Russia begins moving troops into eastern Ukraine

[Dill]

(03-18-2022, 06:16 PM)hollodero Wrote: If he was like that from the very beginning of his tenure, it's hard to tell. He's in power since 1999, a long time not to change at all. It could be that he changed drastically and "lost it" so to say, I just don't really see it, I rather see someone finally following through on long-held plans and goals.

Part II:  Putin in his own words

Do you have evidence of "long-held plans" etc.? I am going by interviews, biographies, and auto biographies by Gorby and Richard Gates--but primarily by Putin's own speeches and their correlation to Russian FP at the time given. 

A. 2001--A baseline for evaluating change in Putin's worldview and goals is the speech he gave before the Bundestag on Sept. 25. I found an English transcript,https://larouchepub.com/other/2001/2838putin_bundestag.html,* but you might be better served by the video. Here it is on Youtube--a youthful, alert Putin addressing the German nation in the language of Goethe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0_0WqUuh9E

I don't expect you to listen to the whole thing, but you might dip in at 6:55 where he describes terrorism as a security concern and affirms his agreement with Bush that nations must band together to defend against it (while continuing to recognize that Muslims will also be our partners in this). That is followed, from 10:10  to 13:53, with a reminder that nations should work together as partners, consulting one another about international security arrangements. Common regional security measures have been determined without Russian input, and then the Russia has been expected to affirm and accept them afterwards. "Is that normal?" etc. etc. 

Also important, the final run of the speech emphasizes, not the unity of Russia with Ukraine, but the unity of European culture, and of the tremendous cultural debt of Russia to Germany. He goes on and on about how German literary masterpieces are translated so carefully into Russian and how, despite the two world wars, they share so much. 

As it plays out over the the next decade, of course, German security interests over the past 75 years and now deeply embedded democracy and consumer culture make its US alliance more than a transactional and transitory thing of the moment. (It was this "deeper" alliance which was always threatened by Trump's "but what have they done for us lately" approach to FP.) 

B. 2007--in the famous Munich Security conference speech, the emphasis on "multi-polarity" and working within established international economic and security frameworks is still there, but there is no affirmation of unity with the US, which is described (correctly) as a global hegemon with the power to make unilateral decisions affecting global security without reference to the UN, which P thinks is the only institution which can legitimate interstate violence. He grouses somewhat about the expectation of some European countries (e.g., Italy), that the EU and NATO are equally legitimate venues for discussion of regional security affecting non-EU and NATO members. But the speech itself is, from the perspective of "Realism," quite rational and unobjectional. https://aldeilis.net/english/putins-historical-speech-munich-conference-security-policy-2007/  

Also, between 1999 and 2007, are you aware of any cyberattacks on European governments? Putin funding Trump-style political parties in France or Germany? I am not.

C. 2021--A and B contrast sharply with Putin's  "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" of 2021, which is unapologetically irredentist, arguing for a historical and spiritual unity of northern Slavs, grounded in a common origin in the 9th century Kievan Rus. The ploy of literary connection is again used (e.g., Gogol was Ukrainian), but RELIGION is the crucial glue and the historical bond which makes the Ukrainians and Russians one people, divided now apparently by the machinations of those outside the Slavosphere whose known tactic is to divide and conquer. It was the 19th century Catholic "Polish elite," desiring to regain their 17th-18th century control of the region, who fomented the notion that Orthodox Ukraine was a separate nation, though its people had now for 500 years looked to Moscow for protection of their religion and cultural identity. In the later 19th century it was the Austro-Hungarian empire which furthered this "lie" in its contest with Russia for control of Eastern Europe. And of course during WWI, post Brest-Litovsk, Germany and A-H signed separate treaties with Ukrainians in return for wheat, continuing to affirm independence as a means of weakening Russia. In this essay, Europe is no longer the center of common culture which includes Russia, but a collection of "external forces" working across centuries to pry Bela-, Novo, and Malorussians from mother Russia. When the USSR was founded in 1922, that darned Lenin incorporated Ukraine (and other former Tsarist controlled principalities) as "Republics" with the sovereign right to join or leave the union of soviets. A terrible mistake and mischaracterization, fragmenting what was a spiritual and cultural unity. (Putin says he is not idealizing, but he clearly is, and edging towards the "spiritual" rhetoric of early 20th century fascism as well.)

I don't want to summarize anymore perfunctory and poorly spun history--enough to say here that the argument is that, with the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine should have reverted back to Russian control, the whole "Republic" designation having been a mistake [like the administrative transfer of Crimea from Moscow to Kiev under Kruschev back in '57]. P mentions his St. Petersburg mentor, Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who argued that once Soviet "republics" declared the '22 constitution invalid, they should have reverted back to Russian provinces. Now U and R have one common economy and only the "elites" there are driving the nationalist narrative, in cahoots with those other "external" powers who want to weaken Russia. 

Regarding the latter part of his argument, he is quite right that "external" powers have sought and still seek to divide Ukraine from Russia, but he leaves out the agency/sovereignty of Ukrainians themselves, who see clear advantages in allying with the big Atlantic players. He begins to sound rather like Walt Rostov back in 1965 insisting that "Moscow" was the real driver of resistance to Diem and successive RSVN regimes, even as he claims it is for the people of Ukraine, and not outsiders, to decide their path forward. Possibly in reference to the notorious Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi militia incorporated into the Ukrainian Army in 2014, Putin's final paragraphs refer to neo-fascist forces within Ukraine who threaten ethnic Russians in the Donbas and work with a national leadership as a tool of the West, against the Ukrainian people and their interests. (He is writing this three years after our own US Congress explicitly prevented military aid from going to the Azov.) 
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

So why lay out this contrast between Putin then and now, in Putin's own words? The first two documents would pass muster with Russian** FP experts and historians as competent representations of national interest, with a chance of engaging international cooperation in shared goals. Reading them, in correlation with the Russian government's actions, suggests not that Putin is "out of touch" with reality and his intel community, but rather quite on top of that reality and playing the Russian hand rather competently. No dictator trap yet.

The 2021 document could hardly be so validated, though P's own experts would likely grant that the Atlantic West has indeed worked to diminish Russia and check its power by dominating its near abroad. 

The R-U "Unity" essay is a middle finger to the international community; its audience is not "the West" nor even the Russian policy establishment, but the domestic audience long-aggrieved by disappointment with the US and Europe and rocked by economic depression/recession. It is not a signal or a request for the international community to work with and respect Russia. Rather Russia (Putin) is laying out groundwork for a new policy which doesn't require "permission" from or cooperation with Atlantic power, seeding pretexts (like neo-Nazism) for later claims they have been "well known" and "already noted." And it follows five years of active meddling in European and US elections. Russia doesn't care anymore if we don't like that. This is a great distance from 2007.
 
Now contrast the low-risk invasion of Georgia and annexation of Crimea to the current invasion of the Ukraine. You've argued Putin "wasn't ready" for his big imperial push back then, as if now he were all consolidated and ready, but I would argue 1) that he was not ready for the Georgian invasion either, or the Crimean annexation, and knew it, but events on the ground forced his hand.  He also definitely was not ready for the current invasion of Ukraine, but DIDN'T know that. Your hypothesis is he was always the meglomaniac ready to restore imperial Russia; mine is that his information environment has greatly degenerated (the dictator trap), or he has suffered a sharp mental decline (onset of dementia?), or both. lol well I'll stop here or I'll probably never stop.

*lol from Lyndon Larouches' "Executive Intel" site. He was a pre-internet Alex Jones. 
**I mean Russian nationals here, not just area experts from the US and Europe.