This crisis having lived in my head relentlessly for some time now, I figured I'd sit down with a transcript of the speech Putin delivered Monday and get a quick overview for myself (and others who may not have the time or inclination) of where Moscow's head is at leading up to the recognition of the LPR and DPR at speech's end:
- Insultingly dishonest recounting of the history of Ukraine (Kievan Rus? Poland? Lithuania? I'm in the combination Poland-Lithuania? Mongols? new phone who dis?)
- Speaks of Ukraine by name multiple times, but says that it has no stable history as a state and essentially exists as a shell for foreign NGOs, Ukrainian oligarchs, and American-appointed political managers.
- He's a bundle of contradictions and speaks from both sides of his mouth.
- He both decries the strong centralized state of the USSR and decries its delegation of some of its powers to individual republics (with the right of secession being the big sticking one). Decries the notion of self-determination while he's at it.
- Twice decries nationalism as a virus. Not Ukrainian nationalism specifically, but nationalism full stop... while laying out extensive arguments for Russian ethnonationalism (Russophobia, language, economic, military, religious) that elides any distinctiveness with Ukrainians.
- Considers Russia synonymous with the USSR for particular events when convenient and flattering, and passes blame to sub-national actors when not.
- Nostalgic flourishes to Imperial Russia (Suvorov gets a big shout for his conquest of Ukrainian coastal stretches from the Ottomans, before this is rhetorically parlayed into a dig about Russian anti-colonial sentiment in Ukraine being hypocritical).
- Alleges Ukraine shifted to a military strategy of anticipating direct confrontation with Russia last March and starting guerilla actions in the Donbas and Crimea.
- Raises the specter of possibility of Ukraine seeking tactical nuclear warheads and the West obliging.
- Nothing said of the Crimean annexation other than pithy references to the vote and 'all thanks to the citizens'. Those openly-decorated soldiers that seized the territory? Not a word of mention, praiseworthy or otherwise.
- Alleged he asked President Clinton in 2000 how America would feel about admitting Russia into NATO, and that the response was "quite restrained", and the nation's true feelings soon revealed regardless.
- Speaks of a number of Ukrainian sites he considers threatening in a NATO context: Boryspil (airfield), Ivano-Frankivsk (airfield), Odesa (airfield), Chuhuiv (airfield), Ochakiv (Maritime Operations Center), Crimea (alleges a likewise Center was planned), Kharkiv (hypothetical ballistic missile deployment ranging all of European Russia)
- And more generally: "Many Ukrainian airfields are located not far from our borders. NATO's tactical aviation deployed there, including precision weapon carriers, will be capable of striking at our territory to the depth of the Volgograd-Kazan-Samara-Astrakhan line. The deployment of reconnaissance radars on Ukrainian territory will allow NATO to tightly control Russia's airspace up to the Urals."
- The justifications for the recognition (and intervention) of the client republics in Donbas largely fall all the way to the end and immediately before he makes the perfunctory request that it be done. Warped history, recounting of grievances, and the perceived threats to Russia all come first and comprise the vast bulk of the speech.
Now, what really stands out as alarming to me that I'll pull together here across four excerpts:
If this is the earnest belief of the Russian leadership and not bluster, then overrunning the Donbas cannot even begin to suffice to counter the feared threat. Only the sweeping destabilization of Ukraine such that NATO could not post
anywhere of strategic significance could hope to meet it, whether that be the wholesale disintegration of the state, its artificial balkanization into perpetually-inflamed fiefdoms (the like of Donbas across the whole of it, in other words), or more conventional seizure and partition between itself and its three bordering clients. And Putin has openly painted targets on cities far in Ukraine's west and south, there is no portion beneath his notice.
What's more, if they believe sanctions will come no matter what they do to Ukraine, that further implies that the only limit placed upon the scope of their military intervention will be set by what they can physically take and what they can physically hold that is both strategically useful (even if only in terms of strategic denial) and will serve to neutralize Ukraine in totality. This is the logic of ethnonationalistic militarism of the "zeroth" sum, a race to the last prime mile.
