PUBLICATIONS

Through its publications, INSS aims to provide expert insights, cutting-edge research, and innovative solutions that contribute to shaping the national security discourse and preparing the next generation of leaders in the field.

 

Publications

News | April 26, 2022

Russia's War in Ukraine: Identity, History, and Conflict

By Jeffrey Mankoff CSIS

Protesters demonstrate against Russian invasion of Ukraine
Protesters gather during a rally against Russian attacks on Ukraine in front of the Russian Consulate General on February 25, 2022, in Istanbul, Turkey. The previous day, Russia began a large-scale attack on Ukraine, with Russian troops invading the country from the north, east, and south, accompanied by air strikes and shelling. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said this week that his country, which is a NATO member, did not "recognize any step against Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity." (Photo by Cem Tekkesinoglu/dia images via Getty Images)
Protesters demonstrate against Russian invasion of Ukraine
Protesters demonstrate against Russian invasion of Ukraine
Protesters gather during a rally against Russian attacks on Ukraine in front of the Russian Consulate General on February 25, 2022, in Istanbul, Turkey. The previous day, Russia began a large-scale attack on Ukraine, with Russian troops invading the country from the north, east, and south, accompanied by air strikes and shelling. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said this week that his country, which is a NATO member, did not "recognize any step against Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity." (Photo by Cem Tekkesinoglu/dia images via Getty Images)
Photo By: Dr. Ernest Gunasekara-Rockwell
VIRIN: 220225-F-YT915-001

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constitutes the biggest threat to peace and security in Europe since the end of the Cold War. On February 21, 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin gave a bizarre and at times unhinged speech laying out a long list of grievances as justification for the “special military operation” announced the following day. While these grievances included the long-simmering dispute over the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the shape of the post–Cold War security architecture in Europe, the speech centered on a much more fundamental issue: the legitimacy of Ukrainian identity and statehood themselves. It reflected a worldview Putin had long expressed, emphasizing the deep-seated unity among the Eastern Slavs—Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, who all trace their origins to the medieval Kyivan Rus commonwealth—and suggesting that the modern states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus should share a political destiny both today and in the future. The corollary to that view is the claim that distinct Ukrainian and Belarusian identities are the product of foreign manipulation and that, today, the West is following in the footsteps of Russia’s imperial rivals in using Ukraine (and Belarus) as part of an “anti-Russia project.”

Throughout Putin’s time in office, Moscow has pursued a policy toward Ukraine and Belarus predicated on the assumption that their respective national identities are artificial—and therefore fragile. Putin’s arguments about foreign enemies promoting Ukrainian (and, in a more diffuse way, Belarusian) identity as part of a geopolitical struggle against Russia echo the way many of his predecessors refused to accept the agency of ordinary people seeking autonomy from tsarist or Soviet domination. The historically minded Putin often invokes the ideas of thinkers emphasizing the organic unity of the Russian Empire and its people—especially its Slavic, Orthodox core—in a form of what the historian Timothy Snyder calls the “politics of eternity,” the belief in an unchanging historical essence.

The salience that Putin and other Russian elites assign to the idea of Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian unity helps explain the origins of the current conflict, notably why Moscow was willing to risk a large-scale war on its borders when neither Ukraine nor NATO posed any military threat. It also suggests that Moscow’s ambitions extend beyond preventing Ukrainian NATO membership and encompass a more thorough aspiration to dominate Ukraine politically, militarily, and economically.

Read the rest of the report at CSIS - 


Jeffrey Mankoff is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University. 

The views expressed are the authors own and do not reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.