In the unrelenting parade of chaos circuses that has besieged the global public sphere since 2014, a war has now broken out in Europe. As the world watches the struggle between an aspiring new world order dictator on one side and democracy, NATO, Europe and the United States on the other, Ukraine expert and Earnscliffe Strategies Principal Yaroslav Baran provides the backstory to Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine obsession, along with some invaluable insight on anti-Putin strategy. This is an updated version of a Policy Online piece published on January 27th.

Yaroslav Baran

February 24, 2022

The months-long crisis at Ukraine’s borders became a full-fledged invasion – likely Europe’s biggest since 1945 – on February 23rd. We have surpassed the realm of diplomatic engagement into a hard discussion about how to stop Russia’s advance. But if we want to know how to confront Vladimir Putin, we need to understand the backstory: What are the psychology and motivation behind the Kremlin’s moves? How does Putin operate? And why is it that this crisis matters globally – beyond Ukraine, Europe, and the NATO-Russia face-off?

Why does Ukraine want to join NATO in the first place? It aspires to join the world’s mightiest collective security alliance precisely to protect itself from Russia. Is this fear justified? Absolutely – not only by Putin’s latest full-scale invasion, but as demonstrated by over 800 years of history.

Today’s conflict can be traced back to medieval Ukraine. We could start the historical context with Prince Yuri Dolgorukyi “the Long-Armed” – a scion of the ruling Kievan dynasty– who was banished to the outer northeast of the medieval Ukrainian kingdom, then called-Kievan-Rus’ or Kievan Ruthenia (after its capital and the Rus’ Vikings who established the state).  Yuri fled and regrouped in a sparsely-populated forestland called Suzdal, and built a fort that would eventually become Moscow. From this new base on the frontier of Kievan Rus’, he launched raids on Kyiv and tried to shift the centre of power. In essence, he was the first Muscovite invader, setting off an 850-year trend.

A political reorganization occurred after a 240-year regional occupation by the Golden Horde which sacked Kyiv in 1240 and controlled Eastern Europe until the late-1400s. As the Mongol empire broke up, the Suzdal region – starting to become known as “Muscovy” – established its own state and by now evolved its own language and culture distinct from that of medieval Ukraine.

Ukraine, in contrast, was moving toward a more central-European orientation, with increasing political, trade and cultural association with Lithuania and Poland. From this mix also emerged one of Europe’s first proto-democracies: the “free state” of Cossacks (which means “free men” in Turkic) established on the Ukrainian steppe and pushing out foreign overlords: Lithuanians and Poles to the west, Ottoman Turks to the south, and Muscovite invaders from the northeast. A divergence in political culture also emerged; while Moscow increasingly embraced the tenets of absolute monarchism, the Cossack Hetmanate in Ukraine yielded Europe’s first modern constitution, post-Florentine republic and elected head of state.

The Ukrainian Hetmanate Republic – one of Europe’s largest countries – continued to fend off Russian invasions for centuries until it fell to Russia’s Catherine II in 1775. And since that time, Ukrainians continued to struggle to reassert their independence from Russia through peasant revolts, a briefly-lived independent Ukrainian National Republic after World War One, and a renewed Ukrainian National Republic in the latter half of World War Two. The rest is recent history: the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Ukraine’s declaration of independence that year, and a renewed hyper-nationalism under Vladimir Putin seeking to reverse what he has called the “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

Putin and his predecessors have coveted Ukraine not only for economic reasons, but for core reasons of national consciousness and historical mythology. Without Ukraine, Russian history starts in the fifteenth century with the collapse of the Mongols and the emergence of Muscovy. By claiming Ukraine as its own – despite separate language and culture – Russia can lay claim to a more ancient medieval heritage that goes back to the 700s:  the legacy of the Kievan empire, its rich ties to Byzantium, the introduction of Orthodox Christianity to Eastern Europe, and a squarely European identity. Seven hundred years of history are added, as is a legitimacy to the later mythology of the Russian Orthodox Church as inheritor of the sacred role of “protector of the faith” – the “Third Rome” left standing after the demise of the Roman Empire, the sacking of Constantinople a thousand years later, and the transfer of the title Caesar (“Czar” in Russian) to Moscow.

Given his motivations of nationalism, revisionist history, and a toxic mix of revanchism and irredentism, Putin’s ambitions cannot be underestimated.

But this only works by holding onto Ukraine – seven hundred years of dots which need to be connected to make the mythology work.  The psychology is not dissimilar to the nouveau riche trying to either buy, marry into, or swindle an aristocratic title to solidify status through appropriated heritage.

This school of historical revisionism, embodied by Putin, cannot accept the dissolution of the Soviet empire, which it saw (ironically, given the disconnect between nationalism and Bolshevik theory) as the pinnacle of Russian greatness. Indeed, the lyrics of the Soviet anthem spoke of the USSR as a reincarnation of “Great Rus’” or “Great Ruthenia” – i.e. medieval Ukraine.

Given his motivations of nationalism, revisionist history, and a toxic mix of revanchism and irredentism, Putin’s ambitions cannot be underestimated. He laid bare his irrational zeal during the emphatic rant that evoked Khruschev’s “we will bury you” speech immediately before authorizing his armed forces to invade. And let’s be clear: existential passion is harder to predict and mitigate than logical calculations such as economic advantage.

Putin’s modus operandi is also entirely different than standard Western diplomacy. Putin is oft referred to as a chess master.  He will advance a pawn on the board (say, like NordStream 2) and then leave it alone for seven years (say, until Angela Merkel is gone), all the while keeping that pawn in his peripheral vision as other pieces move around the board, waiting for it to become optimally useful.

An ex-KGB chief with a blackbelt in Judo, Putin has a lifelong training in patience, assessment, and identifying vulnerability – then striking at the right time. Even when matched with a bigger foe, he knows he can fell giants with patience, discipline, and throwing all his force in precisely the right place at precisely the right time.

As demonstrated with Crimea, he will endure medium-term pain to advance an empire-restoring legacy. Grab what you want, hang on, batten the hatches until you ride out the storm. Restoring past glories is worth years of sanctions, when you know your resolve is stronger than your foe’s. Putin knows attention spans in the West tend to be short-lived, and that Western governments change (sometimes with help from his own info-war campaigns). He knows practical considerations such as trade and natural gas supply eventually erode Western countries’ resolve to uphold sanctions.  Thus he invaded Georgia and Moldova. Thus he brought Chechnya to heel. And thus he seized both Crimea and part of Donbas from Ukraine. Putin may not follow the Chinese tradition of thinking in centuries, but he does think in decades while the West thinks in quarters – or, at most, four-year election cycles. And based on his experience with Western response, he calculated that he can invade Ukraine and watch Western govenrnments chase each others’ tails in discord – particularly having already built a sanction offset in China to soften any new sanctions blow, with its hungry economy ready to consume any natural gas Germany decides to turn off.

Facing this kind of aggressor, three things matter: unity, resolve, and credibility. Anything short is seen by the Judo master as weakness waiting to be exploited. There can be no public dissent between allies; the threatened recourse must be very painful (more than after Crimea) and there can be no bluffs like Obama’s “red line” in Syria.

Putin may not follow the Chinese tradition of thinking in centuries, but he does think in decades while the West thinks in quarters – or, at most, four-year election cycles.

Where is the West? Until now, we maybe get a C+. Germany only reluctantly threatened to freeze the NordStream 2 pipeline, amid a reliance on Russian Natural gas Germany itself has fostered. France spent months speaking of reasonable negotiated compromise in tones ominously reminiscent of the 1938 Munich Conference, and clearly out of touch with the real Vladimir Putin. The UK, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Czech Republic and USA – and now also Canada — do recognize the importance of credible deterrence, and have offered lethal aid ranging from artillery to sniper rifles and ammunition. But placing bets on Russian Roulette, the combined international response does not quite feel sufficiently united and resolute.  Our leaders are still announcing sanctions in batches of dozens of oligarchs and government officials, rather than system-wide moves that could paralyze the Russian economy and foment serious discontent from within. True deterrence with Putin requires Iran-level sanctions and ostracism, so the ruling class can no longer access or visit its assets abroad, apparatchiks’ kids can no longer attend Western universities, and their commercial empires face trade blockades at the border after also finding their credit cards no longer working on international e-commerce networks.  

The Americans and British have a special role in this crisis. We can debate all we want about whether this is “NATO’s fight” or not, and the degree to which we should get involved in this war. But if the moral obligation isn’t compelling enough – stepping in to protect a France-sized European country from being beaten about by an imperialist aggressor – there is a wider global threat to inaction.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine overnight became a nuclear power, setting off years of non-proliferation talks. Through the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Ukraine gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the U.S. and UK. While Russia’s annexation of Crimea was a blatant violation of the Budapest Memorandum, it could also be argued that insufficient response to Crimea is also a failure by the U.S. and UK to live up to their obligations under it. And failing to defend Ukraine now would mean not only the potential destruction of Ukraine and the destabilization of Europe; it would also send a signal to future non-proliferation candidates (Iran? North Korea?) that international security assurances in exchange for disarmament won’t be respected. Buyer beware: you can only rely on yourself, and the best way to do so is to arm yourself to the teeth. This not just a Ukrainian affair that can be written off by appeasers or cynics as “not our problem”.  It is a globally-impacting crisis whose conclusions will reverberate well beyond Eastern Europe. It will bear a heavy cost in blood and treasure.  Just how big a cost is up to us in how we respond.

The Kremlin’s actions are those of post-imperial atavism and insecurity. But they are very dangerous, and they are crimes of passion. NATO must understand them for what they are, understand what is motivating them, and understand the psychology of the perpetrators. They also need to fully grasp the broader implications of failure to stop Russia or live up to real security commitments that have been made. Hanging in the balance may be the competition between two worldviews: a liberal-democratic and rules-based international order that upholds sovereignty and democracy, or an ascendency of a Russo-Chinese autocratic world where great powers invade and partition at will, and where might is right.

Contributing writer Yaroslav Baran is national Strategic Communications Practice Lead with Earnscliffe Strategies. He has led numerous democratic and capacity-building projects in Ukraine, including election observation missions and training for civil society and parliamentary groups. He is also past president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress in Ottawa, and serves on the executive of the Canada Ukraine Foundation.