Soviet poster (1935, J. Zavialov): “The whole world will be ours!”
Today, discussing the expected peace talks in Ukraine, the American media often presents the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a conflict primarily over the territories.
I’m familiar not only with American but also with the Russian-language media’s opinion on this issue, and for me the sharp difference between the Russian and the American understandings of the conflict is striking.
This question of the meaning of the war in Ukraine is perhaps the only issue in which the positions of all those discussing this issue in Russian language coincide. The official Putin’s propagandists, the anti-Putin opposition, and the majority of Russian citizens very often have similar points of view. They all believe that Putin is at war not with Ukraine, but with the entire Western world, primarily the United States.
Putin’s propaganda assures that the U.S. is literally “forcing” Ukraine to go to war with Russia, and many Russians believe this propaganda, because it has very long tradition. For many generations Russians have believed that Russia can bring only good to the world, while the West is evil, and that only the intrigues of Russia’s enemies can make the inhabitants of former colonies or satellite countries want independence from Russia.
Today, Putin’s propaganda interprets the unrest in Georgia, where the people are demanding their government to proceed with European integration of their country, as activity organized by the West. And even the current unrest in Syria Russians interpret as solely the work of the Russia’s Western enemies.
Here is a quote from an article published on December 1, 2024 in the official Russian newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda”:
“ ‘The protests in Georgia and the activation of militants in Syria are links in the same chain’, argues a military correspondent Alexander Kots. Kots says: ‘The West is trying to damage Russia’s interests, to open a ‘second front’ against it, and then a ‘third, fourth front’.
“The analyst notes that ‘Western countries urged the Georgian authorities to unleash a war against Russia and then, after defeat of this attempt, they decided to switch to guerrilla warfare. Official Tbilisi refused to fulfill the requests of the West, but the plans to involve Georgia in a conflict with Russia were not given up, and the revolution was organized in the country.
“ ‘If the Georgian revolution wins, we probably will have to go to war with Georgia, the debt will have to be paid with the lives of Georgian soldiers,’ Kots noted.
“’In Syria’, said the military correspondent Kots, ‘the situation is even more obvious: here the West is trying to kill several birds with one stone: on the one hand, it hopes to divert our resources from the main direction: Ukraine; on the other, to get rid of our main (if not the only) logistical hub in the region’, Kotz explained.
“In his opinion, ‘In case of failure in Georgia and Syria, the West will take up Armenia, Kazakhstan and a number of other regions’. He stated that the stronger Russia’s position on Ukraine, the more such new fires will ignite around the country.”
A Russian-language article in Wikipedia defines Putin’s goals of war in Ukraine this way:
“Researchers assess Russia’s goals in the war as irrational neo-imperialism. Putin’s purported goal in the war was the Russification and destruction of Ukraine as an independent state, followed by the incorporation of its territory into the Russian Federation, which was supposed to restore Russia’s status as an empire. Canadian historian David Marples writes in September 2022 that the scale of the invasion, the shootings in Bucha, Mariupol and other cities indicate that Russia is waging a campaign to destroy Ukraine through the seizure of its territory and depopulation, extermination and deportation. Russia also wants to change the balance of power in Eastern/Central Europe, divide the European Union and expand its influence.
“Putin’s vision is to win and gain a role as a global power for Russia, but Putin is being deliberately vague about the goals of the invasion and how to achieve them. According to the British weekly The Economist, the goal of the invasion was the Russian leadership’s desire to prevent Ukraine from becoming a prosperous European-style democracy.”
Most Russian-speaking opponents of Putin are convinced that any halt to the war in Ukraine, based on temporary or permanent division of territory, will be seen in Russia as a victory for Putin. Such a war stoppage would not lead to peace, but only to a postponement of a larger war until Putin succeeds in increasing his military power.
On December 1, “Republic.ru”, one of the most significant anti-Putin websites, asked a political scientist, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., adjunct professor at Georgetown University Maria Snegovaya, how can the West effectively contain Russian aggression, and will the Trump-brokered negotiations bring results?
Maria Snegovaya replied:
“Putin has started five wars during his time in power, which is about a quarter of a century. Approximately one war every five years. This is the war in Chechnya, in Georgia, two in Ukraine and in Syria. That’s a record among current world leaders.
“Obviously, this dynamic is not directly related to NATO expansion, but the Kremlin is trying to establish its control at least in the countries of the post-Soviet region, which, from Putin’s (and many Russian elites) point of view, is Russia’s zone of influence. The fact that the problem is not so much with NATO, by the way, was demonstrated by the admission of Sweden and Finland to NATO, to which Russia had a rather restrained reaction.
“Containment is a Cold War concept. Russia does not have the scale of influence that the Soviet Union had. Russia is much weaker today. However, it still tries various ways to subjugate these countries – from soft co-optation, soft power, attempts to take control of incumbent politicians (and when other methods have failed) to direct external physical intervention. Russia is indeed expansionist in this regard. You can call it the Russian world, whatever you like. The choice of terms here is secondary to some given reality. But it’s clear that countries like Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova don’t want to be with Russia. They try to avoid its pressure in various ways. There are countries like Kazakhstan that do not speak directly about Russian pressure, but nevertheless we see that they are trying to reduce their dependence on Russia.
“Accordingly, the Western world faces the question of whether it should help countries that turn to it for help. And when Ukraine began to successfully resist Russia, it became clear to the West that if it is abandoned now, there is a risk that it will be Bucha all over Ukraine, that is, in fact, genocide. This would not only destroy the existing legal world order, but the West would then be accused of not helping.
“Therefore, the idea of containment in this respect is not very different from the situation we saw at the end of World War II, when the USSR behaved as expansionist as Russia does today. This led to the Berlin crises and the Korean War, among other things. And based on my research, I believe that, in fact, the same Cold War continues today. It’s not even Cold War 2.0. Why? Because there hasn’t really been a change of elites in Russia.
“Putin and his closest minions are people who started their careers in the Soviet political and administrative system. They see the world in a similar way as Soviet leaders saw it in their time: the West is the enemy, expansion is power, we have spheres of influence, we must hold them by any means necessary, maintain political influence on our neighbors, and if we lose them, it will be a victory for the enemy West. This worldview leaves no room for compromise. And this leads to the only way out: Russia must be contained. At the moment, Russia continues to seize new territory in Ukraine and so on.”
Putin obviously has no plans to stop the war. He has just released his country’s new budget, indicating that he is going to spend record amounts on war. In 2025, 41% of Russia’s budget will go to “national defense” – about $135 billion. This is more than spending on education, health care, the economy, and social policy combined.
Nor does he hide his plans to destroy the Ukrainian nation.
Ukrainian website “Censor.NET” published a report on November 29:
“An online course on the formation of ‘traditional Russian identity’ in children taken from Ukraine has been launched for teachers in the Russian Federation. We would like to remind you that the Verkhovna Rada’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, suggested that the Russian Federation had smuggled about 150,000 children out of Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner for children’s rights, Darya Herasymchuk, put the figure at ‘several hundred thousand children, i.e. somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000’.
“A new course for teachers has been prepared by employees of Russian universities. 1,150 Russian teachers have already signed up for the course. The course will teach teachers, in particular, to ‘identify opposition-minded children’, as well as those who may have been ‘recruited’ by foreign special services, i.e. those who insist on their Ukrainian identity.
“The course program contains nine blocks, of which more than five hours are devoted to ‘neo-Nazism’ in Ukraine.” In Russian propaganda, it is the desire of Ukrainians to maintain their separate identity from Russia that is most often considered “neo-Nazism”.
The course description states that teachers should “instill in children’s minds a willingness to live in times of the West’s hybrid war with Russia”.
The course is designed to last for many years to come.
