If you try to understand the motives of the gentleman in the Kremlin at the beginning of the war against Ukraine, you will come across pure imperialism and two tolerably plausible narrative threads. The first describes how Russia suffered a collective trauma in its history from two attacks from the West, which today leads to certain behavioral disorders and a tendency to violence. The second tells how NATO, with its treaty area, has been getting closer and closer to the Russian border since the end of the USSR, which must at some point lead to a reaction in Moscow.
Both arguments cannot be completely dismissed out of hand; ultimately, however, they are of no use as legitimation for Russia’s military actions. Because no one, not even the most convinced hawk in the Kremlin, can seriously believe that NATO threatens Russia militarily, it has never done that in its entire long history and it never will. The Kremlin, on the other hand, has intervened militarily in Europe several times since 1945.
Which doesn’t mean that Vladimir Putin’s system, which intends to continue dominating Russia at some point without him, doesn’t have legitimate reasons to be concerned when looking west. However, there is no concern about a military threat, but about one that is incomparably more dangerous for the system. It is the fear that Ukraine could develop into what West Germany was for the GDR: a neighbor, culturally and linguistically related, which prospers and thrives, in which democracy and the rule of law prevail – and among the Russians, who are the ones who benefit from all of this can only dream, raises a question: Why don’t we live just as well and freely?
For a Ukraine that is fully integrated into the West, that would be quite realistic. For the Kremlin, on the other hand, this would be much more dangerous than a US aircraft carrier on the Volga – because if every Russian can understand how things are different in his part of the world, then things will get tricky for Putin or his successors. Precisely because he lived and worked in the GDR for a long time and is therefore very familiar with these mechanisms, Putin should be particularly aware of this danger – and then act accordingly.
All the more so since he can thus combine the pleasant (keeping Ukraine down) with the useful, namely to become a major European power again in the medium to long term, whose sphere of influence also includes the states of the former Warsaw Pact, but ultimately also in the Western Europe works. “The next step is then aimed at hegemony throughout Eastern Europe as a prerequisite for Moscow’s dominance over the whole of Europe,” said the German ex-
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.
If, which is not entirely unlikely, Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2024 and continues on his course of turning away from NATO and Europe, Putin could even succeed in driving the Americans out of Europe altogether, which would probably finally establish his supremacy in Europe . A not really pleasant prospect.
–
