Ukraine’s history is complicated and does lend itself to different interpretations but I’m going to attempt to give an overview of that history with enough detail as to shed some light on today’s controversies, but hopefully without getting bogged down in too much detail. I do make the presumption that I am talking to an intelligent and interested audience (come on, there’s nothing wrong with a little flattery) so, I think you will bear with me. However, it will be a challenge – much of this is history that is new to me – and it will take a few episodes of this new podcast of mine. But I think it’s worth giving it a try. This is such a critically important issue. One which we need to understand, and history can help in that.
I grew up calling Ukraine, “the Ukraine”, never knowing that most Ukrainians hated it. Why? Because it indicates that Ukraine is a region rather than a state in its own right. And whilst I have to admit, I did in fact see it as a region, most Ukrainians have always seen themselves as a country in their own right, and wanted the rest of the world to see them that way. Well, most of us do now!
“Ukraine” means borderland which immediately gives us an idea of just why it might be a disputed territory. And I must say upfront that history has left Russia with strong ties to Ukraine. Most Ukrainians speak Russian as well as Ukrainian and one-third of Ukrainians (mostly in eastern Ukraine) do identify closely with Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had the second biggest population of the Soviet Union’s fifteen republics and today, still has the largest ethnic Russian population outside of Russia itself, eight million in 2001. There were emotional ties too. The first Russian state called Kievan Rus’ was established in Kyiv some twelve centuries ago. And it was in Kyiv that Christianity was brought from Byzantium to the Slavic peoples. So that, Kyiv, though it be Ukraine’s capital, is sometimes referred to as “the mother of Russian cities”, up there in importance with Moscow and St. Petersburg.
And yet, in the referendum of 1991 in which 84% of the electorate voted, slightly more than 92% voted in favour of Ukraine’s declaration of independence; an overwhelming majority.
But in this episode, I’m going to move away from Ukraine itself in order to look at the bigger picture: the relationship between Vladimir Putin and the West. And I think you will soon see why it is important to do so.
Putin has not always been painted as the bad guy by the West. When President Clinton phoned on New Year’s Day, 2000 to congratulate him on his appointment as acting President following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, Putin told him that although there were issues on which the two countries disagreed, hopefully there were also core themes on which they were in agreement. And when Clinton called him in March, 2000, this time to congratulate him on his election as president, Putin said he hoped that ‘it is clear to the whole world that I am a person you can work with.’ Tony Blair was convinced that Putin wanted a good relationship with America and that he wanted to introduce economic and democratic reforms. Whilst George W. Bush described his support of America after 9/11 as simply ‘amazing’ and said how much he appreciated ‘his willingness to move beyond the suspicions of the past’. So, what went wrong?
The roots of the problem pre-date Putin’s presidency, for they lie with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia lost almost 50% of the Soviet Union’s population, including tens of millions of Russian speakers stranded on the “other” side of borders, and it lost a little over 40% of its GDP. Crucially, Russia also lost its cherished status as a global power. It could no longer regard itself as America’s equal. Little wonder Putin has repeatedly described the Soviet Union’s collapse as the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
NATOs continued existence, indeed its expansion, after the demise of the Soviet Union, and with it, the East European bloc and the Warsaw Pact, clearly rankled. Just after George W. Bush was elected, Putin said: ‘NATO still exists. What for? We all say that we don’t want Europe to be divided, we don’t want new borders and barriers, new ‘Berlin Walls’ dividing the continent. But when NATO expands, the border doesn’t go away. It simply moves closer to Russia.’ Clearly he wasn’t happy. And he had a point.
Francis Richards, who at that time was head of GCHQ, the British intelligence and security agency, recalled how ‘We were quite grateful for Putin’s support after 9/11, but we didn’t show it very much. I used to spend a great deal of time trying to persuade people that we needed to give as well as take . . . I think the Russians felt throughout that [on NATO issues] they were being fobbed off. And they were.’
And there were those in Moscow, that Putin had to deal with, fellow politicians, the state bureaucracy and the military, who felt Russia was giving too much and getting too little. Putin still felt that a rapprochement with the West best served Russia’s economic and security interests, but the critics of that rapprochement were voices Putin couldn’t ignore forever.By the end of Putin’s first presidential term, in 2004, evidence seemed to be piling up on the side of Putin’s domestic critics. America had ended the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and was developing a national missile defence programme. America had also invaded Iraq in 2003. And in 2004 America had supported the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which to the Kremlin was tantamount to promoting regime change on Russia’s borders (I intend to focus on the Orange Revolution in my next episode).
Also in 2004, NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders when seven countries joined the alliance: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the last three being former Soviet republics. It was NATOs biggest expansion ever. And in 2008 NATO responded positively when Ukraine and Georgia declared they, too, wanted to join the alliance (though we should also note that Germany and France said they would veto any such proposal). This, Russia saw as nothing less than an existential threat and Putin rejected the West’s argument that NATOs expansion was only a response to requests for membership. As far as he was concerned, those requests could be politely declined. In December, 2021, months before the invasion of Ukraine, he revised the argument put forward by Nikita Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, that American missiles were in Turkey and Italy, arguing now that America would feel very differently if Russia was putting missiles in Mexico or Canada.
We need to consider Putin’s perspective on the nuclear issue. Russia has almost 6,000 nuclear warheads, America has almost 5,500 (though Britain and France are also nuclear powers). Now these warheads will be of varying power (though the vast majority will be much more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and they will be at the sharp end of different delivery systems, missiles, nuclear submarines and planes, also there are defence systems to consider; but we can take as a given that each side has enough fire power to obliterate the other.
But America (through NATO) is the only nuclear power in the world to have nuclear weapons based in other countries. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, America removed all its nuclear missiles from Europe. However, it still has nuclear bombs in Europe. Sources I have researched suggest it has anywhere between 100 and 240 nuclear bombs in five countries: Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy and Turkey. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament puts the total number of bombs roughly in the middle of that range: up to 20 in Belgium, Holland and Germany, up to 70 in Italy and up to 50 in Turkey. And again, each is many times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
So, there is a need to look at Putin’s perspective – how would America feel if he put missiles in Mexico or Canada? – with some care. On the one hand, he has a point – America has nuclear weapons in Europe and a defensive alliance with European countries that is growing and has Russia in its sights as its main potential enemy. And we all know the maxim: ‘the best form of defence is attack’. So, he feels Russia is threatened. Whereas in the European theatre, he surely has an overwhelming advantage when it comes to a nuclear threat, as well as also having an advantage in the global theatre, at least in numbers (we will never know how well each side’s nuclear system works unless they are used – so, we hope we will never find out!).
So, for Putin and his advisers in the Kremlin, a Ukraine that is leaning increasingly to the West, a Ukraine that wants to join NATO, with many within NATO favouring such a move, is a very real threat, an existential threat, to Russia.