(This article was written shortly before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It's being revised as events warrant.)
The whole nuclear conflagration thing aside, there's a very pragmatic reason why the West will never attack The Bear: Russia has nothing that we really want to take. What about their oil and gas, you say? What about their wheat? Well, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to just buy Russian stuff than it would be to invade the country and take it. It makes no sense to attack Russia. None.
The point is that Putin's bellowing rhetoric about NATO being a threat to Russian security is all just smoke and mirrors. He knows that NATO will never attack Russia. NATO doesn't do invasions. But Putin also knows that there is a real threat lurking nearby. That threat is coming from an independent, democratic Ukraine, shining a bright light on his oppressive regime from next door. What happened at Maidan could happen in Red Square. On top of all that, Putin just plain wants to invade Ukraine. He's always wanted to invade Ukraine. Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has been trying to reconstitute the Evil Empire as best he can. He loved the Soviet Union, and he thinks that restoring it is going to be his legacy. It's an emotional issue with him, and emotions, as we humans know all too well, can be very dangerous. They can drive us mad.
To understand Mr. Putin's brand of madness let's cast our gaze into his eyes and try to get a sense of his soul. Somewhere in that dark place are memories of November 1989, in Dresden East Germany. Thirty-seven-year-old Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is working in the city as a low-level Soviet KGB agent. The Berlin Wall is falling, and the German Democratic Republic is collapsing. Putin and his KGB pals are scrambling to spirit important documents back to Moscow, and to burn the rest. In the 25 months that follow the Soviet Union disintegrates as well, and poor Vladimir is out of a job. Times get tough, and to make ends meet he has to work as a taxi driver, or so he says. Vlad has a reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth.
Taxi driver or not, the experience of those dark days still haunts Vladimir. Years later he would declare that the breakup of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” In any event he recovers quickly from the historic debacle; Returning to his hometown of Leningrad Saint Petersburg, he gets cozy with the mayor. He's caught trying to launder a few million euros, but he deftly escapes prosecution. Vlad is on his way up the ladder.
By 1998 Vladimir had moved to Moscow and worked his way into Boris Yeltsin's inner circle. Poor, affable, corrupt, alcoholic Boris, who was already dying, saw great promise in the still-young Vlad, who is by any measure quite bright and ambitious. Yeltsin appointed Putin to be the director of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB.
In August of 1999 Yeltsin went a step further and he designated Putin to be the acting Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. He also expressed his desire that Putin should succeed him as President. Only a month later, a series of mysterious explosions rocked apartment buildings in Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk. Over 300 people died, thousands were injured, and the nation was terrorized.
Putin blamed Chechen separatist rebels for the bombings and he ordered retaliations that devolved into the Second Chechen War. There is ample evidence that the apartment bombings were a false flag operation orchestrated by the FSB, but the official government position remained that the perpetrators were Chechens. Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer-turned-journalist, authored a book about the bombings. He argued that they were not only used to justify the Russian invasion of Chechnya, but that the brutal attacks brought Vladimir Putin to notoriety and unassailable power. Instead of being an obscure bureaucrat, hitched to the wagon of a weak and dying president, Putin was now a famous tough guy, and a hero. Other politicians and journalists, among them Sergei Yushenkov, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and Anna Politkovskaya made similar arguments. By 2007 all of them, including Litvinenko, were dead. All of them had been murdered.
On the last day of 1999 Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, and Vladimir Putin became the acting President of Russia. The following March he was elected President in his own right. In the decades that followed Putin implemented market reforms that brought a measure of prosperity to millions of Russians, and he became wildly popular. In the process he struck a deal with Russian oligarchs, allowing some of them to retain power in exchange for fealty to Putin's government. Along the way Putin and his cronies became some of the richest people on the planet.
In 2003 the independent Republic of Georgia dumped its Soviet-era leader and pivoted westward. Tensions between Russia and the Georgian government began to rise, and by 2008 those tensions reached a boiling point. In August pro-Russian separatists in South Ossetia started shelling Georgian villages, and before Georgian forces even responded, Russia sent a large army contingent across the border into the conflict zone. When the Georgian Army finally reacted to the shelling, Russia launched a full-scale invasion. In short order the Georgian Army was crushed, and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia declared their independence. Vladimir Putin offered to give their residents Russian passports, and today both regions are de facto parts of Russia.
The brief war with Georgia uncovered some serious problems with the Russian military. They shot down several of their own planes, and a lack of coordination between forces sometimes resulted in confusion and chaos. None of that sat well with Vladimir Putin, who then embarked on a massive modernization of Russia's military capability. Putin began to spend lavishly, and in 2016 Russia allocated over five per cent of its GDP to its defense budget. At the same time, US defense spending decreased to less than 3.5 per cent of GDP.
In the years that followed the Georgia campaign, the Russian military was transformed. Besides the modernization of ground forces that can now support a large-scale invasion of any neighbor, Russia developed a variety of new-technology and frightening weapons of mass destruction. Among them are a nuclear-powered torpedo that can travel thousands of miles, armed with a 100-megaton warhead. The underwater detonation of such a device could wipe out coastal cities by generating a giant tidal wave. The Russians are also fielding a new intercontinental ballistic missile that could destroy an area the size of England or Texas.
In the 2018 version of his annual address, Putin boasted about his new weapons. Like a little kid demanding attention Putin declared, "No one has listened to us. You listen to us now.” The remark speaks volumes about Vladimir's mindset. He clearly has an inferiority complex, masked by a giant ego. Russia has an inferiority complex. Vlad rides bare-chested on horses and stages all manner of photo ops to showcase his prowess. Knowing that Mother Russia really doesn't have much to offer the world, some Russians threaten to blow us all up in a bizarre attempt to gain some respect. So far it hasn't worked. Nobody really cares about Russia.
In 2004 a pro-western politician named Viktor Yushchenko ran for President of Ukraine against a Kremlin-backed opponent named Viktor Yanukovych. During the campaign Yushchenko was mysteriously poisoned, and although he survived, he was left badly disfigured. After a controversial election Yushchenko prevailed, but his administration only lasted a single term. In the 2010 presidential race Yanukovych was elected, and Putin had the sympathetic Ukrainian government that he wanted. The following year Yanukovych's electoral opponent Yulia Tymoshenko was thrown in jail on trumped-up charges. Years later Donald Trump associate Paul Manafort would confess to participating in the effort to smear Tymoshenko.
In November of 2013 Yanukovych refused to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union, announcing that he preferred to do business with Russia instead. Protests erupted, and on the 18th of February in 2014 tens of thousands of people descended on the Ukrainian Parliament and Kyiv's central Maidan Square. Over the next few days scores of people were killed in violent clashes. The Trade Union Building at Maidan Square was set ablaze. There was compelling evidence that Russian security services played a significant role in the violence.
Within days the government of Yanukovych collapsed, and he fled to exile in Russia. Vladimir Putin convened an emergency meeting with his security chiefs, during which he said that "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia." At the end of February Little Green Men, Russian forces without insignia, invaded Crimea. In the months that followed Putin absorbed the region back into Russian territory.
Crimea's annexation came at a high cost. The world's leading economic powers threw Russia out of their G8 G7 club and imposed sanctions that remain in force today. Russia assumed the burden of managing Crimean salaries, pensions, and infrastructure, without the prospect of much revenue in return. But Vladimir Putin didn't care. He had managed to restore another piece of the Soviet Union.
Putin didn't stop with Crimea, of course. He began to provide material support and personnel to aid separatist rebels along the southern and eastern borders of Ukraine, particularly in the Donbas region. In July of 2014, a Russian antiaircraft battery that had been transported into Ukranian territory shot down a commercial airliner when they mistook it for a Ukrainian military transport. Two hundred ninety-eight people died, most of them Dutch. Naturally, Vladimir blamed the tragedy on Ukraine. Since the Donbas conflict erupted over 13,000 14,000 people have been killed, 28,000 have been wounded, and seven per cent of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is now occupied by Russian forces. Despite the bloodshed Putin's efforts to restore the Soviet Union were succeeding, albeit slowly.
In July of 2021 Putin wrote a lengthy editorial in which he asserted that "...Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole." I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, and I never heard a single Ukrainian say that. The vast majority of them don't care about unity with Russia. They speak Russian, but they don't like Russia. They don't like corruption, and they don't like being told what to do. They just want to be left alone to live their lives, like all of us do, and they're willing to fight and die for that right - If they have to.
On my first visit to Kyiv in 2017, I saw the still-burnt hulk of the Trade Union Building at Maidan Square, covered in a giant tarpaulin. On the tarp giant words were written, in Ukrainian on one side and in English on another: "Freedom Is Our Religion." If Vladimir Putin wants a fight, he's going to get one.
A few months after Putin's July editorial, Russia began a massive buildup of troops and weapons along their border with Ukraine, as well as in neighboring Belarus. Most of us are mystified as to why Putin has chosen to do that now. We can only speculate about the emotions that are swirling around in his troubled soul. Maybe he's doing all of this just for attention. Maybe he thinks that his military bullying will get Ukraine to back down from their dream of joining NATO, just so Russia will back away from their threat of invasion. For now.
Somewhere in his thoughts, Vladimir Putin must know that he's growing old, and that he doesn't have that many years left in power to restore the Motherland to the former glory that he's always dreamed about. Maybe he knows that it's now or never.
I have a friend who hails from Donetsk; She lives in Canada now, but her parents and many of her friends still inhabit the Donbas region where separatist violence continues. Unlike the people I met in Kyiv, she and her family are decidedly pro-Russian. They don't speak Ukrainian. They buy off on the oft-repeated chiasmus that Putin is nothing without Russia, and Russia is nothing without Putin. My friend thinks that Putin is a genius and a great man. He's offered her a Russian passport, just like he did for the folks in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. When a Ukrainian drone blew up a Russian-supplied howitzer that was shelling a Donbas town, she and her family expressed the belief that a Russian military response might be justified. Now that that response appears imminent in gargantuan form, my friend is understandably terrified for the safety of her family. But does Vladimir Putin care? Probably not. Time after time he's demonstrated that sacrifices must be made for the greater glory of the Motherland. As long as those sacrifices don't include him.
On Thursday morning Kyiv time, the 24th of February 2022, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. I spent the better part of a sleepless night communicating with a friend in Kyiv. She started our conversation by writing,
"Hi, I am alive so far. There are explosions in the city, trying to figure out what is going on."
I was relieved to hear from her. I'd sent her a message and I'd been anxiously checking her "activity" status. We chattered about several topics over the next few hours, as she checked with other friends and family to see if they were OK. At one point she wrote about the impending battle,
"It will cost us many and many lives of the best of our people."
I answered back, "Unfortunately, it will. But this has at least galvanized support for Ukraine. Somehow you guys will get through this."
She wrote, "We will. But sometimes I wonder whether I really want to survive this all."
That answer, from a friend who told me how much she loved Kyiv, and the wail of the air raid sirens through the streets of a city that I'd walked many times, pierced my heart.
In her song Graceless, the talented French-Canadian singer-songwriter Beyries asks the questions,
How many more marches in Kiev
How many more deaths on the hands
Of egocentric freaks craving fame
Flying on golden wing paper planes
The answers depend on us, of course, and how we choose to deal with the egocentric freaks of this world. With enough resolve on our part, they can be beaten. But to do that we first have to recognize them for the dangerous madmen that they are. Let's hope that we have the good sense to do so.
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