industrial sector, and a well educated population. But Ukraine came out of the Soviet Union as the second largest independent economy, and proceeded to go backwards for a decade, with weaker post USSR economic growth than anywhere other than Tajikistan. It is the Oligarch infested politics of the place which makes it almost uninvestable. This alone underpins the disenchantment a number of Ukrainians have with their own politicians, and it makes the inclination, by Crimea and the regions of Eastern Ukraine, to look at a different road more explicable.

In the course of trying to resolve a generations worth of gas supply issues to Europe which were inextricably bound to gas consumption in Ukraine a regular refrain from observers was that with two historically close states with two state owned gas companies calling the shots ‘why isnt there a simple government deal?’. The simple answer was the epic level of corruption, involving a range of players in Ukraine close to politics, combined with more open corruption within Naftogaz of Ukraine (the state owned gas transmission system operator). While nobody should think for a second there wasn’t Russian involvement, Russia had a national interest in trying to ensure supply across Ukraine to consumers in Europe. That failed on repeated occasions over the years from 2004-2015, leading ultimately to a cessation of Russian gas going through Ukraine, mired in claims of who owes who for past supply, bogged down in a range of European courts, involving a range of colourful Ukraine political, business, and criminal identities. This provides the backdrop for Russia Ukraine relations in the early 2000s.

Russia has spent billions creating pipelines to get gas to Europe which cant be held to ransom by hostile nations between the source and the end user. The business case for building the Nord Stream pipeline directly between Russia and Germany was underlined – to the point where a second Nord Stream has recently been completed, which takes Ukraine off the table as a factor in the supply of Russian gas to Europe, and potentially makes any imbroglio between Ukraine, Russia and Gas solely now about Ukraine consumption – a far lesser issue.

At this point the entire issue of Russia supplying gas to Europe comes into question because gas is a fossil fuel, it does have carbon implications, and Europe is looking to get out. Although that would once have been painful for Russia, it is far less of an issue if Russia can supply China. The pipelines to supply China are already being built, some completed already, and they will be big and China will be buying plenty. That places VVP and Russia in a position of being able to think ‘If the Europeans don’t want it, just send it to China.’ This is what Russia is now essentially doing. If Europe does still want Russian gas then it can still easily be supplied, via two very large pipelines through the Baltic, and Russia will almost certainly supply gas contracted by Europe. But the nub is that Russia doesn’t have to supply Europe.

But the experience of trying to organise a national level agreement on the handling of gas transit to Europe has left its mark on Ukraine-Russia relations, which is magnified with the last major issue between the two nations, as well as replicated in many former Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations now inside NATO and the European Union. It boils down to trust – They don’t particularly trust the Russians, and the Russians don’t particularly trust them. And if Russia cant come to a deal with a state to whom it was closely allied not long ago, and Russians cannot strike a deal with peoples with whom they share a range of cultural and social ties, over an issue as straightforward as making sure Europe gets its gas, then can Russia come to a deal with the nations to its West about anything – especially military engagements and the deployment of military assets – and have confidence in the deal?

NATO Expansion and the prospect of Missiles being sited in Ukraine aimed at Russia

The fourth major issue involving Ukraine and Russia is the proposed expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia.