Russia's murder-suicide
Ten years ago, Zelensky was Ukraine's answer to Ryan Seacrest. And that's exactly why Putin fears him.
I took the time to respond to this question posted by user Tyler on the Blocked And Reported Substack’s weekly Wednesday open thread.
I know this is not "Foreign Affairs Magazine" but I don't know where else to pose this question. Are there any native Russians or people with extensive knowledge of Russian history, politics, culture?
I ask because I am completely baffled by the mindset driving the invasion of Ukraine.
Imagine I am a criminal who wants to rob a high-end jewelry store or art gallery. Presumably, I would use surgical-level instruments to carefully gain entry, so as not to damage the valuable items I plan to sell. I would not blow up the building, potentially destroying everything inside it.
Instead of using the surgical instruments, Russia is blowing up the entire building. Once they have gained control, there will be nothing but wasteland.
Somebody help me understand the end-game here.
My response:
As of 2022, Russia is a top-down personalist autocracy where one man has the final say on everything. It didn't used to be like that quite as much - even just a few years ago it was more like an uneasy coalition between oligarchs, the FSB, Putin's circle of political cronies and the Russian mafia, but now it's much more like a North Korea-style dictatorship. The oligarchs in particular have lost a huge amount of their power and say (and their funds, due to sanctions). The fact Putin had to keep them onside used to rein him in somewhat - not any more.
The "surgical instruments" analogy is indeed how Putin used to operate: the annexation of Crimea was carried out in exactly such a fashion before Ukraine even really understood what was happening. The invasion of Donbass likewise employed maskirovka and the plausible deniability of "local insurgents" who were actually Russian soldiers or agents in plain clothes. That way, Russia could hide behind the idea that it was some kind of organic grassroots rebellion. Why? Because he knew the complacent West would prefer to hide behind that lie as well for its own convenience, as it would mean they wouldn't have to confront him or take any meaningful action.
Putin is not acting rationally anymore, and that's what shocked and unnerved many Russia-watchers last February. Everyone could see that invading the whole of Ukraine - a large, well-defended and fiercely independent country of 44 million people - would be monumentally stupid, hugely destructive for Russia, and that it would be impossible to hold the country even if they managed to take it. That's why so many seasoned Eastern Europe experts didn't think Putin would be daft enough to do it. He could have done it with a smaller country and gotten away with it: if he'd attacked Georgia in the same way it would have been accepted by the West as a fait accompli that they could do little about, and annexing Belarus would also have been far more militarily and politically feasible - Belarus is already a client state of Russia, has a much weaker sense of its own identity and culture than Ukraine does (as Belarus is far more Russified), and Western countries might even have been quietly happy to see the back of Lukashenko.
But Putin hates Ukraine. Hates it, and is threatened by it. It's a vendetta. A tantrum, even, if you believe the rumours that he's critically ill. He hates it because of what it stands for, because if Ukrainian democracy is allowed to succeed then Russians will start to demand it too. That's his fear. He's terrified of ending up like Gaddafi. Ukraine, with its irritating habit of constantly having popular revolutions where the public rise up and overthrow various corrupt officials and Russian puppets (like Yanukovich), serves as an example to the Russian public of what they could be, what they could do. That's why, from Putin's perspective, the idea of Ukraine must be crushed. He could tolerate this kind of thing happening in a small, non-Slavic ex-USSR country - like the Baltics - but not Ukraine, a core USSR country second only to Russia and indeed foundational in Russia's own history. He sees the Maidan protests and fears them happening in Moscow. His priority to ensure the survival of his own regime is to destroy democracy in Ukraine so that it can't take hold in Russia. (That's also why he destroyed Mariupol, but not Kherson - Mariupol was a Russian-speaking city that had already defiantly and successfully resisted Russian invasion back in 2014, and for that it had to be punished and made an example of, as he considered them traitors.)
And that's why Zelensky - as a native Russian speaker who was a regular figure on primetime Russian entertainment TV well into the 2010s, and as a genuinely popular centrist politician who unites eastern and western Ukraine - represents much more of a threat in Putin's eyes than previous Ukrainian presidents like Poroshenko did. Poroshenko was much more your classic (western) Ukrainian nationalist who voters in the east of Ukraine - who DO identify as Ukrainians but speak Russian as their native tongue - didn't really connect with. Whereas Zelensky is a much more pluralist figure with a broad base across the country.
I strongly believe that the key course-changing event leading up to this invasion was the U.S.'s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the prompt collapse of the Afghan government, leading to the Taliban taking the entire country back in a matter of days. America has rarely looked so impotent internationally, and what Putin took away from that was that U.S. hard power was on the wane, America was no longer willing to defend its interests abroad and its presence on the global stage was weaker than ever. In his ignorance of Ukraine, he incorrectly assumed that the Ukrainian government was a similar government-in-name-only that would collapse like a house of cards as soon as he made his move, just as the Afghan one did when U.S. support was withdrawn. Indeed, Russia planned to have taken control of Kyiv and the entire country within 3 days, deposed Zelensky and replaced him with a puppet leader and Kremlin-friendly government.
How could they get it so wrong? How could all the decision-makers in Russia know so little about Ukraine? Well, the scariest thing of all is that many in the Russian elite have started to believe the country's own propaganda, because they've been marinated in it for so long. Since the mid-to-late 2000s, Russia has increasingly built up an elaborate, unhinged and all-encompassing propaganda sphere both domestically and internationally that has drifted further and further from reality. It has become a self-sustaining parallel universe, despite all the contradictions within it, and within Russia it penetrates and governs all media and is essentially inescapable. There is no alternative media apart from a couple of tiny outlets (now closed down or forced to leave) who can easily be dismissed as cranks or "foreign agents". So those preparing the invasion and making the decision to go ahead with it - only a very tiny cabal and not including most military commanders - likely genuinely believed that the Ukrainian government was just a CIA-backed puppet and that Ukrainians (particularly Russian-speaking ones) would welcome Moscow's soldiers with open arms, just like Russian propaganda always claims. Because they believe that Ukraine's Maidan protests were CIA-instigated faux-revolutions too, rather than genuine expressions of discontent by the Ukrainian people.
"Once they have gained control, there will be nothing but wasteland." - this is true of a lot of Donbass and Luhansk oblasts, with many towns destroyed and the rural land around them pockmarked with artillery shells, but Putin is thinking on a geological timescale. He's thinking that 200 years from now, he will be remembered as a good leader for adding territories to Russia, for expanding the country that little bit on the map. Remember that Russia has continually expanded through colonisation and conquest - Siberia, the conquest of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Circassian genocide etc. Putin just wants to be another leader who conquered new lands and made them part of Russia. It doesn't matter if 100,000 Russian soldiers die (as they already have) to achieve that, because that's what they're there for - that's their purpose and duty, and his legacy is all that matters. Putin IS Russia and personifies himself with the country. On that last note, well, if you believe the rumours that he's terminally ill... he may well think there can be no Russia without him. That if he's going to die, then Russia may as well die with him. And that the whole invasion is an act of rage and bitterness against the world, against the West (and against Ukraine for daring to dream of a better future, for metaphorically divorcing him and shacking up with another man), and Putin literally doesn't care in the slightest what the negative consequences are because he's not going to be around to experience them. And if Russia loses, well, so be it - in his eyes they will have deserved it for not being strong enough.