putin essay july 2021

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Putin’s article: ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’

12 July 2021 saw the publication of an article by President Vladimir Putin, entitled ‘On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, which had been announced on 30 June 2021 during the President’s Direct Line public conference with citizens. The text was published on the President’s official website kremlin.ru (in two languages: Russian and Ukrainian).

The content of the article, which focuses on analysing the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations, is dominated by the claim that Ukrainians are an ancient, inseparable part of the ‘triune Russian nation’. This community is based on a common history spanning one thousand years, the language, the ‘Russian’ ethnic identity, the shared cultural sphere and the Orthodox religion. Their bond with the Russian state is special and organic; it guarantees Ukraine’s development, and any attempts to sever or weaken this bond (which could only be inspired by external actors) will inevitably result in the collapse of Ukrainian statehood.

The most important points regarding the history of bilateral relations include the following:

-         There are no historical arguments to justify the claim that a separate Ukrainian nation existed prior to the Soviet period: the proclamation of the Ukrainian nation was merely the result of the Austro-Hungarian Empire pursuing its great-power interests. Following World War I, having severed its bond with Russia, the Ukrainian state was short-lived, which resulted from “ceding full control of Ukraine to external forces” (first Germany, then Poland); all those who have recently surrendered control of the country to “external forces” should remember this . The Malorussian and Ukrainian culture flourished due to the policy pursued by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Empire (in relation to the latter, Putin mentions the policy of korenizatsiya , and mistakenly claims that it was continued into the 1930s); it was only Soviet national policy that created a basis for distinguishing between the three separate nations – Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian.

-         Russia views the existence of the Ukrainian nation “with respect”. However, present-day Ukraine owes its territorial form to the Soviet period. It benefitted from “regaining” ancient Russian lands at the expense of Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia, and obtained territories which had been taken away from “historical Russia”. Consequently, if Ukraine is determined to severe   its friendly relations with Russia, i.e. the USSR’s heir, it should return to its 1922 borders . Putin also took the opportunity to criticise the policy pursued by the Bolsheviks; he accused them of “robbing” Russia of the territories that were awarded to Ukraine.

-         Russia did a great deal to help the Ukrainian state thrive post-1991; Putin mentioned the significant economic assistance Russia offered to Kyiv. The rupture of the ties between the two countries has resulted in Ukraine’s economic degradation: at present Ukraine is “ Europe’s poorest country” . The anti-Russian Ukrainian authorities have “wasted and frittered away the achievements of many generations”, even while the two nations still have “great affection” for each other.

-         Putin also offered harsh criticism of the policies pursued by the authorities in Kyiv, both towards Russia and domestically, and of the local oligarchs who plunder the Ukrainian state. Ukraine is affected by a persistent weakness of its state institutions and has become “a willing hostage to someone else’s geopolitical will” . In addition, Putin accused Kyiv of mythologising and rewriting history – a routine allegation against those neighbouring states which   work to debunk Russian historical propaganda .   In Putin’s words, “the common tragedy of collectivisation” back in the 1930s is falsely presented as a genocide of the Ukrainian people. As he pointed out, the Ukrainian elites wrongfully base   the country’s independence on a denial of its past. However, at the same time they   “conveniently” leave   out the aforementioned issue of the contemporary state’s borders.

-         Putin once again criticised the Kyiv government’s language policy and the law on indigenous peoples of Ukraine. According to his interpretation, “forced assimilation” of ethnic Russians is ongoing and an ethnically pure Ukrainian state, aggressive towards Russia, is being formed. The consequences of this approach are   comparable to “the use of weapons of mass destruction” (sic!) against Russia. In addition, he criticised the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seeing this as a blow to the spiritual unity of the two nations and a result of the secular authorities’ blatant interference in church life.

-         According to Putin, the West intends to transform Ukraine into an “anti-Russia”, an anti-Russian “springboard”, a barrier between Russia and Europe. This echoes   plans devised in the past by “Polish-Austrian ideologists” who intended to create “an anti-Moscow Rus”. This runs counter to the interests of the Ukrainian nation, which was exploited by Poland, Austria-Hungary and Nazi Germany in the past, and “cynically used” again in 2014. The “anti-Russia” project cultivates the image of an internal and external enemy , is leading to the militarisation of Ukraine (including the expansion of NATO’s infrastructure on its territory) and views it as a protectorate of the Western powers. This project thus denies Ukraine’s genuine sovereignty . The “millions of people” who reject this “anti-Russia” plan are viewed as Moscow’s agents, persecuted or even killed. Only those who hate Russia are considered “the right kind of patriots”. This means that Ukrainian statehood is being built on hate, and this is a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, burdened with a tremendous risk.

-         Putin reiterated some of his previously voiced arguments regarding the causes of Ukraine’s destabilisation post-2014 . The “anti-Russia” project has been rejected by millions of Ukrainians: Crimea has made its “historic choice”, and the population of the Donbas took up arms to prevent ethnic cleansing. He warned that “the followers of Bandera did not abandon their plans to crack down on Crimea, Donetsk and Lugansk” and their crimes would be comparable to those perpetrated by the Nazis. As he said, “ They are biding their time. But their time will not come ”. Putin also claimed that “ Kyiv simply does not need Donbas ” because the local population will never accept the rules of the game imposed by the central government, and the implementation of the Minsk agreements would contradict the “anti-Russia” project. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “lied” when he claimed   ahead of the presidential election that he would strive to achieve a peaceful solution to the Donbas problem;   instead, the situation has deteriorated further since then.

-         Moscow will never allow its “historical territories” and the people living there to be used against Russia . Those who undertake such an attempt will destroy their own country . Meanwhile, good-neighbourly cooperation is possible and desired; ideally it should be modelled on German-Austrian and American-Canadian relations, in which ethnically similar states that speak the same language are closely integrated while remaining sovereign.

-         In the text, Poland is presented as an empire competing with Russia, albeit a weaker one. Its policy towards Ukraine has always been based on the forced Polonisation and Catholicisation of the local population. Meanwhile, the incorporation of a portion of Ukraine into Russia in the 17th century was an act of democratic will on both sides. The further annexations of Polish lands (in the 18th century and later) are (as usual) presented as the process of Old Russian lands being regained and reunited.

• The article is another example of Putin’s revanchism. Although the anti-Ukrainian arguments presented in the text are not new, their more detailed form and appeals to a historical legacy are intended to reinforce and justify   the Kremlin’s message: Russia will not abandon its attempts to keep Ukraine within its sphere of influence. The text contains a de facto threat that the 1991 Belovezha Accords (which recognised the inviolability of borders between the former Soviet republics) may be considered invalid should Ukraine fail to yield to Russia. Due to the present international situation, this threat should be viewed as an empty, ostentatious gesture confirming the increasingly ritual nature of Russian propaganda. However, it is evident that the Russian authorities are toughening up their narrative. On the one hand, this may suggest that the Kremlin feels frustrated with its limited impact on Ukrainian politics, and on the other, that plans have been made to step up the destabilisation of Ukraine in the coming months.
• Putin’s article reflects his attachment to Russia’s imperial history and its ‘history-making’ destiny to determine the fate of the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. He reiterates, in an oversimplified manner, the basic assumptions of 19th-century official historiography of the Russian Empire. He also refers to conspiracy theories formulated by Russian far-right groups, claiming that the Ukrainian nation was a Polish (and later an Austro-Hungarian) anti-Russian political project. In order to prove his main argument, Putin passes over events which are inconvenient for Russia and presents many others in a biased or blatantly distorted manner. This falsified ‘common history’ is intended to legitimate Russia’s influence on Ukrainian society, in order to correct the mistakes made by the ‘puppet’ government in Kyiv .
• The clear threats aimed at Kyiv (suggesting that its anti-Russian policy is exposing Ukraine to the risk of losing its statehood) are mainly formulated with the Western audience in mind. This is being done in the context of the upcoming elections in Germany (in this sense, the text is a continuation of the conciliatory article Putin published on the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s aggression on 22 June) and Russia’s present relationship with the United States. One of Putin’s (rather unrealistic) goals is to discourage the new German government and the Biden administration from supporting the ‘hopeless’ case of defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity. This refers to the West’s position on the annexation of Crimea, military cooperation with Ukraine, and backing Ukraine’s aspirations to NATO membership. Putin sends a clear message to Western ‘hawks’ that Russia is determined to defend its interests in Ukraine – even at the expense of destroying Ukrainian statehood (or trimming its territory to a rump state). On the other hand,   pro-Russian groups in the Western establishment were offered a conciliatory argument, which accompanied the blackmail: Ukrainian-Russian relations can be built on similar foundations as   those of Germany & Austria and Canada & the US.
• Putin also targeted his message to   Ukraine’s leadership and society. The article   contains accusations that Zelensky and his team are serving foreign governments. It depicts a bright vision of the prosperity that could result from Ukraine’s integration with Russia, and condemns Ukrainian oligarchs for robbing the country. Accompanying threats to further   destabilise Ukraine, should it continue its course of Euro-Atlantic integration, include   a thinly-veiled warning that Moscow may resort to military measures. In the Kremlin’s logic, emphasising the ‘civilisational’ role of Orthodox Russia is intended to polarise and radicalise social groups in Ukraine by exploiting divisions about Ukrainian-Russian (Soviet) relations in the past. However, we should not expect this article to shift the views held by most Ukrainians, who now consider Russia as an unfriendly or hostile state. Attempts to undermine the feeling of national distinctiveness will likely be considered as manifestations of the Kremlin’s aggressive policy.
• Putin’s text is intended to demonstrate to Russian society that the Kremlin is determined to defend Russia’s national interests. Against the backdrop of social discontent over the increasing economic problems Russian society is facing, references to imperial resentments, the anti-Western mood and the image of the state as a ‘besieged fortress’ are all elements of the same strategic project. It boils down to building the regime’s legitimacy on its great-power legacy and bygone imperial splendour. In addition, the article contains guidelines for Russian officials   regarding the desirable political narrative. One should therefore expect this discourse within Russia’s ruling elite to intensify.

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Contextualizing putin's "on the historical unity of russians and ukrainians".

Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent essay, "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians," which was published on the Kremlin's website in Russian , English and Ukrainian , elaborates on his frequently stated assertion that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people." In what Anne Applebaum called “ essentially a call to arms ," Putin posits that Ukraine can only be sovereign in partnership with Russia, doesn't need the Donbas and nullified its claims on Crimea with its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, and has been weakened by the West's efforts to undermine the unity of the Slavs.

Responses to the 5000-word article have ranged from deep concern to near dismissal , with some likening its statements to a justification for war and others pointing to its lack of novelty and suggesting that the primary audience is President Volodymyr Zelensky as he met with leaders in the West. (Zelensky, for his part, offered the tongue-in-cheek response that Putin must have a lot of extra time on his hands.) The discussions inspired by the essay have explored questions such as: Why is Russia so obsessed with Ukraine ? Where do the facts diverge from myth? What is Putin's motivation for writing this document? 

In August 2017, we published an interview with Serhii Plokhii (Plokhy) about his book  Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation , which addresses many of the themes emerging in discussions in the wake of Putin's statements. We are reposting the interview below for those who are interested in learning more about Russian nationalism and the intersection of history and myth, past and present.

In the coming weeks, we will also publish excerpts from Plokhii's forthcoming book The Frontline  in open access on our HURI Books website. 

August 2017 Interview

Covering the late 15th century through the present, this book focuses specifically on the Russian nationalism, exploring how leaders from Ivan the Terrible to Vladimir Putin instrumentalized identity to achieve their imperial and great-power aims. Along the way, Plokhy reveals the central role Ukraine plays in Russia’s identity, both as an “other” to distinguish Russia, and as part of a pan-Slavic conceptualization used to legitimize territorial expansion and political control. 

HURI:  Did you come across anything in your research that surprised you?

Plokhy:  A monument to St Volodymyr/ St Vladimir was recently constructed in the most coveted, the most prestigious, the most visible place in the Russian capital, right across from the Kremlin. To me, this was striking enough that I made it the opening of my book.

St. Volodymyr, the Prince who ruled in Kyiv, is more prominent in the Russian capital in terms of the size and location of the statue than the alleged founder of Moscow, Yuriy Dologorukii. Some pundits say that St. Volodymyr is a namesake of Vladimir Putin, so this is really a celebration of Putin, but excepting all of that, there has to be a very particular understanding of Kyivan history to allow one to place in the very center of Moscow a statue of a ruler who ruled in a city that is the now the capital of a neighboring country. 

That means the things I've discussed in the book are not just of academic interest for historians; the history of the idea of what historian Alexei Miller called the “big Russian nation,” is important for understanding Russian behavior today, both at home and abroad. 

HURI:  Do you have any sense of the attitude of Russian people toward the monument?

Plokhy:  Muscovites protested against the plan to place the monument at Voroviev Hills, overseeing the city, but I do not think anyone said that it honored the wrong person or anything like that.

HURI:  In a book that covers 500 years of history, some interesting common threads must appear. What are some of these constants?

Plokhy:  One common thread is the centrality of Ukraine in defining what Russia is and is not. The historical mythology of Kyivan Rus' is contested by Russians and Ukrainians. But no matter how strong or weak the argument on the Ukrainian side of the debate, Russians today have a difficult time imagining Kyiv being not part of Russia or Russia-dominated space and Kyivan Rus' not being an integral part of Russian history.

Ukraine and Ukrainians are important for Russian identity at later stages, as well. For example, the first published textbook of “Russian history” was written and published in Kyiv in the 1670s. This Kyivan book became the basic text of Russian history for more than 150 years.

In the 20th century and today, we see the continuing importance of Ukraine in the ways the concept of the Russian world is formulated, the idea of Holy Rus', church history and church narrative, and so on.

That is one of the reasons why post-Soviet Russia is not only engaged in the economic warfare, or ideological warfare with Kyiv, but is fighting a real physical war in Ukraine. On the one hand, it's counter-intuitive, given that Putin says Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same people, but, given the importance of Ukrainian history for Russia, it's a big issue for which they are prepared to fight.

HURI:  Can you talk about a few important actions or moments when Ukraine saw itself as a distinct group from the projected pan-Russian nation, and maybe when it saw itself as part of it?

The development of a separate Ukrainian identity, literature, and language was met in the 19th century with attempts to arrest that development. HURI recently published an important collection of articles,  Battle for Ukrainian , which (among other things) shows how important language is for the national formation and identity. The Russian Empire also treated language as a matter of security. That's why in 1863 it was the Minister of Interior who issued the decree limiting use of the Ukrainian language, not the Minister of Education, not the President of the Academy of Sciences, but the Minister of Interior. It was a matter of security.

The battles start then and focus on history and language, but for a long time the goal of Ukrainian activists was autonomy, not independence per se. The idea of Ukrainian independence in earnest was put on the political agenda in the 20th century and since then it's refused to leave. In the 20th century, we had five attempts to declare an independent Ukrainian state. The fifth succeeded in 1991, and then the question was, “Okay, you have a state, but what kind of nation does or will Ukraine have? Is it ethnic? Is it political? What separates Russia from Ukraine?” These are the questions that found themselves in the center of public debate. There’s probably no other country where the president would publish a book like  Ukraine Is Not Russia  (President Kuchma). You can't imagine President Macron writing France Is Not Germany or anything like that.

HURI:  Anne Applebaum said  during a lecture  at the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, “If Stalin feared that Ukrainian nationalism could bring down the Soviet regime, Putin fears that Ukraine’s example could bring down his own regime, a modern autocratic kleptocracy.” Putin emphasizes the “sameness” of the nations, which would seem to increase the power of Ukraine’s example to undermine his regime. Do you think the the drive to call Ukrainians the same as Russians is informed not only by foreign policy, but also by domestic considerations? 

Plokhy:  I think so. Historically the two groups have a lot in common, especially since eastern and central Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire for a long period of time, starting in the mid-17th century. Therefore, common history is certainly there, and the structure of society, the level of education, the level of urbanization, and other things are similar.

Because of these connections, if Ukraine could do certain things, it would be much more difficult to say it can’t be done in Russia, that Russia has a special destiny, that democracy would never work in Russia, and so on and so forth. That would be not just a geopolitical setback for Russia, but would undermine the legitimizing myth Russia needs in order to have an authoritarian regime. 

HURI:  Are there any important differences between the behavior of Putin and previous leaders?

The policies introduced in the occupied territories in eastern Ukraine or in Crimea offer very little space for Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture. That's a big difference in thinking from what we had in most of the 20th century, when there were all sorts of atrocities but at least on the theoretical level the Ukrainian nation’s right to exist was never questioned. Now it is. The recent attempt to declare “Little Russia” in Donbas and under this banner to take over the rest of Ukraine, promoted by Mr. Surkov, has failed, but it shows that the Russian elites prefer to think about Ukraine in pre-revolutionary terms, pretending as though the revolution that helped to create an independent Ukrainian state and the Soviet period with its nation-building initiatives had never taken place.

HURI:  How about the mentality of Russian citizens toward Ukrainians?

Plokhy:  When the conflict started, Putin was voicing the opinion of the majority of Russians that there is no real difference between Russians and Ukrainians, but the war is changing that. We see a much bigger spike of hostility toward Ukraine on the side of Russian population as compared to the spike of anti-Russian feelings in Ukraine, which also reveals a lot about the two societies and how state propaganda works.

HURI:  Speaking of Russian nation-building and nationalism, what about the non-Slavic peoples, particularly those living to the east of the Urals? Has their inclusion and sense of belonging in the Russian state (or empire) changed over time?

Plokhy:  I leave this subject largely outside the frame of this book, which focuses mainly on relations between Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians, and how the sense of Russian identity evolved over time. But non-Slavs are extremely important part of Russian imperial history as a whole.

Russia today, compared to imperial Russia or the Soviet Union, has lost a lot of its non-Russian territories, including Ukraine and Belarus, but still a good number of non-Slavs live in the Russian Federation. On the one hand, the government understands that and tries not to rock the boat, but exclusive Russian ethnic nationalism is generally on the rise in Russia. The Russians who came to Crimea, the people who came to Donbas, like Igor Girkin (Strelkov), they came to Ukraine with a pan-Russian ideology. It's not just anti-Western, it puts primacy on the ethnically, linguistically, culturally understood Russian people, which certainly threatens relations with non-Russians within the Russian Federation.

What we see is the ethnicization of Russian identity in today's Russia. It has a lot of ugly manifestations, but overall it's a common process for many imperial nations to separate themselves from their subjects and possessions. Russians redefine what Russians are by putting emphasis on ethnicity. We witnessed such processes in Germany, and in France, and in both countries there were a lot of unpleasant things, to put it mildly.

Plokhy:  For a long time, Russian ethnic nationalism, particularly in the Soviet Union, was basically under attack. Russian as lingua franca was of course supported and promoted, the dominance of Russian cadres in general was supported, but the emphasis on ethnicity, on Russian ethnicity in particular, was not welcome because that could mobilize non-Russian nationalism as a reaction, and that was a threat to the multi-ethnic character of the state.

Today, Russia is much less multi-ethnic than it was during Soviet times, and the regime is much more prepared to use ethnic Russian nationalism for self-legitimization or mobilization for war, like the war in Ukraine. All of that contributes to the rise of ethnic nationalism. The government relies more on its support and it provides less of a threat to the state, given that the state is less multi-ethnic.

HURI:  With the belief that Russia's borders should come in line with the ethnic Russian population, doesn't that create a danger with Chechnya and other autonomous republics in the Caucasus having a reason to leave?

Plokhy:  It does. One group of ethnicity-focused and culture-focused Russian nationalists are saying that Russia should actually separate from the Caucasus. If you bring ethnonationalist thinking to its logical conclusion, that's what you get, and that's what some people in Russia argue. They're not an influential group, but they argue that.

HURI:  And what about, say, eastern Russia?

Plokhy:  Yes, in terms of geography, it is easier to imagine Chechnya and Dagestan leaving than Tatarstan. That is why extreme Russian nationalism is an export product for the Russian government, rather than the remedy the doctor himself is using at home. It is used to either annex or destabilize other countries, but within the country itself there is an emphasis on the multi-ethnicity of the Russian political nation. Putin has to keep the peace between the Orthodox and Muslim parts of the population.

The goal is to keep the post-Soviet space within the Russian sphere of influence. In the case of Georgia and Ukraine, the goal is also to preclude a drift over to the West; in the Baltic States, to question the underlying principle of NATO, that countries like the US or Germany would be prepared to risk a war over a small country like Estonia. Large NATO countries don't have the answer to that dilemma yet, and Putin is trying to create a situation where the answer will be “no.” So it's great power politics, it's sphere-of-influence politics.

Putin and the people around him are not ideologically driven doctrinaires. They use ideology to the degree that it can support great power ambitions and their vision of Russia’s role in the world. They jumped on the bandwagon of rising Russian nationalism, seeing in it an important tool to strengthen the regime both at home and abroad.

Ukraine became a polygon where the strength of Russian nationalism as a foreign policy was tested for the first time. The Baltic states have a big Russian-speaking minority where the "New Russia" card can be played if the circumstances are right.

HURI:  Was there a point after the fall of the Soviet Union when Russia turned back to an imperial model of Russian identity? Or was it never going to become a modern nation state?

Plokhy:  The shift started in the second half of the 1990s, but it really began to solidify when Putin came to power in 2000.

The 1990s for Russia were a very difficult period as a whole. Expectations were extremely high, but there was a major economic downturn, the loss of the status of a super power. This discredited the liberal project as a whole, in terms of foreign policy, in the organization of a political system, in the idea of democracy itself. The only thing from the West that Russia adopted to a different degree of success was a market economy. The market per se and private property, despite the high level of state influence, is still there, but the democracy did not survive. The Yeltsin-era attempt to shift from “Russkii” to more inclusive “Rossiyanin” as the political definition of Russianness also found itself under attack. The rise of ethnic Russian nationalism undermines the liberal model of the political Russian nation.

Society’s disappointment in the 1990s led to a search for alternatives, which were found in the idea of strengthening the power of the state and led to the rise of authoritarian tendencies. At the same time came Russia’s attempt to reclaim its great power status, despite an extreme gap between its geopolitical ambitions and economic potential. Today, Russia isn't even part of the ten largest world economies, so its GDP is smaller than Italy’s and Canada’s and is on par with South Korea’s. Think about Italy or Canada conducting that kind of aggressive foreign policy. You see the discrepancy right away.

This aggressive policy is a terrible thing for Ukraine and other countries, but it's also not good at all for Russia’s society, for the Russian economy, for the future of Russia as a state.

HURI:  What do you think of the term "managed democracy"? Do you think that's an accurate term?

Plokhy:  That's certainly the term that you can use to destroy democracy and get away with it.

Post-imperial countries - and that applies to the new nations in the post-Soviet space - face special difficulties in that regard. The majority of countries that were subjects of empires probably go through a period of authoritarian rule, and that's because they have to organize themselves, they have to build institutions. Think about Poland or Romania during the interwar period. You see the same situation in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Russia fell in that category as well. It was running an empire and had a long tradition of institutions, but none of those institutions were democratic.

Ukraine is an outlier in that sense. It's maintained its democratic institutions. It's paying a price for that, but the society is quite committed to keep going as a democratic country. There were two attempts -- one under President Kuchma, which resulted in one Maidan, and one under President Yanukovych, which resulted in another Maidan -- attempts to strengthen the presidential branch and join the post-Soviet authoritarian sphere. Both attempts were rejected by the Ukrainian society.

Foreign factors paid their role as well. But one should not overestimate those. On a certain level, the US was trying to help strengthen the democratic society and Russia was trying to strengthen the authoritarian tendencies in Yanukovych's regime, but in the end, it wasn’t up to outside players. The Ukrainian society made the decision, and in the last 25 years both attempts at authoritarianism failed.

They're issued by different publishers that view their readership differently. The title is the part of the book where the publisher has as much influence as the author, or maybe even more, and marketing people are also involved. The titles reflect the different ways publishers understand what is most important and can be conveyed in the most direct way to the readership.

HURI:  And I would guess it’s the same with the different cover art? What’s the significance of the images?

The same thing with the images. With the American one, there was a number of possibilities, and the publisher listened to my preference. The European one just produced something, and I accepted it.

So it's directly related to the story told in the book, but I also liked it as an image because it's extremely detailed, with a lot of things happening at the same time. It is easy to get lost in these details of battle. It fits the main title of the book,  Lost Kingdom , pretty well. The idea is that with all these wars and interventions, Russia lost its way to modern nationhood.

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Putin Is Taking a Huge Gamble

His decision to assemble an invasion force along Russia’s border with Ukraine suggests that we are about to enter a dangerous new phase of international relations.

I n 2002, at the height of the unipolar moment, as the United States prepared to invade Iraq, some of the country’s most prominent international-relations professors tried to solve a puzzle: Why were other major powers in the world that opposed U.S. foreign policy not doing anything about the invasion? Russia, China, France, and Germany made their views known at the United Nations, but they would not back Saddam Hussein. Nor were they building up their militaries or changing their alliances to oppose the United States.

When states push back against other states that they see as threatening or powerful, political scientists call this behavior “balancing.” In a collection of essays titled America Unrivaled , some of these professors suggested that this basic act of geopolitical competition had been missing since the collapse of the Soviet Union because the United States was too far ahead of everyone else. Others argue that the United States was not threatening to other major powers, or that it had constructed a liberal order that was open to all.

Read our ongoing coverage of the Russian invasion in Ukraine

Today, however, balancing is most certainly back—and is popularly described with the rather imperfect and amorphous phrase great-power competition . Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, intervened militarily in Syria, and interfered in the U.S.’s 2016 presidential election. Meanwhile, China has built artificial islands in the South China Sea and made rapid advances in military technologies, sometimes surpassing even the United States. Russia and China began to balance as they became stronger but also because Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping worried that if Western liberalism succeeded globally, it could pose an existential threat to their regimes. Even America’s allies are balancing. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses military power and coercive diplomacy freely, cooperating with Russia when it suits. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates no longer defer automatically to the United States and use military power even when Washington prefers they not do so, as Riyadh has done in Yemen.

The decision by other countries to project military power in ways designed to frustrate U.S. actions is a transformative change in America’s external environment. After the Cold War, the United States could, and sometimes did, treat the geopolitical preferences of rival or even friendly powers as an afterthought. It can do so no longer. In fact, Russia’s assembly of a 175,000-person-strong invasion force along its border with Ukraine suggests that we are about to enter a dangerous new phase of international rivalry.

N o one quite knows why Putin appears to be choosing this moment to go after Ukraine. An invasion cannot be credibly attributed to a specific Western action or a precipitating event, such as an intervention in Syria or the European Union offering Ukraine an association agreement in 2013. Some have argued that Putin is frustrated that Ukraine is not abiding by its commitments under the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015 to give Russian-dominated regions a veto over Ukraine’s relationship with the West—but this is not a new development.

One interpretation is that Russia is using the threat of an invasion to force a real discussion about the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the future of European security. It will keep the troops in place as a coercive tool, showing that it is willing to use force if the talks stall. This, in some ways, would be an incremental escalation of the type of aggressive balancing behavior that Putin has engaged in since 2014.

The darker scenario is imminent invasion. In a July essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” Putin argued that the two countries constituted “one people” and that “the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.” Now in his third decade of rule, Putin could well believe that if he does not take decisive action, Ukraine will move further apart from Russia.

An analysis from the Russian International Affairs Council suggested that if Putin decided to invade (which the report advised against), “the apotheosis of the operation should be the encirclement and the subsequent capture of Kiev, and the stabilisation of the front line along the Dnieper. The creation of a new Ukrainian state with the capital in Kiev would be announced and recognised by Russia. It would include the previously-independent DPR and LPR. Russia thereby resolves several historical problems at once. The immediate threat to the southwestern borders is removed. Full control over the Sea of Azov and a land corridor to the Republic of Crimea are ensured. Two Ukrainian states appear on the map, one of which should be ‘friendly and fraternal.’”

Western analysts have long noted that Russian and Chinese assertiveness can be counterproductive. Prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Ukraine felt torn between the West and Russia. Afterward, Ukraine began to move steadily westward geopolitically. Similarly, China’s crackdown on Hong Kong hardened attitudes in Taiwan against peaceful unification along a “one country, two systems” model. An invasion would be Putin’s answer to this critique—if small acts of aggression create anti-Russian sentiment, he will just double down and impose his will.

That’s quite a gamble. If Russia does not rout Ukrainian forces quickly, the conflict could be protracted, with Western military assistance pouring into Ukraine. The inevitable civilian casualties and destruction of property could inflame public opinion in the eastern part of Ukraine, which could lead to an insurgency. Russia could not resort to official deniability, as it did with the annexation of Crimea. And with Kyiv the goal, an uprising could not be dismissed as a far-away conflict over a disputed patch of land.

The prospect of an invasion comes at a time when Putin’s relations with the rest of the world are relatively steady. The Biden administration has made clear that it desires a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, by which it means preserving the status quo. French President Emmanuel Macron has long been of the view that Europe should engage with Russia on security matters. Meanwhile, far from being isolated, Putin has actively sought to increase Russia’s ties around the world, most recently concluding a major new arms sale to India.

In the coming weeks, the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom will no doubt seek to strengthen deterrence by raising the cost of an invasion. The Biden administration has also announced that the United States and “at least four NATO allies” will meet with Russia to discuss European security. As it strengthens deterrence and seeks to turn down the geopolitical temperature through diplomacy, NATO leaders should also be sure to remind their counterparts around the world that they have a stake in this crisis too. Indeed, Russia’s ties with the rest of the world mean that other leaders—such as India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Erdoğan, and Israel’s Naftali Bennett—have a significant role to play.

Non-Atlantic leaders are unlikely to take a strong stance in favor of Ukraine and against Russia, but they should know that if Putin takes Ukraine, a Rubicon will have been crossed. The Asian powers ( India and Japan) hope over the long run to dilute Russian-Chinese cooperation. An invasion would make Russia ever more dependent on China and possibly politically indebted to it for support during this crisis. India and Japan have a strategic interest in preventing that from happening. More generally, the destruction of the Ukrainian state would turbocharge rivalry between the United States and Russia, especially if Putin retaliated for Western military assistance to Ukraine. This would result in massive pressure on non-NATO U.S. allies to reduce ties with Moscow and isolate it.

This crisis is not just about the Minsk agreements or the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. It is about whether we are poised to see a dramatic escalation in military confrontation among the major powers that will shake the international order to its foundation. The diplomatic effort to prevent this needs to be global.

Putin Sees Himself as Part of the History of Russia’s Tsars—Including Their Imperialism

I n the Kremlin room with that long white table where Putin entertains his foreign visitors there is a quartet of statues of the tsars he most admires. Their achievements are his benchmark of success.

The first two statues are dedicated to the eighteenth-century rulers who established Russia as an empire on the European continent: Peter the Great, who conquered the Baltic lands in his wars against the Swedes; and Catherine the Great, who swallowed half of Poland, extended Russian power to the Black Sea through her wars against the Turks, and annexed the Crimea, from which the Russian navy dominated the Near East.

The speed of Russia’s growth alarmed the powers of Europe. Between the sixteenth century, when it began the conquest of Siberia, and the Revolution of 1917 the Russian Empire grew at a rate of 50 square miles every day . Western fears of Russia reached their peak following the defeat of Napoleon by Alexander I, the third tsar in Putin’s pantheon. Writers like the Marquis de Custine, in his bestselling Russian Travels (1839), argued that the country was fundamentally expansionist in character, a view later reinforced by the Cold War. Does Putin’s war of unprovoked aggression in Ukraine support this theory, or is it part of something new?

Russia grew on the forest lands and steppes between Europe and Asia. There are no natural boundaries, neither seas nor mountain ranges, to define its territory, which throughout its history has been colonised by peoples from both continents. Its openness made Russia vulnerable to foreign invasion. The Mongols and the Turkic-speaking tribes, the Teutonic Knights, the Poles and Swedes, the Ottomans—they all invaded Russia prior to Napoleon.

The Russian state developed to defend the country’s frontiers, subordinating society to its military needs. Social classes were organised to benefit the state as taxpayers and military servitors. Territorial aggrandisement was its method of protecting Russia’s frontiers. History shows that Russia tends to advance its security by keeping neighbouring countries weak, and by fighting wars beyond its borders to keep hostile powers at arm’s length.

Ukraine long played a special role as a “borderland” (the meaning of the Slav word ‘ ukraina ‘) between Russia and the West. From its incorporation into Russia in the seventeenth century , Ukraine served as a conduit for Western ideas, technologies, and fashions in Russia. But it was an open door for Europe’s armies to attack Moscow, if they got the Cossacks or Ukrainians to join their side.

Read More: Russia Declares Energy War With Leaking Pipelines

This last point was emphasized by Putin in his long essay ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, published in July 2021, which can now be read as his justification for the invasion of Ukraine . At many points throughout its history, Putin argued, Ukraine had been used by hostile foreign states—the Poles and Swedes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Austrians and the Germans in the First World War, the allied powers in the Russian Civil War, the Nazis after 1941—as a Trojan horse against Russia. The West today, he claimed, was doing just the same. Russia was at war, not with the Ukrainians, but with their masters in NATO.

Many Russians are persuaded by this narrative because it builds on Cold War fears. It also makes sense to them in the framework of the history they were taught at school and have been fed through films and TV programmes over many years: that Russia does not start aggressive wars but is a victim of attacks by hostile Western powers, and therefore, needs a strong state and leader to defend itself against the West.

That was the lesson they had learned from Alexander Nevsky, the saintly prince of Novgorod, who in 1242 defeated the Teutonic Knights (German crusaders who had set out to impose Catholicism on Orthodox Russia) in a battle on the ice of Lake Peipus in today’s Estonia—a victory that looms large in the national consciousness because it forms the central episode of Alexander Nevsky (1938), Sergei Eisenstein’s great patriotic film, which was seen by millions in the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany . It too was the lesson they had learned from 1812, the Patriotic War against Napoleon; and the story they were told about World War Two, which they date from 1941, when the Soviet Union was invaded by the Germans, not from 1939, when there was a Soviet-Nazi pact.

The other argument of Putin’s essay—that Ukraine is a historic part of Greater Russia and has never had an independent nationhood—also makes sense to the Russians’ understanding of their country’s history. From tsarist times the Russians have been taught to look down on the Ukrainians (the “Little Russians”) as their junior brothers in a family of Russians (with the Belarussians or “White Russians”) which made up the empire’s Slavic core. The Russians’ leading role in the Soviet Union was similarly emphasized, particularly after 1945, when Stalin credited the “Great Russians” for the Soviet victory and began a campaign of Russification in the newly annexed territories of west Ukraine, Moldova, and the Baltics.

The sense of cultural superiority which this inculcated in the Russian population may help to explain the brutality of Putin’s operation in Ukraine. The Russian killings of civilians, their rapes of women, and other acts of terror are driven by a post-imperial urge to take revenge and punish them, to make them pay for their independence from Russia, for their determination to be part of Europe, to be Ukrainians, and not subjects of the “Russian world.”

The “Russian world” is Putin’s mythic concept of a spiritual empire uniting Russia with Ukraine and Belarus in a tripartite nation going back to Kievan Rus in the first millenium. The idea was developed by the Russian Church to promote its spiritual inheritance from Kievan Rus, a link broken by the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It was seized on by Putin, who used it as an arm of his foreign policy to defend the Russian speakers (he called them ‘our citizens’) left outside the territory of Russia after 1991. He justified his invasion of Ukraine on the bogus pretext of protecting them from the genocidal aims of what he called the Junta, the post-Maidan nationalist government in Kiev. The fact that these Russians were Ukrainian citizens, and identified themselves as such, did not count in Putin’s view.

This is where the last tsar in our quartet of statues, Nicholas I, appears closest to Putin in his vision of the Russian World. Devoutly Christian, Nicholas believed that Russia was an empire of the Orthodox uniting Moscow (‘the Third Rome’ or last remaining seat of the true faith) with Constantinople and Jerusalem. On these grounds, in 1853, he went to war against the Turks to force the sultan to concede to his demands for a privileged position for the Orthodox in the Balkans and the Holy Lands (both then ruled by the Ottomans). His fatal error was to underestimate the western powers’ willingness to support the Turks. In 1854 the British and the French sent their allied forces to the Crimea where they captured the Russians’ naval base at Sevastopol, forcing them to surrender.

Among Russia’s nationalists, including Putin, Nicholas I is a national hero because he stood up to the West for Russia’s spiritual interests, and because he made that stand alone, against the opposition of the western-looking liberal intelligentsia. Likewise, Putin cultivates the image of a man who stands alone for Russia, who is Russia in his patrimonial autocracy.

Whether he believes in the religious (‘Russian’) values which he places at the heart of his anti-Western nationalism is hard to say. Unlike Nicholas I, he was not brought up as an Orthodox believer, but had a KGB training, which lends more credence to the view that he is merely using these ideas —for instance his attacks on U.S. arrogance or LGBT rights—to stir up feelings of mistrust and hatred for the West. It is a hostility already felt by millions of Russians who lost out from the collapse of 1991, who never quite adjusted to the market system and democracy, and who now want a return to something like the Soviet Union.

Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine is a sign of the imperial expansionism that has defined the Russian state for so much of its history. But it is based as much on mythical ideas as on geo-politics in the conventional sense: ideas of a nationalist, socially conservative, anti-Western and religious character that underpin dictatorships in Russia, China, and Iran. Before us we can see a new type of empire arising in Eurasia, uniting countries with historic grievances against the West. It is an empire growing in supporters and ideas.

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Vladimir Putin's essay - "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians"

12 Jul 2021

Vladimir Putin

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The return of the enemy: Putin’s war on Ukraine and a cognitive blockage in Western security policy

Subscribe to the center on the united states and europe update, constanze stelzenmüller constanze stelzenmüller director - center on the united states and europe , senior fellow - foreign policy , center on the united states and europe , fritz stern chair on germany and trans-atlantic relations @constelz.

August 2023

• 39 min read

This is a translated, expanded, and updated version of an essay that appeared in the German magazine Kursbuch in June 2023. This piece is part of a series of policy analyses entitled “ The Talbott Papers on Implications of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine ,” named in honor of American statesman and former Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott. Brookings is grateful to Trustee Phil Knight for his generous support of the Brookings Foreign Policy program.

Eighteen months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked full-scale invasion of his country’s sovereign neighbor on February 24, 2022, the question of how this war ends appears as open as ever. Ukraine has put up a heroic resistance to the invaders. The West, under U.S. leadership, and with huge financial and material outlays on both sides of the Atlantic, has helped. Kyiv’s counteroffensive is producing modest successes. But it is equally clear that it is taking a terrible toll — on Ukraine’s armed forces, on its citizens, and on its supporters worldwide. Russia, too, is taking heavy losses, has failed to reach key goals, and is arguably running out of options; the brief mutiny of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has revealed startling vulnerabilities in the top echelons of the Kremlin, including of Putin himself. 1 Still, Moscow continues its barbaric, indiscriminate attacks against Ukraine’s troops, its people, its cultural heritage sites, and the infrastructure of its economy.

Is it time — as critics continue to argue — to seek a compromise solution instead of further arms deliveries in order to prevent further bloodshed or a disintegration of the Western coalition? 2 Might it even be imperative for Ukraine to renounce regaining its entire territory in order to avoid defeat, the expansion of the war to neighboring states, a nuclear escalation by the Kremlin, or starvation in the world’s poorest countries? Certainly, Vladimir Putin appears to be calculating that time is on his side. “Far from seeking an off-ramp,” Alexander Gabuev writes, “Vladimir Putin is preparing for an even bigger war.” 3

Such a compromise peace would demand a near-superhuman degree of pragmatism and self-denial from the Ukrainians, who are victims of a war of aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and who live under almost continuous Russian bombardment. The critics’ fears are nonetheless worthy of careful consideration because they are realistic. They are heightened by the visible fact of Western governments struggling with numerous other disruptive challenges, as well as the prospect of a string of elections in key states, from Poland in October 2023 to the United States in November 2024; all of which appear to be empowering the extreme right, or at least driving up the price of voter consent. Notably, opposition against U.S. support for Ukraine is rising in the ranks of Republican presidential candidates and among their voters as the election campaign takes off. 4 Responsible policymakers must acknowledge these constraints and weigh the costs and risks of all options.

Putin’s Russia: Take it literally and seriously

And yet the calls for negotiation elide a central question: What if Putin’s system and the Russian president himself are unwilling — even unable — to reach such a compromise? The distinguished German historian of Eastern Europe Karl Schlögel has described Putinism succinctly: “a violence-based order following on the demise of a continental empire and a system of state socialism” rooted in a “Soviet-Stalinist DNA … It includes the targeted killing of political opponents, commonplace violence in prisons and camps, impunity for crimes, arbitrariness, conspiracy myths, the notion of ‘enemies of the people.’” 5

In his now notorious historical essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” from the summer of 2021, Putin flatly — and not for the first time — denied Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent country; it was, he wrote, a component (together with Belarus) of a “single large nation, a triune nation.” 6 The Kremlin has repeatedly made it clear that only Ukraine’s complete surrender, including the relinquishment of its sovereignty, is acceptable as the basis for a peace agreement.

This maximalist intransigence is by no means limited to Ukraine. On December 17, 2021, the Kremlin sent two similar “draft treaties” to the White House and to NATO headquarters in Brussels which articulated the Kremlin’s goals for Europe with remarkable clarity. 7 The demands in the proposals — which were immediately dismissed by their recipients — included not just a veto on Ukrainian membership in the alliance but a revision of the Euro-Atlantic security acquis of the post-Cold War period on enlargement, basing, deployments, exercises, and cooperation with partners. They would have severely limited U.S. freedom of movement in Europe (with no concomitant limitations on Russia), reversed 25 years of Central and Eastern European integration into NATO and the European Union, ended the right of non-members to choose their own alliances, and re-established a Russian sphere of influence on the continent. 8 The coup de grâce was the final stipulation (Art. 7) of the draft U.S.-Russia treaty, that all nuclear weapons should be returned to their national territories: it would have meant the end of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Europe and thus quite possibly of the alliance itself.

As my Brookings colleagues Fiona Hill and Angela Stent have warned: “This war is about more than Ukraine. … Ukrainians and their supporters understand that in the event of a Russian victory, Putin’s expansionism would not end at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other states that were once part of the Russian empire would be at risk of attack or overthrow from within.” 9

Konrad Schuller, the Eastern Europe correspondent of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, adds that the proponents of negotiations misjudge the categorical nature of this hostility: “In the case of total enmity, compromise never serves anything but a tactical pause.” This approach, he writes, has “deep roots in the Soviet Union,” and has been demonstrated time and again by Putin, as in the systematic violation of the Minsk agreements from the outset. 10

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously .

It appears Putin must be taken — like Donald Trump — literally and seriously . That, in turn, requires confronting something else: the return of the category of the enemy to security policy.

1989: The end of enmity

The key theorist of this concept in the 20th century was Carl Schmitt, a fierce critic of liberal modernity, parliamentary democracy, and political pluralism; also an ardent antisemite. Despite his refusal to distance himself from his role as “crown jurist of the Third Reich,” his thought has unleashed what Jan-Werner Müller described as a “great and lasting intellectual fallout” for debates about political geostrategy to this day — not only in the West, but also in Russia and China. 11 For Schmitt, the concept of the enemy is the essence of the political: “The political enemy is … the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” 12 Enmity is not meant here in a metaphorical sense: “The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.” 13 Schmitt distinguishes here between “real” and “absolute” enemies: the former are capable of a territorial reconciliation of interests; the latter are incapable of this because of the ideological nature of their antagonism. 14

During the Cold War, much of the world was divided into camps of friend and foe, some of which were separated by genuine fortified borders such as the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. The West’s adversary was the Soviet Union, a rival superpower with a totalitarian ideology and a “settled and implacable hostility,” together with the Warsaw Pact. 15 In the words of John Lewis Gaddis, Western leaders envisaged a postwar European security order “that assumed the possibility of compatible interests, even among incompatible systems” — whereas Josef Stalin’s goal was “the eventual Soviet domination of Europe,” and it “assumed no such thing.” 16 The states of the West, on the other hand, as former French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted in 2016, no longer defined their national identity after 1945 in opposition to a “demonized Other.” 17

It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States was left as the only superpower, with no rival far and wide. Its hegemonic status was also reflected in political theory: the so-called theory of convergence, according to which the rest of the world would gradually align itself with the Western model of free-market democracy. (Ironically, the notion of convergence originated in a famous essay by the Russian physicist and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov, whose 1968 essay “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” posited that the political systems of the West and the Soviet bloc would converge as their relations thawed. 18 ) Thomas Wright has pointed out that “the notion of convergence pervaded the three post-Cold War U.S. administrations. It was an explicit goal of their strategy and defined the parameters of it.” 19

The convergence thesis found its classic expression in a 1990 address to Congress by then-President George H.W. Bush:

“Out of these troubled times … a new world order … can emerge: a new era — freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. A hundred generations have searched for this elusive path to peace, while a thousand wars raged across the span of human endeavor. Today that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we’ve known. A world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle. A world in which nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice. A world where the strong respect the rights of the weak.” 20

History, as we know, has taken a somewhat different course since then. Nonetheless, there was remarkable progress in the decade that followed, which initially seemed to confirm the hope for convergence. The bipolar order of the Cold War reconstituted itself as an “aspiring global commonwealth that enlarged NATO and transformed the United Nations, the [International Monetary Fund] and the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and the EU.” 21 Not only that, the democratic transformation of almost the entire Warsaw Pact found imitators around the world; civil society movements overthrew authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. It seemed that the phenomenon of the enemy in international relations had ended up on the garbage heap of history.

The key proponents of this thesis were the liberal political theorists. Francis Fukuyama’s 1989 essay “The End of History” — arguably the most influential articulation of the theory of liberal entropy — postulated outright that the category of the enemy state, or more precisely, the enemy state with an anti-Western ideology, was doomed to become an anachronism. “The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology of world historical significance … And the death of this ideology means … the diminution of the likelihood of large-scale conflict between states.” Fukuyama hastened to add that terrorism and wars of national liberation would continue, but “large-scale conflict must involve large states still caught in the grip of history, and they are what appear to be passing from the scene.” 22

As late as 2011, the most persistent proponent of the liberal convergence thesis, G. John Ikenberry, inveighed against the “panicked narrative” of the rise of illiberal, authoritarian powers: “China and other emerging great powers do not want to contest the basic rules and principles of the liberal international order; they wish to gain more authority and leadership within it. Indeed, today’s power transition represents not the defeat of the liberal order but its ultimate ascendance.” 23

The country that most enthusiastically embraced the narrative of the end of history, the victory of the West through diplomacy and democratic transformation, and the irresistible global spread of a rules-based world order, was reunified Germany. In 2019, the diplomat Thomas Bagger, then head of the planning staff at the German Foreign Office, described Berlin’s interpretation of the Zeitenwende of 1989 with gentle but unmistakable irony:

“Toward the end of a century marked by having been on the wrong side of history twice, Germany finally found itself on the right side. What had looked impossible, even unthinkable, for decades suddenly seemed to be not just real, but indeed inevitable. The rapid transformation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into parliamentary democracies and market economies was taken as empirical proof of Fukuyama’s bold headline. … Best of all, while Germany would still have to transform its new regions in the East, the former GDR, the country in a broader sense had already arrived at its historical destination: it was a stable parliamentary democracy, with its own well-tested and respected social market economy. While many other countries around the globe would have to transform, Germany could remain as is, waiting for the others to gradually adhere to its model. It was just a matter of time.” 24

Thirty years after reunification, the Germans’ remarkably complacent interpretation of the events of 1989 would become a stubborn cognitive blockage against perceiving and adapting to another, much darker period of climate change in international relations and the global security order.

In the United States, however, the representatives of the realist school of international relations viewed this liberal narrative of a linear arc of history with the same skepticism they harbored for international institutions, international law, and the notion of a liberal world order in general. Realist theorists such as Kenneth Waltz, John Mearsheimer, and Stephen Walt argued that competition was the main driver of the international system. But because realists consider interests to be far more important than ideologies, they are also disinclined to consider a rival state or even an adversary an “enemy” in the Schmittian sense. The competitor’s interests are simply different; this also makes it easier to negotiate with them, to come to a compromise, or even to accept their demand for a sphere of influence. 25 This rather relaxed — and quite condescending — view of the phenomenon of interstate competition was doubtless rooted in the fact that until recently the United States had no plausible peer rival. China’s rise has noticeably changed the realists’ tone.

A third school — the constructivists — took exception to the realists’ refusal to acknowledge identity and ideas as key factors in the behavior of states. And it was the constructivist Alexander Wendt who, a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, addressed the problem of the enemy head-on. He distinguished between Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian orders — based respectively on enmity, rivalry, and friendship. 26 Explicitly citing Schmitt, Wendt defined the difference between enemy and rival: “An enemy does not recognize the right of the Self to exist as a free subject at all … A rival, in contrast, is thought to recognize the Self’s right to life and liberty.” He adds: “Violence between enemies has no internal limits. … Violence between rivals, in contrast, is self-limiting, constrained by recognition of each other’s right to exist.” 27 Wendt cites post-Cold War conflicts occurring between “Palestinian and Israeli fundamentalists” and in Northern Ireland, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda as examples of hostility. All of these examples, however, are of internal or highly localized conflicts.

At the end of the first Bush presidency (1989-93) and then under his successor Bill Clinton (1993-2001), the United Nations sent peacekeepers to Cambodia and Rwanda, and NATO intervened in the Balkans with combat troops for the first time since its founding. Justifications for sending troops included the need to prevent regional destabilization, to end a humanitarian disaster, or the violation of basic principles of international law such as the prohibition of genocide. Leading Western states had patronage relationships with some of the conflict actors (France-Rwanda; France/U.K.-Serbia; Germany-Croatia), but they never went so far as to consider their clients’ enemies as their own. Meanwhile, relations among the great powers were for the most part stable and constructive. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Clinton clashed over NATO’s air war against Serbia. Otherwise, however, they largely cooperated with each other; Clinton paved the way for China to join the World Trade Organization.

2001: Terrorists, the West’s new enemy

It was the rise of radical Islamist terrorism, al-Qaida’s attacks on America on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “Global War on Terror” with which the category of the enemy as the enemy of the West returned to trans-Atlantic strategic discourse. The neoconservative strategists of President George W. Bush (2001-2009) were convinced that the terrorists and their state sponsors had to be utterly defeated; they put this conviction into practice by driving the Taliban out of Afghanistan and invading Iraq. Their highly controversial formulas, such as the “axis of evil” or “Islamofascism,” were reminiscent of the “absolute enemy” in Schmitt’s “Theory of the Partisan . ” 28 What distinguished the neoconservatives from the Schmittians, however, was the fact that they were moral universalists and, in the majority, convinced advocates of a democratic transformation of the Middle East. On this issue, they were in broad agreement with the liberal internationalists.

The Islamist enemy, it was hoped, would also be transformed by the pull of freedom and democracy. As my colleague Robert Kagan wrote in 2008: “The best [option] may be to hasten the process of modernization in the Islamic world. More modernization, more globalization, faster.” 29 The great powers of Russia and China would — or so it was assumed — share the task of combating terrorism with the West. For the rest, the great powers would — as the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy put it — “compete in peace.” 30 In 2005, Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick said that once China became a “responsible stakeholder” in the U.S.-led world order, all differences could be settled in light of shared interests. 31

A decade later, Le Drian identified the Islamic State group (IS) as France’s “current enemy.” 32 But he simultaneously introduced a distinction that was as precise as it was careful: for France, he explained, IS was an ennemi conjoncturel , an enemy whose status was contingent, depending on the current threat it posed. France, on the other hand, is an ennemi structurel for IS, based on an “apocalyptic, totalitarian, and eliminatory vision of this combat … Our deeds are of little importance from this point of view. We are targeted above all for what we are, and for what we represent.” 33 We will have to come back to this distinction.

2008-present: The pulverization of peaceful convergence

The presidency of Barack Obama (2009-2016) was the last in the post-Cold War era to spell out its national security strategy within the paradigm of peaceful convergence. Obama, however, viewed the interventionism of his predecessors with skepticism. He understood that competition was rising globally, but he was determined not to let that fact define his administration. 34

When Obama took office in 2009, Dmitry Medvedev was his counterpart in the Kremlin. But the power center was Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had served once before as prime minister (1999-2000) and as president (2000-2008). Putin had triggered a sharp revisionist turn in Russian foreign policy in 1999 with the bloody Chechen war. In February 2007, he challenged the West in a speech at the Munich Security Conference. 35 In August 2008, the Kremlin provoked Georgia into a week-long shooting war as punishment for its aspirations to become a NATO member. Obama nevertheless offered Russia a “reset”; it produced the New START Treaty on strategic arms reduction and greater Russian cooperation on Afghanistan and Iran.

In 2012, Putin again assumed the Russian presidency. Yet even as Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and sent proxy troops into eastern Ukraine, Obama — supported by German Chancellor Angela Merkel — resisted pressure from Congress and his own administration to send lethal weapons to Kyiv. When Putin intervened in Syria in 2015 in favor of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad (triggering Germany’s refugee crisis), the United States also remained reluctant to intervene. Obama believed that the Europeans should take more responsibility for their own security; for him, the most important American security interests lay elsewhere, in Asia.

But China had also become much more power-conscious, both in its own neighborhood and in international institutions. The Obama administration initially took a wait-and-see approach; then it tried to change course with the “pivot to Asia” — with limited success. Derek Chollet, who had served as a senior Pentagon official in the administration, described U.S.-China relations as “increasingly cooperative on select issues, [but] rooted in competition and distrust.” 36 Few people, however, would have been less inclined to view a challenging great power like Russia or a rising rival like China as an enemy than the cerebral Obama; indeed, he notoriously dismissed Russia as a “regional power.”

Donald Trump’s term in office did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been ‘pulverized’ by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism.

Donald Trump’s term in office (2017-2021) did not end the era of friendly convergence — that had already been “pulverized” by the global financial crisis, the failure of the Arab Spring, Russia and China’s increasing challenge to the Western-led liberal world order, and the global rise of populism. 37 But it became the scene of a bizarre power struggle in U.S. security policy between Republican traditionalists and the president. The former sought to articulate a new paradigm of global great power competition with the 2017 National Security Strategy. The document referred to Russia and China as “revisionist powers”; however, it simultaneously emphasized the importance of democracy, values, and allies. 38 This restrained intonation of systemic rivalry enjoyed bipartisan consensus. It found an increasing echo in Europe as well — such as in the European Union’s 2019 China Strategy, with its description of the emerging great power as a “partner, competitor, and strategic rival.” 39

The commander-in-chief’s political instincts, as it happened, were diametrically opposed to those of his advisers. The president had nothing but contempt for institutions, rules, allies, and especially NATO and the EU; he admired authoritarian leaders like Putin all the more submissively. In all this, Trump was (and is) neither a strategist nor an ideologue, but a transactional “America First” nationalist in a zero-sum world — a theory of American power that an anonymous senior official described as a “no friends, no enemies” policy. 40 Trump’s attacks on the rules-based world order were ultimately unsuccessful, as were his attempts to prevent his successor from winning the election. Nor did he manage to stop the U.S. government from providing Ukraine with lethal assistance, increasing sanctions on Russia, and strengthening the American military presence in Europe. 41

The lasting damage done by Trump’s tenure, however, was and is the normalization of ethno-nationalism, open contempt for democracy, and violence in the U.S. conservative camp. The enemy of the right-wing of the GOP (as is the case with other radical populists) is none other than liberal modernity itself. The Economist reported from a meeting of the hard-right Conservative Political Action Conference: “the movement’s goal is the utter destruction of the enemy.” 42

Joe Biden assumed the presidency of a politically and socially deeply divided country in January 2021, in the midst of a historic pandemic that by today’s count has claimed the lives of nearly seven million people worldwide and has shed an unsparing light on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the international order and Western democracies. 43 An administration strategy paper from March of that year described Russia as a disruptor (“determined to enhance its global influence and play a disruptive role on the world stage”) and China as a potential peer opponent (“the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”). 44

2022: The return of the great power enemy

Only eleven months later, Putin invaded Ukraine; shortly before, Moscow and Beijing had sworn a “friendship” with “no limits.” 45 In October 2022, the administration’s National Security Strategy stated succinctly: “The world is now at an inflection point. This decade will be decisive, in setting the terms of our competition with the [People’s Republic of China], managing the acute threat posed by Russia, and in our efforts to deal with shared challenges, particularly climate change, pandemics, and economic turbulence.” 46 But in the summer of 2023, fears of a U.S.-China war continue to haunt Western capitals; Russia shows no signs that it might be willing to relent.

The free democracies must now understand that they are dealing with a phenomenon they had believed to be historically obsolete: state rivals who see them as ideological enemies. Specifically, “absolute” enemies as defined by Schmitt, or ennemis structurels, as Le Drian put it. Or — to use a more old-fashioned term — mortal enemies. Whether the leadership in Beijing perceives the nations of the West in this sense can be left open here — but in the case of Putin and his regime, the case is clear. Putin’s frequent characterization of the Kyiv leadership as “Nazis,” the tirades with which Putin rails against a “corrupt” Ukraine and a “decadent” West and threatens to “cleanse” “filth and traitors” in his own population, the threats of nuclear Armageddon — these linguistic tropes are familiar from the history of 20th-century genocides. 47

Conceivably, in the case of Putin himself, there is a personal psychopathology at play. Equally possibly, it is — as Fiona Hill argues — simply a cynical terror strategy designed to paralyze the resistance of Ukraine and the West. 48 Perhaps Putin is convinced that he can win this way; perhaps he feels compelled to articulate his invasion as a life-or-death struggle because his power and his life depend on not losing? In any case, the facts are that this unhinged language is amplified daily in the most garish colors by members of the Kremlin leadership as well as Russia’s state-controlled media, that it is taken at face value by much of the Russian population, and that it is implemented in brutal and sadistic ways by Putin’s armed forces. In this respect, Putin’s publicly staged hostility has long since developed a political life of its own. “If anything,” writes Tatiana Stanovaya in a compelling analysis of the hardening mood of Russia’s next-generation security elites, “the country is becoming more committed to the fight … No one is seriously considering or discussing a diplomatic end to the war: a notion that looks to many high-profile Russians like a personal threat, given all the war crimes that their country has committed and the responsibility that the entire elite now bears for the carnage in Ukraine.” 49

Help Ukraine win, strengthen Europe’s defenses, and avoid the mirroring trap

So how should the West grapple with this dilemma? Peace for Ukraine must at some point involve negotiations with Russia. But given the Kremlin’s implacable attitude, the burden of proof for the credibility of its negotiating offers would be extremely high. An armistice based on a freezing of the status quo in the form of continued Russian occupation of Crimea and the Donbas would reward Putin’s aggression and merely pause hostilities. The fact that the aggressor’s identity and the extent of his war crimes are beyond legal doubt will weigh heavily on any negotiations; an end to the fighting without some form of accountability, atonement, and reparations is hard to imagine. Diplomacy, in other words, would have to be very largely on Kyiv’s terms. That does not necessarily presuppose a Russian military defeat or a Ukrainian military victory. Conceivably, Russia could be forced to conclude that the price of pursuing Ukraine’s subjugation is unsustainably high by, for example, losing the support of a key non-Western power like China, or if the so-called Global South turned away from it. But as long as neither of those scenarios is within reach, helping Ukraine means helping it win on the battlefield. 50

Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance.

Would that lead Russia to stop seeing it, and the West, as enemies? Certainly, Germany only embarked on the road to atonement after utter defeat, capitulation, and occupation — a scenario that seems unimaginable for Russia in this conflict. Given the risk that an end to the war becomes an interregnum between wars, only the strongest guarantees — a clear, constructive, and hopefully short path to NATO and EU membership — can satisfy Ukraine’s security interests, and indeed those of the Western alliance. The EU has accelerated membership talks, and the European Council is expected to kick off accession negotiations with Ukraine in December, a process that my Brookings colleague Carlo Bastasin notes comes with “huge political, financial, and institutional implications.” 51 Managing it carefully is all the more crucial because NATO member states were unable to agree on accelerating Kyiv’s NATO accession at the Vilnius summit in July; the question will unquestionably return with full force at the alliance’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC in July 2024.

Meanwhile, NATO, as well as the European Union, will have to continue to radically rethink their security provisions and address their huge deficits in deterrence and defense. Given the evolving U.S. presidential election campaign, Europeans especially will have to do more (much more) to defend themselves. As long as Russia is internally totalitarian and externally neo-imperial, Europe’s security can only be defined against Moscow.

Finally, as Le Drian put it succinctly in his 2016 essay: we must not fall into the intellectual trap of mirroring. This risk is not trivial, as was demonstrated by the attempts of Justice Department officials under the Bush administration after the September 11 attacks to justify “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding by invoking a quasi-unlimited executive prerogative. 52 The current debate on how to deal with China’s increasingly assertive global stance also has hysterical overtones, even if the concern itself is justified. And, yes, there is a very real danger of subjecting those who leave authoritarian regimes to blanket suspicion, racism, and dehumanization.

The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. When you gaze long into the abyss for a long time, the abyss also gazes into you.” 53 In an age of what a recent U.K. strategy paper calls accelerated, constant, and dynamic systemic competition and faced with authoritarian great powers who think of us as the absolute enemy, that warning is especially pertinent. 54

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July 10, 2023

Constanze Stelzenmüller

June 8, 2023

• Lawrence Freedman, “Putin is running out of options in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs , July 25, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/putin-running-out-options-ukraine .
• Jürgen Habermas, “A Plea for Negotiations,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 14, 2023, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/juergen-habermas-ukraine-sz-negotiations-e480179/?reduced=true ; Alice Schwarzer and Sarah Wagenknecht, “Manifest für Frieden” [Manifesto for Peace], petition, Change.org, February 10, 2023, https://www.change.org/p/manifest-f%C3%BCr-frieden ; Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, “The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs , April 13, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/russia-richard-haass-west-battlefield-negotiations .
• Alexander Gabuev, “Putin is looking for a bigger war, not an off-ramp, in Ukraine,” Financial Times , July 30, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/861a8955-924e-4d3e-8c59-73a13403e191 .
• William A. Galston, “Republicans are turning against aid to Ukraine,” The Brookings Institution, August 8, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/republicans-are-turning-against-aid-to-ukraine/ .
• Claudia von Salzen, “Historiker Schlögel zum Ukrainekrieg: ‘Der Ruf nach Verhandlungen zeugt von völliger Unkenntnis der Lage’” [Historian Schlögel on the war in Ukraine: ‘The Call for Negotiations Testifies to Complete Ignorance of the Situation’], Tagesspiegel , January 11, 2023, https://www.tagesspiegel.de/internationales/karl-schlogel-zum-ukrainekrieg-der-ruf-nach-verhandlungen-hat-etwas-mit-volliger-unkenntnis-der-lage-zu-tun-9149778.html .
• Vladimir Putin, “Article by Vladimir Putin ‘On the historical unity of Ukrainians and Russians,’” Office of the President of Russia, July 12, 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 .
• “Press release on Russian draft documents on legal security guarantees from the United States and NATO,” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, December 17, 2021, https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1790809/ .
• William Alberque, “Russia’s new draft treaties: like 2009, but worse,” (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies), January 25, 2022, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2022/01/russias-new-draft-treaties-like-2009-but-worse ; Steven Pifer, “Russia’s draft agreements with NATO and the United States: intended for rejection?”, The Brookings Institution, December 21, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/russias-draft-agreements-with-nato-and-the-united-states-intended-for-rejection/ .
• Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, “The Kremlin’s Grand Delusions,” Foreign Affairs, February 15, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/kremlins-grand-delusions .
• Konrad Schuller, “Frieden mit dem Todfeind” [Peace with the mortal enemy], Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 7, 2022, https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/schwarzer-und-habermas-zum-ukraine-krieg-frieden-mit-dem-todfeind-18010760.html . 
• Jan-Werner Müller, A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1.
• Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 27. 
• Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, trans. G.L. Ulmen (New York:  Telos Press Publishing, 2007), 85-95.
• Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 119.
• John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Allen Lane, 2005), 27.
• Jean-Yves Le Drian, Qui est l’ennemi? [Who is the enemy?] (Paris: Le Cerf, 2016), 19.
• Andrei Sakharov, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom,” The New York Times, July 22, 1968, https://www.sakharov.space//lib/thoughts-on-peace-progress-and-intellectual-freedom .
• Thomas J. Wright, All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and The Future of American Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 8.
• George H.W. Bush, “Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit,” (speech, Washington, DC, September 11, 1990), https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-before-joint-session-the-congress-the-persian-gulf-crisis-and-the-federal-budget . 
• Robert D. Blackwill and Thomas Wright, “The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy,” (Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations, May 2020), 6, https://www.cfr.org/report/end-world-order-and-american-foreign-policy . 
• Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest , no. 16 (Summer 1989), 18.
• G. John Ikenberry, “The Future of the Liberal World Order: Internationalism After America,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3 (May/June 2011), 57, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/future-liberal-world-order . 
• Thomas Bagger, “The World According to Germany: Reassessing 1989,” The Washington Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2018), 54, https://www.atlantik-bruecke.org/the-world-according-to-germany-reassessing-1989/ . 
• See, for example: John Mearsheimer, “Playing With Fire in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs , August 17, 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/playing-fire-ukraine ; Stephen M. Walt, “The Conversation About Ukraine Is Cracking Apart,” Foreign Policy, February 28, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/02/28/the-conversation-about-ukraine-is-cracking-apart/ . 
• Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 260.
• Ibid., 261.
• Carl Schmitt, Theory of the Partisan, 91.
• Robert Kagan, “End of Dreams, Return of History,” in To Lead the World: American Strategy after the Bush Doctrine, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Jeffrey W. Legro (Oxford University Press, 2008), 36-59, 54.
• “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America , ” (Washington, DC: The White House, September 2002), https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf .
• Robert B. Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?”, (speech, New York, September 21, 2005), https://2001-2009.state.gov/s/d/former/zoellick/rem/53682.htm . 
• Jean-Yves Le Drian, Qui est l’ennemi? , 13.
• Thomas J. Wright, All Measures Short of War , 173.
• Vladimir Putin, “Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy,” (speech, Munich, February 10, 2007), http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034 . 
• Derek Chollet, The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World (New York: Perseus Books, 2016), 58.
• Thomas Wright, “The G20 Is Obsolete,” The Atlantic, July 11, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/g20-obsolete-trump-putin-russia-germany-france/533238/ . 
• “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” (Washington, DC: The White House, December 18, 2017), https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf . 
• “Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the European Council and the Council: EU-China – A strategic outlook , ” (Strasbourg: European Commission, March 12, 2019), 1, https://commission.europa.eu/system/files/2019-03/communication-eu-china-a-strategic-outlook.pdf .
• Jeffrey Goldberg, “A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch,’” The Atlantic , June 11, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/a-senior-white-house-official-defines-the-trump-doctrine-were-america-bitch/562511/ . 
• Christina L. Arabia, Andrew S. Bowen, and Cory Welt, “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine,” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, updated June 15, 2023), https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040 ; Cory Welt et al., “U.S. Sanctions on Russia,” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, updated January 17, 2020), https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R45415/9 ; Paul Belikin and Hibbah Kaileh, “The European Deterrence Initiative: A Budget Overview,” (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, updated June 16, 2020), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1106137.pdf . 
• “Donald Trump’s Hold on the Republican Party is Unquestionable,” The Economist , August 18, 2022, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/08/18/donald-trumps-hold-on-the-republican-party-is-unquestionable .
• “WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard,” World Health Organization, https://covid19.who.int/ (accessed 5/1/2023).
• “Interim National Security Strategic Guidance,” (Washington, DC: The White House, March 2021), 8, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-1v2.pdf . 
• “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development,” (joint statement, Beijing, February 4, 2022), http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770 .
• “National Security Strategy,” (Washington, DC: The White House, October 12, 2022), 12-13; https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf .
• See, for example, Vladimir Putin, “Valdai International Discussion Club Meeting,” (speech, Moscow, October 27, 2022), http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69695 . 
• Fiona Hill, “Freedom From Fear: A BBC Reith Lecture,” (speech, Washington, DC, December 21, 2022), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/freedom-from-fear/ . 
• Tatiana Stanovaya, “Putin’s Age of Chaos,” Foreign Affairs , August 8, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/vladimir-putin-age-chaos .
• For a useful summary of the arguments, see Timothy Ash et al., “How to end Russia’s war on Ukraine: Safeguarding Europe’s future, and the dangers of a false peace,” (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, June 2023), https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/2023-06-27-how-end-russias-war-ukraine-ash-et-al_0.pdf . See also the exchange organized by Samuel Charap, “Should Ukraine negotiate with Russia?,” Foreign Affairs, July 13, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/responses/should-america-push-ukraine-negotiate-russia-end-war . 
• Carlo Bastasin, “Want Ukraine in the EU? You’ll have to reform the EU, too,” (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, July 2023), https://www.brookings.edu/articles/want-ukraine-in-the-eu-youll-have-to-reform-the-eu-too/ .
• Philippe Sands, Torture Team: Deception, cruelty and the compromise of law (London: Allen Lane, 2008), 270.
• Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse [Beyond Good and Evil] (Leipzig: C. G. Naumann, 1886) Aphorism no. 146.
• “Integrated Review Refresh 2023: Responding to a more contested and volatile world,” (London: United Kingdom Government, March 2023), https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1145586/11857435_NS_IR_Refresh_2023_Supply_AllPages_Revision_7_WEB_PDF.pdf .

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Europe Russia Ukraine

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Molly E. Reynolds, Tara Varma, Sophie Roehse

May 28, 2024

Jaganath Sankaran

May 10, 2024

Mariana Budjeryn

April 29, 2024

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

History reveals what Putin really wants to do in Ukraine

At the root of the escalating Russian-Ukrainian conflict lies a contested past.

Over the past few weeks, reports have emerged that Russia has been building up its forces on the Ukrainian border. With these actions, Russia seems to be signaling that it is prepared to intensify its military intervention in Ukraine that began with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has alleged that Russia is not just prepared to invade but is also plotting a coup against him. As the world attempts to make sense of these developments, the fundamental question that has haunted this conflict for the past seven years remains at play: What is Putin’s ultimate goal in Ukraine?

Those attempting to answer this question often put forward the idea that Putin sees Ukraine as “Russia” and its inhabitants as “Russians,” and that this view serves as the foundation for policies that seek to turn Ukraine into a Russian satellite. But what Putin is doing is in fact something more insidious — he is denying Ukraine’s sovereignty by denying its history.

Today’s Ukraine was founded as an independent country in 1991 when it broke away from a collapsed Soviet Union, but its political and cultural history goes back much further. In the 10th century, a medieval kingdom allied with the Byzantine Empire emerged in Ukraine’s current capital of Kyiv, ruling over territory spanning present-day Ukraine, Russia, Poland and Belarus. The Kyivan kingdom, which both Russia and Ukraine claim as their country’s origin, was conquered by the Mongols, and over time the territories once united by Kyiv became part of various political formations, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

As imperial Russia grew more powerful in the 17th century, it conquered and took more of this region from its rivals. Still, a portion of the Ukrainian lands remained outside Russia, forming the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Between the Romanovs and the Habsburgs, the Ukrainian lands served as a key juncture in transnational European networks, which fostered a culture in Ukraine influenced not only by Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also by Vienna and Warsaw.

By the early 20th century, the heterogeneous Ukrainian lands had become the crucible of Eastern Europe’s most important movements, with Jews, Poles, Russians and Ukrainians rooted in this region becoming key figures in radical politics, avant-garde art and various nationalisms. That’s why between 1914 and 1921, Ukraine was home to half a dozen governments, all with distinct visions for Ukraine’s future. Some imagined an independent Ukraine in the form of a multinational federation, others a Bolshevik-led party-state ruling from Moscow — the vision that eventually won by force.

When the Bolsheviks founded the Soviet Union, Ukrainians were recognized not only as a distinct nation but as the titular nation of the multiethnic Ukrainian republic. That meant that Ukrainian language and culture would be the foundation of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the 1920s, Ukrainian intellectuals engaged in the production of new art and scholarship that emphasized a Ukrainian heritage not only separate from Russia but rooted in the multiplicity of traditions that long existed on the Ukrainian lands.

As the Soviet party-state became more centralized in Moscow, it became increasingly threatened by historical narratives that emphasized cultural autonomy from Russia, especially in a powerful republic like Ukraine. Beginning in the 1930s, Soviet historians revived imperial-era ideas that put forward Russia’s origins as being in Ukraine, tracing Russian history as beginning with the medieval kingdom in Kyiv and emphasizing the expansion of imperial Russia as the foundation of Soviet power.

In 1954, this historical narrative was elevated to the status of a set of theses — titled “Theses on 300 Years of Russian and Ukrainian Reunification” — that were officially adopted by the Communist Party and printed in the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda . The theses were adopted on the 300th anniversary of the 1654 Treaty of Pereiaslav, which brought much of the Ukrainian lands into imperial Russia.

For nationally minded Ukrainian historians, the 1654 treaty was an end to Ukrainian independence and the beginning of Russian oppression. But the Soviets rewrote this history, celebrating it as a “reunification” of the Russian and Ukrainian people. Subsequent moments when Ukrainian leaders had allied with foreign powers or attempted to assert their independence from Russia were deemed tragic events that led to the oppression of the Ukrainian people. This narrative did not erase Ukrainian traditions, but instead insisted that these traditions flourished only when Ukrainians were living alongside their Russian brothers and sisters.

In 1954, the adoption of this historical narrative came with a surprise gift. As an anniversary present to the Ukrainian republic, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the Crimean Peninsula to Ukraine from Russia. While there is no consensus about the reasons for this transfer, Crimea was officially presented as a reward to the loyal leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party for embracing the 1954 theses as the foundation for Soviet Ukraine.

Sixty years later, in March 2014, the gift would be wrested away from Ukraine and annexed to Russia. Yet, in the speech Putin gave in the wake of the annexation, he offered the same version of a shared Russian and Ukrainian history that appeared in the 1954 edition of Pravda. But for Putin, this history justified why Crimea needed to be taken from, not given to, Ukraine. The Ukrainian leadership’s refusal to continue a partnership with Russia needed to be met with a harsh punishment — losing the anniversary gift of Crimea and experiencing the unrelenting devastation of military conflict.

While in 2014, Putin’s speech referencing history served as justification for a territorial grab, his July 2021 essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” leveraged this same history to hint at his plans. Published just a few months before the new troop buildup, Putin again drew extensively upon the narrative of the 1954 theses to criticize Ukraine’s hostile position toward Russia.

The vision of history outlined in the 2021 essay supports a path for Ukraine to remain independent, as long as it accepts becoming a partner with Russia — albeit a subservient one. Russia’s continued presence in Ukraine, in this way, can be justified not as an occupation but as liberation.

Just as with the facade of democracy in Russia, the natural question that arises is why bother with the illusion of “managed independence”? Because Russian imperial power has long depended on Ukrainian subservience. Ultimately, it is not desirable for Ukraine to become “Russian,” but instead to maintain its distinctiveness so that Ukraine can be a partner that has chosen Russia as a leader. In this role, Russia can present itself as the protector of Ukrainian culture, a culture that Russia insists is shared between them.

And this is where the danger lies. In the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s position as “second” among equals allowed Moscow to claim that the Ukrainian republic enjoyed a flourishing official culture and support for the Ukrainian language, all the while restricting this culture and language so that it could never operate on equal footing with what was defined as “Russian.” If Russia is successful in ensuring a loyal government in Ukraine, Ukraine may remain on the map but it will be a Ukraine remade in Russia’s image. Through rewriting Ukraine’s past, Russia hopes to be in a position to define not only Ukraine’s future but the future of post-Soviet Europe in the 21st century.

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Russia in Review: July 7 – July 20, 2021

By Mason Clark and Rachel Kenny

Russia Expands Military Presence in Central Asia in Response to Afghan Instability

The Kremlin is increasing its military presence and diplomatic outreach in Central Asia to prevent Taliban-led violence from destabilizing former Soviet states . The Kremlin aims to contain instability created by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Taliban advances within Afghanistan itself. Potential refugee flows, Taliban advances beyond Afghanistan, or the creation of safe havens for jihadist groups to strike across Central Asia could all threaten the Kremlin’s campaign to maintain dominant influence over Central Asia.

Russia’s military base in Tajikistan began regular military exercises on July 6 near the Afghan border that are scheduled to continue into August.  The Taliban rapidly gained control of most districts within Badakhshan and Takhar provinces, bordering Tajikistan, in early July. [1]  Russian troops at the 201 st  Military Base in Dushanabe, Tajikistan—Russia’s only formal international military base—have held regular military exercises since July 6. [2]  The Kremlin announced that Russia began constructing and providing funding for modernized border posts on the Tajik-Afghan border on July 14. [3]  The 201 st  Military Base will hold joint exercises with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan at the Tajik-Afghan border from August 5 to 10. [4]  Kremlin-backed media outlet Izvestiya reported on July 15 that the Russian military will hold several joint exercises in August and September with Central Asian militaries through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to practice repelling jihadist groups from Afghanistan. [5]

The Kremlin assesses that its current forces in Tajikistan are sufficient to stabilize the border but retains the option of deploying additional forces, potentially leveraging the CSTO.  The Russian Foreign Ministry stated that Russia’s existing forces in Tajikistan can stabilize the border without external support on July 6, but caveated that Russia will undertake “additional efforts” if needed. [6]  The Tajik government submitted an official request for CSTO military assistance on July 7, citing an inability to handle the situation independently. [7]  The head of the CSTO Joint Staff said July 8 that the CSTO will provide technical assistance but does not need to deploy joint military forces. [8]  The Kremlin retains the option of deploying the CSTO Rapid Reaction Force—which it has prioritized integrating into Russian command structures since mid-2020—if it assesses existing Russian troops are no longer sufficient. [9]  The CSTO and SCO exercises scheduled for August and September are likely intended to prepare for this contingency, or could themselves support the deployment of international troops under the cover of exercises.

The Kremlin in part seeks to mitigate the legitimate security risk of violence in Afghanistan spreading into the former Soviet states.  The Kremlin maintains that it does not intend to conduct operations inside Afghanistan and called on the Taliban to “prevent the spread of tensions” beyond Afghanistan’s borders during a meeting with Taliban officials in Moscow on July 8. [10]  The Russian military has publicly discussed the risks to Russia of a US withdrawal from Afghanistan for several years. [11]  Russian military exercises since 2018 have increasingly prepared to combat jihadist groups that could exploit instability to strike targets in the former Soviet Union. [12]  Russian military exercises and potential new deployments are in large part responses to this legitimate threat.

The Kremlin’s military deployments in Central Asia threaten US interests.  The Kremlin will likely seek to expand its military base in Tajikistan and establish basing in neighboring Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan in the next 6 months. Additional Russian bases in Central Asia and further military cooperation will support Russia’s campaign to integrate the militaries of the former Soviet Union under Russian structures. The Kremlin is additionally likely maneuvering against Ankara’s efforts to establish Turkey as a significant player in Central and South Asia, as well as pushing back on Chinese influence in the former Soviet Union. Finally, the Kremlin does not share NATO’s objectives in Central Asia and will not be a reliable counterterrorism partner in the region.

• Belarusian authorities began a coordinated campaign of countrywide raids against Belarusian media and NGO groups in mid-July.  The Belarusian KGB announced the start of a “large-scale operation to cleanse radicals” on July 8. [13]  Belarusian security forces began raiding dozens of Belarusian journalists and human rights activists across Belarus on July 8; those raids were ongoing as of July 20. [14]  Belarusian forces additionally raided the Minsk bureau of the US Government-sponsored Radio Free Europe media outlet. [15]  Belarusian authorities notably released most detainees within a day of their arrest, in contrast to typical prolonged detention. Belarusian authorities have not conducted targeted raids at this scale since fall 2020, at the peak of popular protests. Many of the targeted groups do not have direct ties to the protest organizers or opposition media outlets that the Belarusian regime has previously targeted. Self-declared Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is likely targeting all independent media or non-government organizations, regardless of their past activities, to degrade the opposition’s will and deter further support for the opposition. Lukashenko’s crackdown will further isolate Belarus, deepening his reliance on support from Russia. Lukashenko met Russian President Vladimir Putin for an unannounced July 13 meeting in Russia to discuss further Russian economic support to Belarus, and likely further Belarusian concessions to Russia, in response to tightening Western sanctions. [16]
• Moldova’s pro-Western party won an absolute majority in snap parliamentary elections as the Kremlin abandoned its preferred political proxy.  Pro-Western Moldovan President Maia Sandu’s Action and Solidarity party won an absolute majority over the pro-Russia Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM) party in snap parliamentary elections on July 12. [17]   Sandu called for snap elections in April 2021 after PSRM blocked two prime minister appointees following her election in November 2020. [18]  Action and Solidarity’s majority will enable Sandu to increase cooperation with the EU to combat corruption in Moldova and grow trade ties, two of Sandu’s key campaign promises. [19]  The Kremlin stated that it respects the election results and will work with the new government, despite its pre-election claims of “ongoing EU interference.” [20]  The Kremlin has steadily withdrawn support for PSRM following a string of setbacks since November 2019. [21]  The Kremlin will likely adapt to the loss of its preferred political proxy and increase its engagement with Sandu’s pro-Western—but not necessarily anti-Kremlin—government to maintain its interests in Moldova, including energy contracts and the presence of Russian troops in the breakaway region of Transnistria.
• The Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) began “Zaslon-2021,” its first-ever operational-strategic exercise, in July to prepare for participation in the Russian military’s Zapad-2021 exercise in September.  The exercise will occur in several regions of southwest Russia from July 12 to July 30. [22]  Zaslon-2021 is Rosgvardia’s first operational-strategic exercise since its establishment in 2016 and is explicitly intended to prepare Rosgvardia for participation in the Russian military’s annual capstone exercise Zapad-2021, scheduled to begin in September. [23]  Rosgvardia reports directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin and is intended to counter internal threats such as protests, terrorists, and what the Kremlin frames as Western-backed support for “color revolutions” within Russia. [24]  The Kremlin will likely continue to prioritize integrating Rosgvardia into major military exercises to counter perceived threats from terrorist groups or claimed NATO subversion.
• Russia reversed course on vetoing a UN Security Council resolution for maintaining the final international aid delivery point to Syria not controlled by the Assad regime.  The Kremlin voted on July 9 to extend international aid deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing in opposition-controlled Idlib Province on the Turkish-Syrian border, the final UN aid crossing into Syria not controlled by the Assad regime. [25]  The resolution maintains the crossing for six months with an option for a six-month extension. The Kremlin threatened to veto the resolution prior to the vote, asserting that an international crossing point violates Syrian sovereignty. [26]  The Kremlin may have withdrawn its veto in an effort to secure concessions from the United States. The Kremlin praised “coordinated efforts” between the United States and Russia on Syria following a call between President Putin and President Biden on July 9. Russia’s UN ambassador stated the vote was “in the spirit” of the Geneva summit between Putin and Biden. [27]  The Kremlin’s short-term concession does not remove the Kremlin’s leverage in Idlib. Continuing Russian and pro-Assad strikes on civilian infrastructure and limited aid deliveries will amplify the humanitarian crisis in Idlib. The Kremlin retains the ability to increase offensive operations against Idlib to pressure Turkey’s proxies in Syria and create the threat of a refugee influx.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin published an essay cementing his view of Russia-Ukraine relations.  The Kremlin published the essay directly on July 12. [28]  The essay argues that Russians and Ukrainians are one people and claimed that Ukraine can only be sovereign in partnership with Russia. Putin claims Ukraine’s separate national identity has been “fabricated” by Europe to divide Ukraine from Russia. He further claimed the West and Ukrainian elites have created the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia—in which Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and controls proxy forces in occupied eastern Ukraine—and seek to exploit Ukraine economically. Kremlin-run media has subsequently claimed that the essay positively argues for close cooperation between Russia and Ukraine, despite Putin’s overt rejection of Ukraine’s existence as a national polity. [29]  The Russian government has taken several steps to elevate the article, including Defense Minister Shoigu issuing an order for Russian military personnel to study the essay. [30]  The essay is likely intended to outline the Kremlin’s preferred framing of Ukraine for a domestic Russian audience and the Russian government, rather than directly change Ukraine’s relationship with Russia.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced Ukraine’s powerful interior minister to reform the Ukrainian security services and remove a rival from power.  The replaced minister, Arsen Avakov, resigned on July 15 after serving in the position for over 7 years. [31]  Avakov developed a significant independent power base through his control of the interior ministry and was the only Ukrainian minister to serve under both President Zelensky and former President Petro Poroshenko. [32]  Avakov is deeply unpopular in Ukraine due to numerous high-profile scandals and corruption allegations, including a longstanding failure to address police brutality. [33]  Avakov was the greatest counterweight to Ukrainian President Zelensky’s Servant of the People (SoP) party within the Ukrainian government, and insiders familiar with the event suggest that the two agreed on private terms surrounding Avakov’s resignation. [34]  Zelensky replaced Avakov with Servant of the People MP Denys Monastyrsky. [35]  SoP stated Monsastyrsky will pursue institutional reform and split up the centralized Ukrainian law enforcement agencies that Avakov refused to implement. [36]  Zelensky likely replaced Avakov to eliminate his entrenched institutional power and further consolidate control over the Ukrainian government in addition to the legitimate goal of instituting these reforms.
• Russia will likely secure a basing agreement in Sudan despite hesitancy from the Sudanese government, expanding Russian power projection capabilities in the Indian Ocean.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mariam Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi in Moscow on July 12. The meeting focused on cooperation between Russia and Sudan in the UN and on ongoing conflicts in Libya and Syria. Lavrov and Al-Mahdi confirmed that their governments will start the ratification process of an agreement, previously announced in November 2020, allowing Russia to construct a naval base in Sudan. [37]  Sudan previously announced in June 2021 it would review the agreement to ensure that it benefited Sudan. [38]  It is unclear from available sources why Sudan dropped its objections to the basing agreement or if Sudan secured concessions from Russia. A Russian naval base in Sudan will enable further Russian power projection in Africa and support the Russian Navy’s efforts to reestablish a global footprint.

Contributors to this Report: 

Mason Clark 

George Barros

Will Baumgardner

Brian Darios

Catherine Hodgson

Rachel Kenny

Matthew Sparks

[1]  Bill Roggio, “Mapping Taliban Contested and Controlled Districts in Afghanistan,”  Long War Journal,  July 17, 2021,   https://www.longwarjournal.org/mapping-taliban-control-in-afghanistan .

[2]  Russia maintains three Motor Rifle regiments and several combat support elements at the 201st  Military Base in Dushanabe, Tajikistan. Fredrick W. Kagan, Catherine Harris, “Russia’s Military Posture: Ground Forces Order of Battle,”  Institute for the Study of War,  March 2018, http://www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/Russian%20Ground%20F... [“In Tajikistan, Russian Military Pilots Launched a Missile Attack on a Mock Enemy Grouping,”]  Russian MoD,  July 6, 2021, https://function.mil dot ru/newspage/country/more.htm?id12370320egNews; [“The Russian Military Began Exercises in Tajikistan Against the Backdrop of Exacerbation in Afghanistan,”]  Interfax , July 14, 2021, https://www.interfax dot ru/world/777832.

[3]   Olesya Stepakova, [“The Foreign Ministry Told about Russia’s Participation in the Construction of a Border Post in Tajikistan,”]  TV Zvezda , July 14, 2021, https://tvzvezda dot ru/news/2021714645-1qY2L.html.

[4]   [“In August, as the Harb-Maidon training Ground, a Joint Exercise of the Military Personnel of Russia, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan will Take Place,”]  Russian MoD , July 19, 2021, https://function.mil dot ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12372819@egNews.

[5]  The Russian Ministry of Defense and other participating organizations have not formally announced these exercises. Izvestia is closely linked with the Kremlin, however, and its report on upcoming exercises is likely accurate. Roman Krezul and Anna Cherepanova, [“threat Revealed: Russia to Conduct Series of Exercises on Afghan Border,”]  Izvestia , July 16, 2021, https://iz dot ru/1193112/roman-kretcul-anna-cherepanova/vskrytaia-ugroza-rossiia-provedet-seriiu-uchenii-na-afganskoi-granitce.

[6]  [“The Russian Foreign Ministry Said that the 201 st  Military Base is Equipped to Provide Assistance Near the Border with Afghanistan,”]  TASS , July 6, 2021, https://tass dot ru/politika/11833209.

[7]  [“Tajikistan Requested Assistance from the CSTO due to the Situation in Afghanistan,”]  Ria Novosti,  July 7, 2021, https://ria dot ru/20210707/afganistan-1740325094.html; [“CSTO Task Force Arrived in Tajikistan to Monitor the Border with Afghanistan,”]  Izvestia,  July 6, 2021, https://iz dot ru/1189414/2021-07-06/opergruppa-odkb-pribyla-v-tadzhikistan-dlia-monitoringa-granitcy-s-afganistanom.

[8]   [“The CSTO Sees No Need to Deploy  the Collective Forces of the Organization to Tajikistan,”]  TASS , July 8, 2021, https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/11859585.

[9]  Goerge Barros, “Russia in Review: Putin’s ‘Peacekeepers Will Support Russian Wars,”  Institute for the Study of War,  November 16, 2020, http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia-review-putins-%E2%80... .

[10]  [“Consultations with a Taliban Delegation,”]  Russian MFA,  July 8, 2021, https://www.mid dot ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4810299.

[11]  Alexander Lapin, [“Afghanistan Again?”]  VPK , May 28, 2018, vpknews dot ru/articles/42857.

[12]  Mason Clark, “the Russian Military’s Lessons Learned in Syria,”  Institute for the Study of War,  January 2021, http://www.understandingwar.org/report/russian-military%E2%80%99s-lesson... .

[13]  [“On July 8, At Least 14 Journalists and Civic Activists Were Detained and Held in a Detention Center,”]  Radio Svaboda,  July 9, 2021, https://www.svaboda.org/a/31349848.html; [“Operation to Cleanse Radicals in Belarus – KGB,”]  Belta,  July 8, 2021, https://www.belta dot by/society/view/v-belarusi-prohodit-operatsija-po-zachistke-ot-radikalno-nastroennyh-lits-kgb-449686-2021/.

[14]  [“Searches Came to Viasna's Human Rights Defenders: Attack on NGOs in Belarus Continues,”]  Viasna Human Rights Center , July 14, 2021, https://spring96 dot org/ru/news/104286; [“Journalists Connected with Radio Svaboda and Belsat TV Channel Were Searched. There Are Detainees,”]  Radio Svaboda,  July 16, 2021, https://www.svaboda dot org/a/31361235.html; [“List of Political Prisoners,”]  Viasna Human Rights Center , accessed July 20, 2021, https://prisoners.spring96 dot org/ru/table; [“Detentions and Searches in Belarus on July 20,”]  Viasna Human Rights Center , July 20, 2021, http://spring96 dot org/ru/news/104375; [“Detentions and Searches in Belarus Continue on July 15,”]  Viasna Human Rights Center , July 15, 2021, http://spring96 dot org/ru/news/104305; [“July 16. Searches Against Journalists Continue. Security Officials in the Office of Radio Svaboda,”]  Dev Belarus,  July 16, 2021, https://dev dot by/news/16-iulya-obyski; Yuras Karmanau, “Belarus Targets Rights Activists, Journalists with Raids.”  Washington Post,  July 14, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/belarus-targets-rights-activists-jo... [“In Just a Day, at Least 30 Searches Were Carried Out, More Than 10 People Were Detained,”]  Naviny Belarus,  July 15, 2021, https://naviny dot online/new/20210715/1626322988-tolko-za-den-bylo-provedeno-ne-menee-30-obyskov-zaderzhano-bolee-10-chelovek; “Belarus Continues Media Crackdown, Detains Three More Journalists,”  RFE/RL,  July 19, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/31367176.html .

[15]  “RFE/RL, Other Media Raided as Belarusian Police Search Offices, Homes of Journalists,”  RFE/RL,  July 16, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-raids-rferl-journalists/31361517.html .

[16]  [“Meeting with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko,”]  Kremlin,  July 13, 2021, http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/66185; [“Working Visit to the Russian Federation. Talks with Vladimir Putin”]  Belarusian Presidential Office,  July 13, 2021, https://president.gov dot by/ru/events/rabochiy-vizit-v-rossiyskuyu-federaciyu-1626156820.

[17]  [“Moldova: Sandu’s Party Wins Early Parliamentary Elections,”]  Radio Svaboda,  July 12, 2021, https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/news-sandu-moldova-peremoga/31354099.html .

[18]  Savannah Modesitt and Paisley Turner, “New Moldovan President Presents Opportunity to Limit Kremlin Suzerainty in Moldova,”  Institute for the Study of War,  December 10, 2020, http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/new-moldovan-president-pres... .

[19]  Maia Sandu, interview by Steve Rosenberg, Chisinau, Moldova, November 16, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54942847 .

[20]  [“Briefing of the Official Representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs M.V. Zakharova, Moscow, July 9, 2021,”]  Russian MFA,  July 9, 2021, https://www.mid dot ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4811091.

[21]  Savannah Modesitt and Paisley Turner, “New Moldovan President Presents Opportunity to Limit Kremlin Suzerainty in Moldova,”  Institute for the Study of War,  December 10, 2020, http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/new-moldovan-president-pres... .

[22]  Rosgvardia announced the exercises will occur in Russia’s Central, Volga, and Southern federal districts. Rosgvardia did not specify the number of troops or specific units participating in the exercises. [“The Active Phase of the Large-Scale Operational and Strategic Exercise ‘Zaslon-2021’ Under the Leadershp of Director general of the Army Viktor Zolotov has Begun in Rosgvardia,”]  Rosgvardia,  July 12, 2021, https://rosguard.gov dot ru/ru/news/article/v-rosgvardii-nachalas-aktivnaya-faza-krupnomasshtabnogo-operativnostrategicheskogo-ucheniya-zaslon2021-pod-rukovodstvom-direktora-generala-armii-viktora-zolotova.

[23]  “Operational-strategic exercise” is a Russian term for a large military exercise occurring in multiple locations, combining staff exercises with field deployments. The term has previously been used to identify the Russian military’s major annual exercises. Zaslon-2021 is Rosgvardia’s first use of the term.

[24]  Mikhail Falaleev, [“Rosgvardia will conduct an Operational-Strategic Exercise ‘Zaslon-2021,’”]  Rossiskaya Gazeta,  July 2, 2021, https://rg dot ru/2021/07/02/rosgvardiia-provedet-operativno-strategicheskoe-uchenie-zaslon-2021.html; [”Colonel-General Viktor Strigunov Highly Appreciated the Actions of the Rosgvardia Units During the Training to Destroy a Conditional Terrorist Group as Part  of the Exercise ’Zaslon-2021,‘“]  Rosgvardia,  July 20, 2021, https://rosguard.gov dot ru/ru/news/article/generalpolkovnik-viktor-strigunov-vysoko-ocenil-dejstviya-podrazdelenij-rosgvardii-v-xode-trenirovki-po-unichtozheniyu-uslovnoj-terroristicheskoj-gruppy-v-ramkax-ucheniya-zaslon2021; [“The Russian guardsmen in the Murmansk Region Worked to Neutralize Terrorist During the Tactical Episode of the Exercise ‘Zaslon-2021,’”]  Rosgvardia,  July 17, 2021, https://rosguard.gov dot ru/ru/news/article/nejtralizaciyu-terroristov-otrabotali-rosgvardejcy-v-murmanskoj-oblasti-v-xode-takticheskogo-epizoda-ucheniya-zaslon-2021.

[25]  “Security Council Extends Use of Border Crossing for Humanitarian Aid into Syria, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2585 (2021),”  United Nations,  July 9, 2021, https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sc14577.doc.htm .

[26]  [“Russia Insists on Non-Extension of the Cross-Border Assistance in syria,”]  Ria Novosti,  July 7, 2021, https://ria dot ru/20210707/siriya-1740196392.html.

[27]  [“Telephone Conversation with US President Joseph Biden,”]  Kremlin,  July 9, 2021, http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/66172; “Security Council Extends Use of Border Crossing for Humanitarian Aid into Syria, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 2585 (2021),”  United Nations,  July 9, 2021, https://www.un.org/press/en/2021/sc14577.doc.htm .

[28]  [“Article by Vladimir Putin ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,’”]  Kremlin,  July 12, 2021, http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/66181.

[29]  [“Real Good Neighborliness,”]  Kommersant,  July 14, 2021, https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/4899556; [“Putin Noted the Rich and Indivisible Cultural Heritage of Russia and Ukraine,”]  TASS,  July 12, 2021, https://tass dot ru/politika/11886623; [“Rada Deputy Called Putin’s Article Strong,”]  TASS,  July 13, 2021, https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/11890065.

[30]  [“Peskov Considers it Understandable and Natural for the Russian Military to Study Putin’s Article on Ukraine,”]  TASS,  July 16, 2021, https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/11918627.

[31]  [“Statement by the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen avakov,”]  Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs,  July 13, 2021, https://mvs.gov dot ua/uk/press-center/news/zayava-ministra-vnutrisnix-sprav-ukrayini-arsena-avakova.

[32]  [“Why Avakov Resigned and What Will be his Future,”]  BBC Ukraine,  July 14, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/ukrainian/features-57833404 .

[33]  “Ukraine’s Powerful Interior Minister Tenders Resignation,”  RFE/RL,  July 13, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-avakov-minister-resigns/31356810.html .

[34]  “Ukraine’s Interior Minister Submits Resignation,”  Reuters,  July 13, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-interior-minister-resigns-... .

[35]  “Ukrainian Parliament Approves Denys Monastyrskiy as New Interior Minister,”  RFE/RL,  July 16, 2021, https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-interior-minister-monastyrskiy/31362321.... .

[36]  Ukraine’s Interior Ministry is heavily centralized, controlling Ukraine’s police, National Guard, border patrol, and territorial defense units. [“Reform Awaits the Ministry of Internal Affairs: Arahamiya Named the Main Task of Minister Monastyrsky,”]  Unian,  July 19, 2021, https://www.unian dot ua/politics/na-mvs-chekaye-reforma-arahamiya-nazvav-golovne-zavdannya-ministra-monastirskogo-novini-ukrajina-11486563.html.

[37]  [“Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s Talks with Sudanese Foreign Minister Mikhail Al-Mahdi,”]  Russian MFA,  July 13, 2021, https://www.mid dot ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4812421; [“Lavrov: Sudan is Preparing to ratify the Agreement on the Support Point of the Russian Navy,”]  TASS,  July 12, 2021, https://tass dot ru/politika/11882579.

[38]  [“Sudan Decided to Revise the Agreement with Russia on the Creation of a Naval Base,”]  Ria Novosit,  June 1, 2021, ,  https://ria dot ru/20210601/baza-1735174544.html.

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• Large Shares See Russia and Putin in Negative Light, While Views of Zelenskyy More Mixed

Views of NATO remain favorable among member nations

Table of contents.

• 1. Confidence in Putin to handle world affairs
• 2. Overall opinion of Russia
• 3. Attitudes toward Russian oil and gas
• 4. Confidence in Zelenskyy to handle world affairs
• Opinion of NATO over time
• How politics and views of the U.S. affect views of NATO
• 6. Confidence in world leaders
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Political categorization
• Classifying parties as populist
• Classifying parties as left, right or center
• About Pew Research Center’s Spring 2023 Global Attitudes Survey
• The American Trends Panel survey methodology

This Pew Research Center analysis focuses on public opinion of Russia and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 24 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Views of Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and NATO are examined in the context of long-term trend data. The report also explores views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This is the first year since 2019 that the Global Attitudes Survey has included countries from Africa and Latin America due to the coronavirus outbreak .

For non-U.S. data, this report draws on nationally representative surveys of 27,285 adults conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surveys were conducted face to face in Hungary, Poland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. In Australia, we used a mixed-mode probability-based online panel.

In the United States, we surveyed 3,576 U.S. adults from March 20 to 26, 2023. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for the report , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

CORRECTION (Sept. 8, 2023): A previous version of this report included an incorrect chart. The map graphic “Lack of confidence in Putin is widespread” has been updated to accurately reflect confidence in Putin in 24 countries.

As a new Pew Research Center survey highlights, Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, continue to be viewed negatively by people around the world. A median of 82% of adults across 24 countries have an unfavorable view of Russia, while a similar share have no confidence in Putin to do the right thing regarding world affairs, including nine-in-ten or more in Poland, Sweden, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Ratings for the country and its leader plummeted in many nations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and they are at all-time lows in several countries in this year’s survey.

Data was collected prior to the late June uprising by Russian paramilitary organization the Wagner Group .

In contrast to Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seen more positively. While a median of just 11% express confidence in the Russian leader, 51% say this of Zelenskyy. But opinions of Zelenskyy vary by country and fewer than half have confidence in his leadership in 10 nations, including NATO members Hungary, Greece and Italy.

NATO, which has contributed weapons and training to Ukraine since the February 2022 invasion, is seen favorably by 11 member states included in the survey. NATO has been consistently viewed more favorably than not in recent years , and views have grown slightly more positive in Greece and Poland since 2022. However, negative opinion of NATO has crept upward in Hungary and the U.S. While about six-in-ten Americans continue to express a favorable view of NATO, there is a large partisan difference on this question: 76% of Democrats see the alliance positively, compared with 49% of Republicans.

In 11 European countries surveyed, as well as India – where Russian oil access is a relevant issue – people were asked if being tough with Russia on Ukraine or maintaining access to Russia’s oil and gas reserves is more important to bilateral relations. Across these countries, a median of 66% say it is more important to be tough with Russia, while 29% say it is more important to maintain access to Russia’s energy reserves. People in Hungary, India and Greece are the most likely to want to maintain access to Russia’s oil and gas reserves, while Swedes and Poles are the most likely to want to be tough on Russia.

In several ways, publics in Greece, Hungary and India are outliers when it comes to views about Russia and Putin. Greeks and Hungarians stand out relative to European counterparts as being more favorable on Russia, confident in Putin and negative toward Zelenskyy. Hungary, in particular, has faced criticism for delays in sanctioning Russia, while public sentiments in Greece have tended to favor remaining neutral in the conflict. India (which has abstained from condemning the Russian invasion) is the only country where a majority expresses a favorable view of Russia and confidence in Putin.

These findings come from a new Pew Research Center survey conducted from Feb. 20 to May 22, 2023, among 30,861 people in 24 countries. Below are some of the other findings regarding views of Russia and NATO, attitudes toward Russian energy and confidence in Putin, Zelenskyy and key NATO leaders.

Ratings of Russia and Putin in middle-income nations

The survey includes eight middle-income nations that Pew Research Center has not surveyed since 2019 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent difficulties in conducting face-to-face interviews across the world. Opinions toward Russia and Putin are on balance negative in these countries, although India and Indonesia are exceptions. Negative sentiment toward Russia and Putin has increased by double digits in nearly every middle-income country since 2019. For instance, 74% now express a negative view of Putin in Argentina, up from 51% four years ago.

Confidence in Zelenskyy

A median of 51% across the 24 countries surveyed express confidence in Zelenskyy’s leadership, while 39% hold the opposite view. Confidence in Zelenskyy ranges from 86% in Sweden to just 11% in Hungary. Besides Hungary, half or more do not have confidence in the Ukrainian leader in Greece, Mexico, Italy, Israel, Brazil and Argentina. Age is linked to these views: Younger adults (those ages 18 to 39) are more likely to express a lack of confidence in Zelenskyy than adults 40 and older in several countries.

Views of NATO

Positive opinion of NATO in the 11 member states polled ranges from 93% in Poland to 40% in Greece. And in Sweden, which is currently in negotiations to join NATO, 78% have a positive view of the alliance. Among these countries, NATO favorability has been largely stable, historically, and particularly high in the aftermath of the Russian invasion. Greeks, who tend to have more negative views of NATO compared with other countries surveyed in recent years, have grown more favorable since 2022, as have Poles. However, positive sentiment has declined in both the U.S. and Hungary.

Those who place themselves on the ideological right in several European countries are more likely to express a positive view of the alliance than those on the left. However, in the U.S. and Canada, this pattern is reversed: Those on the left are more likely to say they have a favorable opinion of NATO.

Confidence in Biden, Macron and Scholz

On balance, confidence in Zelenskyy largely aligns with views of U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. A median of 54% have confidence in Biden on the world stage, 50% have confidence in Macron and 49% say the same of Scholz.

While Biden is largely viewed with confidence across the world, support is weaker among some NATO allies, such as Hungary and Italy. For more on international views of Biden, see “ International Views of Biden and U.S. Largely Positive .” While medians of 50% and 49% have confidence in Macron and Scholz, respectively, support of both leaders has declined in many countries since 2022, particularly among NATO allies.

Road map to the report

The chapters that follow discuss these findings and others in more detail:

• Chapter 1 looks at confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
• Chapter 2 examines overall opinion of Russia across 24 countries surveyed.
• Chapter 3 considers attitudes toward Russian oil and gas access .
• Chapter 4 explores confidence in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to do the right thing regarding world affairs.
• Chapter 5 looks at overall opinion of NATO among member nations and Sweden.
• Chapter 6 examines confidence in Putin and Zelenskyy , paired with views of U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

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In Talks With Putin, Xi Hails ‘Powerful Driving Force’ of Cooperation

At a summit with China’s leader, in Beijing, the Russian president called for stronger economic ties between the countries, as he intensifies his war effort.

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By David Pierson and Paul Sonne

With his army making advances in Ukraine and his political grip tightened at home after securing an unprecedented fifth term as president, Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Beijing on Thursday in search of another win: more support from his “dear friend,” Xi Jinping.

Mr. Putin, whose economy is isolated from the West because of sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine, relies on Mr. Xi, China’s leader, for diplomatic cover and a financial lifeline, including huge purchases of Russian oil.

But Mr. Putin will need more help to sustain his war machine, especially now as his military makes a push near Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, before billions of dollars’ worth of arms arrives from the United States to shore up Ukraine’s depleted forces.

In Beijing, Mr. Putin sought to show that Moscow was deepening its ties as a bulwark against Western attempts to contain the two countries. “We are working in solidarity on the formulation of a more just and democratic multipolar world order,” he said.

He trumpeted China’s role as Russia’s number one trade partner, highlighted the use of the Russian ruble and the Chinese renminbi currency in the countries’ transactions, and said the sides would strengthen contacts between credit institutions and banks. He also said the leaders discussed working more closely in energy and nuclear power research, though made no mention of a proposed natural gas pipeline to China that Moscow would like to see built.

Mr. Xi is committed to his partnership with Mr. Putin, regarding Russia as a critical counterweight to their common rival, the United States. The two leaders share a vision of an alternative world order where autocratic countries like China and Russia can operate free of interference from Washington and its allies.

The pomp and pageantry that greeted Mr. Putin in Beijing made clear the importance of that relationship and the leaders’ “no limits” strategic alignment. Mr. Xi welcomed Mr. Putin at the Great Hall of the People with a tightly choreographed ceremony featuring a 21-gun salute, a marching band, an honor guard and children jumping and waving in sync.

Mr. Xi hailed ties between their two countries as “a model for a new type of international relations and relations between neighboring major powers.” Key to the relationship, he said, was that the countries “always firmly support each other on issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns.”

The nations released a lengthy joint statement late Thursday that vowed deeper cooperation in a range of critical areas, including the space, military and energy sectors. The document also took particular aim at the United States, demonstrating how the world’s two most powerful autocratic powers are consolidating their alignment against a community of democracies dominated by Washington.

The joint statement implicitly accused the United States and its allies of “pursuing confrontational policies and interfering in the internal affairs of other states, undermining the existing security architecture, creating new dividing lines between countries, provoking regional tension and promoting bloc confrontation.”

The document also called on the United States not to arm its allies in Asia and Europe with intermediate range missile launchers, a move made possible after Washington withdrew from a treaty regulating the weapons in 2019 , citing violations by Moscow.

“The parties strongly condemn these extremely destabilizing steps, which pose a direct threat to the security of Russia and China, and intend to increase interaction and tighten coordination in order to counter Washington’s destructive and hostile move toward the so-called ‘dual containment’ of our countries,” the statement said.

“The signal is, ‘we are strong together,’” said Nadège Rolland, a scholar at the National Bureau of Asian Research. “Western sanctions may bite, but as long as China stands by Russia, the power of the West is limited, precisely because of their own interdependence.”

Russia publicly reaffirmed its support for China over Taiwan, saying Moscow opposed “independence of Taiwan in any form.” China supported Russia’s efforts to ensure its “sovereignty and territorial integrity” and said it opposed “outside interference in Russia’s internal affairs” but stopped short of endorsing its actions in Ukraine.

The two leaders were due to discuss the crisis in Ukraine over dinner late Thursday.

Mr. Xi is under growing diplomatic and economic pressure from the West to curtail any support that aids Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine.

The United States has accused Beijing of aiding the Kremlin’s war efforts by providing satellite intelligence, fighter jet parts, microchips and other dual-use equipment. Senior American officials have warned of sanctions against Chinese banks and “significant consequences” for Chinese companies that assisted Russia’s war effort.

The warnings appear to be having some effect. Russian media reported earlier this year that Chinese banks have scaled back transactions with Russian firms over concerns about secondary sanctions. The change is believed to have contributed to a fall in trade between Russia and China in March from the same period a year ago, the first such decline since January 2021, according to Chinese customs data.

Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said finding a way to restore bank transactions and trade volume may be the summit’s “number one topic of discussion.”

Mr. Putin traveled with a sizable delegation that reflected the deepening economic and military cooperation he hoped to cement with Mr. Xi in the face of such pressure from the West. Included were Andrei R. Belousov, an economist who was named the new defense minister this week; Maksim Reshetnikov, the economy minister; and Sergey V. Lavrov, the foreign minister.

Mr. Belousov has experience with China, having previously co-chaired a group formed in 2014 to promote more trade between the two countries.

Others accompanying Mr. Putin included the heads of Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear power company, and Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, as well as five deputy prime ministers.

The makeup of Mr. Putin’s entourage suggested that the talks focused on military and space cooperation that could include how China can aid Russia’s military aims in Ukraine, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“What this visit gives to Putin is this avenue to have one-on-one sincere conversations with the Chinese leader, brainstorming on strategy, and then bringing the most senior military-security teams together,” Mr. Gabuev said.

Mr. Putin wants to find ways to circumvent sanctions and gain support with banking and the supply of parts, rather than ready-made lethal weapons, Mr. Gabuev said. Military-technological support, he said, seemed to be “a subject of very intensive discussions between the Russians and the Chinese.”

Mr. Putin also called for greater economic cooperation, saying the two countries should prioritize energy and agriculture, as well as advanced technologies, infrastructure construction and transportation. Chinese products, from electronics to cars, have filled the gap left by Western companies that quit the Russian market after the start of the war, allowing Mr. Putin to retain a semblance of consumer normalcy for his people despite Moscow’s isolation.

The Russian leader lauded the two countries’ use of rubles and renminbi to settle trade to circumvent U.S. restrictions on using dollars.

“Despite some actions aimed at restraining our development — some actions on the part of third countries — trade turnover between Russia and China is increasing at a good pace,” Mr. Putin said, according to Russian state media.

“Our cooperation in world affairs today serves as one of the main stabilizing factors in the international arena,” he added.

The two leaders, who have met over 40 times, including virtually, depicted their relationship as close. In a statement he read to reporters, Mr. Putin sought to show that he was both not isolated and fully in charge. He said that he and Mr. Xi were in frequent contact, enabling the leaders to “discuss any, even the most difficult problems.”

On Friday, Mr. Putin is scheduled to visit Harbin, a city in China’s northeast that for years was home to tens of thousands of ethnic Russians, many of whom were involved in railroad construction or fled to the city during the Russian Civil War.

With pointed symbolism, the Russian leader will visit the Harbin Institute of Technology, which boasts scientific exchange between Russians and Chinese dating back more than a century. The institute has become one of the most important military research universities in China, developing some of the technologies that the Kremlin may want, as Moscow and Beijing deepen their military cooperation, Mr. Gabuev said.

The details of any agreements in that area are likely to be a top focus of the Kremlin and unlikely to be revealed in public, he added.

“The substance, the most important part, is hidden,” he said. “It is the underwater part of the iceberg.”

Ivan Nechepurenko and Olivia Wang contributed reporting and research.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about David Pierson

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine. More about Paul Sonne

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

President Biden, under pressure from his top national security aides and European allies, has authorized Ukraine to conduct limited strikes inside Russia with U.S.-made weapons .

In recent days, Ukraine has conducted a series of drone attacks inside Russia  that target radar stations used as early nuclear warning systems by Moscow.

Top Ukrainian military officials have warned that Russia is building up troops near northeastern Ukraine , raising fears that a new offensive push could be imminent.

Zelensky Interview: In an interview with the New York Times, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine challenged the West  over its reluctance to take bolder action.

Russia’s RT Network : RT, which the U.S. State Department describes as a key player in the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus, has been blocked in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. Its content is still spreading .

Striking a Chord: A play based on a classic 19th-century novel, “The Witch of Konotop,” is a smash hit among Ukrainians who see cultural and historical echoes  in the story of what they face after two years of war.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

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