Dmitry Trenin
The dramatic withdrawal of Americans from Afghanistan prompted some in Russia to talk about the fact that the United States has ceased to be a superpower and, over time, Washington will also abandon Ukraine. Hence the conclusion is drawn that not everything is lost for Moscow on the Dnieper, and the hour is close when Ukraine, abandoned by the Americans as unnecessary, will return to the sphere of Russia’s geopolitical attraction.
The debate about the role of the United States will lead us too far from the topic of this text, but the statement about the inevitability of an “Afghan” future for Ukraine deserves attention. It can be disorienting – all the more so as it falls on misconceptions that have already formed.
The axioms of attractiveness
The Russian Federation’s approach to relations with Ukraine traditionally proceeds from the assumption that a neighboring country is an extremely attractive asset. First, it is pointed out that Ukraine is a part of the historical core of the Russian state, and its capital Kiev is “the mother of Russian cities”. Secondly, it is argued that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, which has become divided as a result of the anti-Russian policy of the Kiev authorities.
Thirdly, it is noted that Ukraine occupies an extremely important strategic position between Russia and the NATO countries. Fourth, it is said that Ukraine has a powerful demographic, economic, scientific and cultural potential, which, when combined with the Russian one, can help Russia become a world center of power.
Accordingly, the withdrawal or separation of Ukraine from the Russian Federation is seen as a splitting of the core of historical Russia, from which the Russian Federation becomes an incomplete Russia. It also disrupts the unity of the Russian people and the Russian Orthodox civilization, turns a strong buffer in the south-western direction into a convenient springboard for an external enemy to strike at the very heart of Russia, and deprives Russia of the chances of becoming a world economic heavyweight.
These arguments, in different interpretations, are constantly present in Russian political rhetoric, starting with the Maidan of 2014 or even the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005. Moreover, they seem to underlie many of the decisions that have been made recently. In fact, they are taken on faith by both supporters and some opponents of the current Russian course towards Ukraine. Meanwhile, all of the above arguments are untenable.
From closeness to importance
First of all, the Russian Federation is a full-fledged Russia, a self-sufficient state that does not need further territorial expansion, especially towards Ukraine. Russia became a unified power long before Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich accepted the Cossacks of Bogdan Khmelnitsky under his high hand. This “reunification” of 1654 itself had little effect on the international position of the Russian kingdom.
Contrary to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s often quoted and accepted as an axiom that without Ukraine Russia ceases to be an empire, Russia did not become an empire as a result of the annexation of Kiev and other lands on both banks of the Dnieper and remained a world magnitude, despite Ukraine’s declaration of independence.
Russia’s uniquely stable geopolitical position is the result of the development of Siberia and access to the Pacific Ocean. The core of modern Russia lies within the current Russian Federation. It was this core, including not only purely ethnic Russian regions, but also the Volga region, that remained unified in all the cataclysms the country went through, including the revolution and civil war of the early twentieth century and the collapse of the USSR.
The thousand-year continuous history of Russian statehood includes the Kiev period, but Novgorod is rightfully considered the cradle of statehood and the place from which the first ruling dynasty originated. As for the act of Baptism, Christianity came to Russia from Constantinople, and not from Kiev. Who was baptized where, has no mystical meaning. If you like, we can assume that the turning point – the baptism of Prince Vladimir with his retinue – took place in the Crimean Chersonesos.
Now about the people. Russians in the Russian Federation constitute the basis of the Russian political nation, whose rallying is the most important condition for the internal stability of society and the state. There are many people living in Ukraine who are close in blood and spirit to Russians and Russians in general. But we must also take into account the fact that the very population of Ukraine is culturally and religiously heterogeneous. Galicia with Volyn and Donbass with Novorossiya profess in many respects different, sometimes directly opposite values. The process of formation of the Ukrainian political nation is not easy, and so far there is no single Ukrainian people.
Thus, the thesis of the reunification of the Russian people, allegedly divided by the Russian-Ukrainian border, turns out to be a trap. Even if we hypothetically allow the inclusion of the bulk of the Ukrainian population in the expanded Russian nation – such as it really is today, 30 years after the collapse of the USSR and seven years after the Maidan, and not such as exists in our memories and ideas – then this is enlargement will undermine the unity of Russians rather than strengthen it. Integration is possible and even desirable, but at the individual level, and not on an expanded territorial basis.
The importance of Ukraine’s strategic position for Russia’s security interests is also obviously exaggerated. The current reality is very different from what it was in the twentieth century. Mutual nuclear deterrence, high-precision weapons with a global range, changes in the geopolitical alignment of forces and the structure of the main contradictions in the world make a large-scale military conflict in Europe unlikely. War here, unfortunately, is still possible, but rather as a result of an unforeseen escalation of the conflict or a series of incidents between the armed forces not stopped in time.
Recently, in Russia, they began to refer less often to the mantra about the danger of Ukraine joining NATO, but its place was taken by the specter of Kiev’s transformation into a US ally outside NATO. Nevertheless, the stable situation of nuclear deterrence and the further development of Russian strategic weapons are guaranteed to exclude the possibility that Washington could acquire significant strategic advantages over Russia as a result of the possible, albeit unlikely, deployment of American bases on Ukrainian territory. Washington continues to arm Kiev, but the prospect of a military clash with Russia over Ukraine, where US interests are limited, prompts American policymakers to proceed with caution.
In the early 2010s, Ukraine’s economic and demographic potential was an important argument in favor of attracting Kiev to the Eurasian Union project. Moscow then planned to create an economic bloc with a population of about 200 million people. Another important goal of Russian policy was to preserve the military-technical and military-economic ties that were considered inseparable from the times of the Soviet Union.
Since then, the Russian defense industry has succeeded in replacing military imports from Ukraine. As for the notorious 200 million people, the population of modern Ukraine has significantly decreased from almost 50 million who lived in the Ukrainian SSR at the time of the collapse of the Union. Now its estimated number is about 35 million, which roughly corresponds to the population of Uzbekistan. Today it would be more meaningful and promising for Russia to develop economic ties in the southeast, not the southwest direction.
Increment format
If we take these arguments into account, then the correction of the Russian approach to relations with Ukraine might look like this.
Ukraine is a neighbor that will never again become a fraternal republic. The integration perspective must finally be sent to the historical archive and replaced with the perspective of neighborhood relations.
This, admittedly, is also a distant prospect. For it to be realized, it is necessary for a leadership to appear in Kiev capable of forging pragmatic relations with Moscow. Even if such a change in the mood in Ukraine happens, it will be very far away. At the same time, geographical, economic and political circumstances do not allow to completely exclude this option.
Russia, therefore, in no case should indulge in dreams that it will once again grow into Ukraine, or at least its southeastern regions. Even the sometimes discussed division of Ukraine, either along the Dnieper or along the line of the western border of the USSR in 1938, is not only incredible without huge shocks and the dangers associated with them, but is also disadvantageous to Russia.
A hypothetical alteration of the “Russian” part of Ukraine would require colossal funds. Do not forget that the re-education of Ukrainian nationalists at one time was not within the power of ideologists from the VKP (b) -KPSS and specialists from the NKVD-MGB-KGB of the USSR. The experience of the past three decades leaves no doubt that, having received large-scale Russian assistance during a hypothetical reunification, Ukraine, instead of gratitude, will again turn away from Russia.
Instead of collecting land – a historically successful political program on the territory of today’s Russian Federation – Moscow should pay attention to collecting people. We are not talking about the mechanical distribution of Russian passports to those who would like to be able to use them to cross borders and receive pensions: this project is already being carried out in Donbass, which is not controlled by Kiev. It makes sense for Moscow to act strategically, making the move to work and live in Russia attractive for Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine and other countries of the former USSR, especially specialists.
This is a real way of forming one nation – on the territory of Russia. Instead of forming groups of people with Russian citizenship on the outskirts of the former empire who would become the backbone of local pro-Russian political forces, it is worth strengthening the demographic and professional potential of Russia itself. Then relations with neighbors can develop more satisfactorily from the point of view of the interests of the Russian Federation.
Going to the neighborhood
Recently, Russia has rightly felt that issues related to Ukraine have become less of a priority for the leaderships of Western countries. In fact, in America and Europe, post-Soviet Ukraine has never been viewed as a particularly valuable political, military, or economic asset.
The actions of the Barack Obama administration in 2014 were apparently explained mainly by the desire to prevent Ukraine from participating in the Eurasian Union initiated by Moscow. The EU, for its part, with the help of the Eastern Partnership program, sought to create a comfortable foreground for itself in the Russian direction. And that’s pretty much it.
Seven and a half years later, Western countries did not have the desire not only to integrate Ukraine into European and Atlantic institutions, but also to seriously invest in the Ukrainian economy. Although politicians in Europe and the United States continue to rhetorically support the Ukrainian position on Donbass or participate in the Crimean platform, they hardly hide their fatigue from Ukraine and its problems. Against this backdrop, some in Moscow believe that declining Western interest in Ukraine opens up opportunities for Russia. This is a deep misconception.
The meaning of the Ukrainian political project is to alienate, dissociate from Russia. In an extremely lapidary form, this thesis was stated in the title of the famous book by Leonid Kuchma: “Ukraine is not Russia”. This distancing can take different forms: overt and brutal, as it is now, or hidden and hypocritical-dependent, as it was in the days of Kuchma and Yanukovych. But the essence remains the same.
And the Ukrainian political elite and its ruling elite will not abandon this project in the course of any of their possible rotations. They will remain the spiritual heirs of Ivan Mazepa. Ukraine’s independence in their eyes is independence from Russia.
One must also see the truth that is more unpleasant for Russia. The Ukrainian ruling elite relies on an active minority, oriented towards Western values, and on a passive majority, which lives according to the principle “my house is on the edge” and is mainly focused on concrete and mainly material values. Neither the “Russian spring” in 2014 outside Crimea and only partly the Donbass, nor the Russian world had any serious chances in Ukraine in subsequent years.
The lack of a broad public reaction to the laws that completely curtailed education in Russian and severely restricted access to Russian culture testifies to the futility of hopes for a pro-Russian Maidan. But that’s not the point.
The main thing for Russia is that Russia does not need Ukraine to realize the most important Russian national interests in such areas as state identity, national cohesion, security, economic development. Moreover, the sharp turn of the Maidan Ukraine away from Russia significantly eased the financial burden of the Russian Federation. Had Yanukovych held out in power for another six months, $ 3 billion in bad Russian loans would have turned into $ 15 billion promised by President Putin.
All in all, according to Putin himself, Russia’s subsidies to Ukraine in the first two decades after the collapse of the USSR reached $ 82 billion. This is a direct illustration of the words of President Boris Yeltsin, who urged officials to ask themselves every day what each of them has done for Ukraine today. Ultimately, as can be seen, these cases resulted in huge net losses.
Despite all this, the importance of Ukraine for Russia is still greatly overestimated, not so much in the public consciousness as in the view of the elites. It is time to admit this discrepancy, and once recognized, to make a long-overdue reassessment of this value.
This conclusion does not mean that Ukraine can be ignored. Just the opposite.
– Ukraine is now more hostile towards Russia than any other state in the world. The degree of not only readiness, but also the ability of Kiev to undertake unfriendly actions against Moscow, should in no way be underestimated. The contemptuous and mocking attitude towards the modern Ukrainian state that has developed under the influence of Russian state propaganda is fraught with unpleasant surprises.
– Restraining Kiev’s urges to solve the problem of Donbass by force, Russia must in any case avoid a large-scale war with Ukraine. Such a conflict would be a disaster and tragedy for millions of people. Nothing can justify it.
– While continuing to adhere to the Minsk agreements and dialogue, mainly with Germany and France, within the framework of the Normandy format, one must be aware that for Kiev these agreements are a symbol of military defeat and diplomatic surrender, and that Ukraine cannot and will not be able to fulfill them. The maximum possible is maintaining a stable ceasefire in Donbass, excluding new casualties on the line of contact.
– In the absence of an official dialogue, it makes sense to maintain contacts and communicate with a few moderate groups and figures in Ukraine, bearing in mind that in the long term, there may be an opportunity to begin the process of normalizing Russian-Ukrainian relations.
– The concept of the Russian World – according to Arnold Toynbee, the Russian Orthodox civilization – needs to be rethought and implemented in Ukraine with an emphasis on cultural and linguistic aspects, leaving it out of the brackets or at least minimizing the geopolitical component. The audience of the cultural Russian world in Ukraine exists and will remain for the foreseeable future. It is necessary to interact with it above the barriers erected in recent years.
– Considering the present-day Ukraine as a foreign state, one should not project the present into the past and thereby exclude the history of Ukraine before 1991 from the all-Russian history. Little Russians made an invaluable contribution to state building, economy, science and culture of pre-revolutionary Russia, Ukrainians – to the development of the country in the twentieth century.
– Finally, modern Ukraine needs to be carefully and seriously studied in order to replace the mythologized ideas about the former Soviet republic with real knowledge of the subject and an adequate understanding of how the neighboring large country is structured and functioning. Living with the Ukrainians will no longer work – and you shouldn’t regret it. You have to live nearby.
The article was prepared within the framework of a project implemented with the support of the Danish Embassy in Russia.
Courtesy: (Carnegie)
