Two years of war in Ukraine: The world without rules

The truth behind all of Vladimir Putin’s current rhetoric is that if Ukraine falls, he will not stop there, writes Alexander Temerko.

Alexander Temerko is a British-Ukrainian businessman who held senior posts in the Russian Defence Ministry in the Yeltsin era.

The first time Putin tested the strength of the collective West was when he shared his self-serving views on the multipolarity of the world – and Russia’s role in it – at the Munich conference in February 2007.

This is the traditional ideological fare for autocrats and dictators who rule over a fragment of what was once a great, powerful empire. They believe that time can be turned back. Putin wants to first restore what was lost, and then divide what is available.

“You cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable”, in the words of John F Kennedy.

Putin is the type of statesman who uses historical events to legitimise his current claims. We must understand that the tragedy of Russian history is that this tradition is not only the past and present but also the future.

Russia’s mindset is caused by an eternal feeling of undervaluation, multiplied by a baleful search for its special path and role in the modern world, which produces a regime that can only exist if there is a constant battle against internal and external aggressors.

If there are none, they must be invented. Throughout the 1000-year history of Russia, mythical victories, as well as historical defeats which are also rewritten as victories, are the mainstay of Russian politics and life.

Therefore, in all the wars that Russia has ever fought, no matter if it won or lost, the highest criterion of glory and valour has always been the number of victims that Russia has suffered. Russia is still proud of more than 20 million lives of its citizens lost during World War II.

The pain threshold for human losses in Russia today is one of the highest in the world. This is a systemic weakness, but an acute strength when it comes to 21st-century conflicts.

In addition, we must understand that the Russian leader is always the embodiment of the Russian state and the nation transfers the free will of its individuals to him.

Because of this, a leader in Russia has no responsibilities towards his people or civilisation as a whole. He only has a great mission that he has defined for himself. Thus, any leader of Russia is in a sense a fanatic with a wounded feeling of eternal national undervaluation.

Throughout the history of Russia, there have been several exceptions, which, like all exceptions, only prove the rule. Putin is not one of these exceptions.

Sadly, he personifies the real Russia, with all its historical problems during the last stage of its existence.

After his speech in 2007, Putin did not visit Munich again; he simply created tension in the parts of the world that he could reach and then offered to resolve the conflicts that arose, claiming as ever that Russia has global interests and that it is not a regional country, but rather the second superpower in the world today.

Embodying the autocratic thoughts expressed in Munich in 2007, Russia has intervened in conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia within the last 10 years.

It has built puppet organisations to mirror and twist the international order, allying with China to form the CSTO, BRICS and SCO, as well as bribing small nations around the world to throw wrenches in the works of the UN.

During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was a truly powerful global political-military force, NATO and the Warsaw Pact faced off against each other with enormous military capacity.

With these opposing behemoths armed and ready, in order to save humanity from apocalyptic catastrophe, an international order was created, with a system for regulating global conflicts.

After the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, Boris Yeltsin’s Russia tried to build amicable neighbourly relations with the West, but the arrival of Putin 24 years ago destroyed this process.

He destroyed all traditions and channels through which international consultations could take place. Putin’s new Russia tried to replace everything with private deals that contradicted not only international law but also national legislation, via bribery, blackmail, and threats.

The apotheosis of this was a series of murders of opposition political figures, the latest being the murder of Alexei Navalny only earlier this year.

Accordingly, in 2014, Putin violated international law and his own guarantees to Ukraine and annexed Crimea and part of Donbas.

Having not met a worthy reaction from the West, he resorted to open aggression against a sovereign country, seizing more than 20% of its territory. Mocking international law, he held a fake referendum in four regions of Ukraine and incorporated them into Russia.

Today, there are no international treaties that could stop Russia – they were denounced by Russia itself. There are now only the people of Ukraine, Moldova, and partly Belarus who stand any chance at genuinely fighting and halting Russian aggression.

We have a 1,500km long front line, two armies in which half a million people each have good military equipment, and another million ready for mobilization. The collective West, given the low pain threshold for human losses, continues to mourn its relatively light losses of life during World War II.

Some 50,000 American soldiers dying in Vietnam caused political will to collapse. 10,000 Coalition dead in Iraq earned that war the title of ‘quagmire’ or ‘fiasco’.

The West cannot sacrifice hundreds of thousands in the fight against a raging Russia, but the West can arm and support those who are ready to put Russia back in its place and preserve hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers and officers, the tranquillity of millions of civilians, and peace in Europe.

The truth behind all of Putin’s rhetoric is that if Ukraine falls, he will not stop there.

He says so repeatedly in interviews today, and his proclamations only become more aggressive and apocalyptic. Putin’s vision is long-term; in two weeks, he will win a further term of election in Russia that will keep him in office until 2030. He will launch his assault on the West well before then.

And when he does continue his twisted crusade, we will all have to fight – not only with ‘boots on the ground’ advising Ukraine, to quote Emmanuel Macron but across the whole of Europe.

The collective West has only one chance to avert this – to do everything to ensure Ukraine wins, to provide Ukraine total and utter support, and to ensure Ukraine’s victory is formalised by an international agreement that would create a legal foundation for a new world order that prohibits military aggression.

That would open the door to reforming global international organizations such as the UN, and purging them of corruption, Russian-Chinese influence, and individual leaders pitting their ambitions against international peace.

We have one chance, now, to avoid a world war – and that chance lies with our unfailing support for Ukraine.