Russian invasion of Ukraine/Reasons: Difference between revisions

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* [https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng Russian casualties in Ukraine. Mediazona count, updated]
* [https://en.zona.media/article/2022/05/20/casualties_eng Russian casualties in Ukraine. Mediazona count, updated]
* [https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/02/24/2-years-into-ukraine-war-russias-ethnic-minorities-disproportionately-killed-in-battle-a84170 2 Years Into Ukraine War, Russia’s Ethnic Minorities Disproportionately Killed in Battle]


=== Deportations ===
=== Deportations ===

Revision as of 00:53, 23 April 2024

“наступною буде Україна” —“Ukraine will be next”, 2008 [3]

Russia’s president invaded Ukraine not because he felt threatened by NATO expansion or by Western “provocations.” He ordered his “special military operation” because he believes that it is Russia’s divine right to rule Ukraine, to wipe out the country’s national identity, and to integrate its people into a Greater Russia.

— Fiona Hill and Angela Stent, The World Putin Wants

The root cause of the war is Russia’s refusal to accept the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its willingness to take its former empire back by force. That problem will be fully solved only when Moscow accepts that its empire is gone for good and readjusts to life as a normal country rather than an international predator.

Gideon Rose, “Ukraine’s Winnable War Why the West Should Help Kyiv Retake All Its Territory” (archive)

Since 2003, russia planned the russian invasion of Ukraine [10]. Since 2006, russia infiltrated/trained “separatists” in Eastern Ukraine. Since 2011, it started training its troops for invasion using German provided training center. First invasion happened in 2014 (Russian invasion of Ukraine/2014), second in 2022, with parts of Ukraine occupied by russian troops in-between:

Among other things, the Court found that areas in eastern Ukraine in separatist hands were, from 11 May 2014 and up to at least 26 January 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.

— European Court of Human Rights, “Grand Chamber decision Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia - Flight MH17 and eastern-Ukraine-conflict case partially admissible, will proceed to judgment”, January 25, 2023. See: russian invasion of Ukraine#2014. Also confirmed by a russian court [11], see: ru:Вторжение России на Украину#2014.

Below some of the reasons, goals, objectives and enabling factors of the russian invasion of Ukraine.

Prelude: Background and enabling factors

If Putin was “provoked”, it’s by the West’s meakness (See also: Kremlinism/Propaganda/Bots)

if I wanted to, I could take Kiev in two weeks.

Vladimir Putin, 2014 [12]

1994: Disarmament

The Clinton administration ignored flashing warning signs as it pushed Ukraine hard to accept unilateral disarmament—depriving Kyiv of a deterrent against Russia while providing nothing real to replace it.

How Bill Clinton Sealed Ukraine’s Fate: The inside story of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, when Kyiv returned its nuclear weapons to Russia in return for ‘assurances’ from Moscow and Washington.

“Separatists”

Among other things, the Court found that areas in eastern Ukraine in separatist hands were, from 11 May 2014 and up to at least 26 January 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.

— European Court of Human Rights, “Grand Chamber decision Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia - Flight MH17 and eastern-Ukraine-conflict case partially admissible, will proceed to judgment”, January 25, 2023. See: russian invasion of Ukraine#2014. Also confirmed by a russian court [15], see: ru:Вторжение России на Украину#2014.

Early preparations (since 2003)

Donetsk-2009.jpeg
Ru-donetsk-pre-maidan.png

Illarionov was Putin’s chief economic advisor up until 2005. When he resigned, he left the country and became an outspoken critic.

He says Putin has been planning the months-long invasion for years.

“He’s had this idea, this goal for last two decades. Even when I was his advisor, I was able to watch to see myself his intentions,” Illarionov said.

Illarionov says Putin could never accept the fact that Ukraine was its own sovereign nation separate from Russia. He believes the invasion is step one in Putin’s grand plan of reunifying the whole former Soviet Union.

‘This should be stopped’: Ex-Putin advisor weighs in on Russia-Ukraine invasion
  • Russia started training separatists to split Ukraine in 2006 already. Then Russia’s relations with NATO were still excellent. [16]

Coup attempts

Dam construction (2003)

Warning signs

“Russia attempts to challenge the territorial integrity of Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, which is 59 percent ethnically Russian and is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, must be prevented,” the memo warned five years before Russian forces would seize Crimea and 13 years before they would invade the rest of the country. The memo added that “Russia will exploit Europe’s dependence on Russian energy” and use political means “to drive wedges between the United States and Europe.”

— George W. Bush, 2009 memo to his successor Barack Obama, From George to Barack: A Look at Secret Bush Memos to the Obama Team (Bush warned Obama about Russia’s plans for Crimea, NYT reports)

Operation: Novorossiya: The History Behind The Kremlin’s Neo Nazi Psy-op In Ukraine

Invading army preparation

“We had no hypersonic weapons back then, but now we do have them,” Putin replied to a Russian propagandist Pavel Zarubin who asked why Russia did not start the so-called special military operation in Ukraine earlier. “Now we have other modern systems, apart from the hypersonic weapons. But there was nothing like that in 2014,” Putin added.

Lack of hypersonic weapons did not allow Russia to [ full-scale ] invade Ukraine in 2014 – Russia’s President

Militarization of society

Military parades (2019)

russian invasion of Georgia, 2008

Territorial expansion, imperialism, domination

[8] Ah yes, the great legacy of: Kremlinism/WWII, GULag, Holodomor...
[9] Why deny the crimes of the Soviet Union, unless you want the Soviet Union?


The root cause of the war is Russia’s refusal to accept the dissolution of the Soviet Union and its willingness to take its former empire back by force. That problem will be fully solved only when Moscow accepts that its empire is gone for good and readjusts to life as a normal country rather than an international predator.

Gideon Rose, “Ukraine’s Winnable War Why the West Should Help Kyiv Retake All Its Territory” (archive)

Reviving the Soviet Union

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.

Vladimir Putin, “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation”, April 25, 2005

In essence, Ukraine’s ruling circles decided to justify their country’s independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.

Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, July 12, 2021

Expanding the russian empire

Границы России нигде не заканчивается - Russia’s borders end nowhere

Peter the Great ... was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.

Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals.

Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with young entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists”, June 9, 2022

Cultural domination

Preventing democratic concurrent models

At a basic level, Russia likely fears that an economically prosperous, democratic Ukraine might offer the Russian population the prospect of an alternative political and economic system other than an authoritarian-ruled kleptocracy. This might be partly why Russian President Vladimir Putin tends to characterize the war in Ukraine as existential in nature, which in turn enables the Kremlin to further mobilize the population against what it claims are the military and cultural threats of the eastwardly expanding NATO and EU.

After failing to subjugate the country completely, this then appears to be Russia’s principal political objective in Ukraine: keeping it from becoming an example of what an alternative political and economic path might bring the Russian people.

What is Russia’s Strategy in Ukraine?

Here’s why I believe Ukraine was, and remains, such a threat to Vladimir #Putin: In 1989, Putin was a KGB officer in Dresden when the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed. How did that collapse happen? East Germans who were (illegally) watching West German TV saw that their neighbors to the West had a life, and lifestyle, far superior to the one in East Germany. More freedom. More income. More opportunities. Better quality of life. So, East Germans voted with their feet and fled. Putin soon experienced the collapse of East German firsthand.

Today, Putin’s worst nightmare is a #Ukraine that holds free and fair elections, and has a free media, human rights, freedom of speech and religion. Ukraine, Russia’s neighbor, already has a higher standard of living than Russia. Ukraine has not yet reached its potential, but unlike #Russia, they’ve already made some significant strides in that direction. (Compare the respective trajectories of North and South Korea since 1970 if you want to see a historical precedent.)

A successful #Ukraine is simply a ticking time bomb for an autocratic revanchist Tsar in the Kremlin, plain and simple. So yes, you could say that Ukraine was an existential threat to Putin’s kleptocratic regime. But not for the absurd reasons the #Kremlin has claimed.

— Fred Hoffman, D.Sc. [18]

Forced russification

Genocide

Владимир Путин взял на себя —без капли преувеличения —историческую ответственность, решив не оставлять решение украинского вопроса будущим поколениям.

Vladimir Putin has assumed, without a drop of exaggeration, a historic responsibility by deciding not to leave the solution of the Ukrainian question to future generations.

— Петр Акопов, Наступление России и нового мира [ Petr Akopov, The new world order ], February 26, 2022

я думаю убивать, убивать и убивать. Больше разговоров никаких не должно быть. Как профессор я так считаю.

We must kill, kill and kill Ukrainians. No need to talk to them. This is my opinion as a professor.

Aleksandr Dugin

Украину надо очистить от идиотов. Геноцид кретинов напрашивается сам собой. Кретинов злобных, закрытых для голоса Логоса, смертельно опасных и… при всем этом неимоверно глупых. Я не верю, что это украинцы. Украинцы прекрасный славянский народ. Это какая-то появившаяся из канализационных люков раса ублюдков.

Ukraine must be cleaned of idiots. The genocide of these cretins suggests itself. Evil cretins, closed to the voice of the Logos, mortally dangerous and... for all that incredibly stupid. I don’t believe they are Ukrainians. Ukrainians are a wonderful Slavic people. This is some kind of bastard race that emerged from the sewer manholes.

Aleksandr Dugin, August 24, 2014

Pavel Gubarev

Destroying Ukraine as a nation, genocide of Ukrainians

Occupation and concentration camps

Castrations

Genocide of minorities from occupied Ukraine

Crimean Tatars enjoyed an autonomy within Ukraine. But since Russia annexed Crimea the deportation of Tatars resumed.

Mikhail Svetov, “An appeal to western libertarians about the war in Ukraine”, August 19, 2014

Genocide of minorities from russia

Russia-casualties-regions.jpeg

Putin cannot announce a general mobilization, since that would be an admission that he is losing the war. It would too overtly break the social contract according to which the poor, the Asians, and forcibly mobilized Ukrainians do the dying.

Timothy Snyder

Deportations

Demographic decline / kidnapping children

Simonyan-territories1s.jpg
Simonyan-territories2s.jpg

Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).

Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova

Secondary reasons

Resource grab

Gas

Neon

Lithium

Domestic popularity boost

Putin-approval-rating.jpeg

Fighting the West

False reasons (excuses, pretexts, artificial reasons)

Russia-rescue-help-victim.jpg

Some of these reasons are relevant, but not as primary reasons. Ukraine potentially joining NATO, and Euromaidan, impeded russian plans of controlling Ukraine. But they were not reasons for the initial goal of controlling Ukraine and putting an end to its independence and democratization —one way or another. If the Kremlin had no such plans to begin with, none of this would have been relevant. Note also the direct russian involvement behind some of those “reasons” (e.g. the consequences of the 2014 russian invasion/russian-led separatism, russian nationalists/extremists, etc.).

NATO

I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.

Vladimir Putin, “Press Statement and Answers to Questions at a Joint News Conference with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma”, May 17, 2002
  • russia has always had borders with NATO (Norway, Alaska)
  • Note also: that NATO is not a threat to russia, no matter how many borders it has with russia, should be obvious by now, as NATO is not invading russia despite the ongoing russian invasion of Ukraine [23], which would both provide a reason for invading russia and has shown russia’s weakness. NATO is a “threat” to russia only in the sense of preventing russia from invading its neighbors —not a threat to nuclear-armed russia’s internationally recognized territory itself.

Denazification

Desatanization

Ukraine/Biolabs

Euromaidan

Euromaidan “coup”

Donbas

Donbas “liberation”

to claim that the setting up of ‘independent’ republics in 2014 in Donetsk and Luhansk, and their annexation by Russia in 2022 following fake ‘referenda’ under brutal military occupation, was “the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russian population of Donbas,” is a statement of extraordinary ignorance.

— * Michael Karadjis, “Ukraine myths used to justify Putin’s terror

See also