HISTORY IS NOT WRITTEN IN A VACUUM
Marshall T. Poe, The Russian Moment in World History
The unfolding Russian Disaster
“Three days to Kyiv!” has turned into an ongoing 4-year disaster for Russia.
More than 1460 days after the full-scale invasion, Ukraine still stands. The so called “de-nazification” and “demilitarisation” of Ukraine has ground to virtually a standstill. The war has now lasted longer than the “Great Patriotic War”, the titanic struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Ukraine now has arguably the strongest army in Europe and strikes targets in Russia more than 1500 kilometres from its border. Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. After more than twelve years of conflict, Russia does still not fully occupy Donetsk.
Since the full-scale invasion in February 2022, more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded, and Russia has lost an estimated ten thousand tanks, and thirty thousand artillery systems. Despite all bluster, Russia has in the last four years managed to occupy a measly additional 1.4 percent of Ukraine, today occupying in total approximately 19 percent of the country, including Crimea.[1]
In the last four years, the Russian official military budget has increased from $102 billion in 2022, to an estimated $167 billion in 2026. Officially, Russia has spent $400 billion on the war since the invasion, and official expenditure has surpassed half a trillion dollars. It is estimated that Russia spends $3 billion a month of manpower, recruiting thirty-five thousand soldiers a month while sustaining roughly thirty thousand casualties every month in Ukraine. Total economic losses from the war could run over $1 trillion dollars.[2]
Steve Rosenberg, the imperturbable BBC reporter based in Moscow, summed up the invasion when he in typically British understated fashion wrote that “The Russian leadership envisaged a short and successful military operation. It didn’t go to plan.”[3]
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concurs, writing that ”the fifth year of Russia’ invasion of Ukraine is not beginning well for Moscow… Battlefield realities as of late February 2026 show that continued significant Russian battlefield gains, let alone total victory, are not inevitable… Putin’s invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year with Russia having failed to achieve any of its original war aims and facing setbacks on the battlefield amid mounting casualties…”[4]
Paul Kirby, writing for the BBC, reminds us that Putin has long questioned Ukraine’s right to exist, and a day after the invasion called on the Ukrainian military to target “the gangs of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” that run the Ukrainian government. Putin has claimed that “modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia” following the communist revolution in 1917. In a long, rambling essay published on the Kremlin website in 2021, he claims that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people.” In a 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Putin claimed Ukraine was an “artificial state”. Similarly, the Russian state-run Ria news agency explained that “denazification is inevitably also de-Ukrainisation.”[5]
In 2009 Putin told the Ukrainian-born journalist Larisa Kaftan to read General Anton Denikin’s, the leader of the Russian “Whites” in the Russian civil war, diaries. Specifically, he told her to read the passages where he discusses “Great and Little Russia, Ukraine”.[6]
The quote Putin had in mind read:
“No Russia, reactionary or democratic, republican or authoritarian, will ever allow Ukraine to be torn away. The foolish, baseless, and externally aggravated quarrel between Muscovite Rus’ and Kyivan Rus’ is our internal quarrel, of no concern to anyone else, and it will be decided by ourselves.”[7]
Is it any wonder then, as Kirby points out – “many believe that the goal of the invasion was in effect to erase the state of Ukraine.”[8]
On Negotiations and Russian Democracy
It bears repeating that despite continued, yet subdued, peace negotiations, Russia has not abandoned their maximalist aims to control Ukraine. In December US intelligence agencies warned that Putin “has not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire”. These views ”largely align with the views of European leaders and spy agencies that he covets all of Ukraine and territories of former Soviet bloc states, including members of the NATO alliance, according to the sources.”[9]
In February ISW summarised the situation, stating that the then upcoming negotiations in Geneva would see Russia “unlikely to deviate from their original war demands.”[10] Senator Lindsey Graham, a republican and one of President Trump’s closest allies, said during the recent Munich security conference in mid-February that “I am convinced that they’re not serious about a deal now, ’cause they think they’re gonna win militarily in the Donbas.”[11]
Winston Churchill once remarked that perhaps the key to understanding the riddle that was Russia, was the Russian national interest.
By this standard, Russian conduct in the last years becomes incomprehensible.
Vladimir Putins last ten years as the ruler of Russia has been, by any useful metric, a disaster for Russia.
Yet he remains.
The fundamental question then, the one that ought to make us understand our current and future relationship with Russia is, quite simply, why?
Alexander Motyl, writing in Foreign Policy, has wondered why Russians seem to be so passive and accepting of the current Russian regime.
Motyl contrasts the recent behaviour of the Iranian people and the Russians, and whereas ordinary Iranians have been killed in their tens of thousands in protests, “Russians continue to avoid collective action against their regime. There are obviously many differences between Russia and Iran, but the contrast is nonetheless puzzling.”[12]
The last real mass protest in Russia took place 14 years ago following the fraudulent elections in 2012. Relatively few protested the invasion of Ukraine and only a few thousand attended Alexei Navalny’s funeral. As Motyl notes, Masha Gessen blames the lack of protests due to increased repression. Yet Motyl insists we must go further in our analysis – “Gessen makes an important point – but fails to dig deeper and ask how the soft factors of persuasion have influenced Russians.”[13]
Recent polling suggests that Putin and the “special military operation” enjoys relatively popular support, with just over half of Russians expecting the war to end in 2026; should it fail to do so, a majority believes Russia should escalate with greater force.[14]
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Putins approval rating has hovered around 80 percent, and some independent pollsters still put the support for the ”special military operation” at around sixty to seventy percent.[15]
As Motyl points out, “insofar that Putin is a dictator, his high approval ratings indicate that’s today’s Russians don’t hold democracy in the highest regard. If this is true, it bodes poorly for Russia’s prospects once the war ends, since Russian political culture will continue to hinder the development of democracy [my italics].”[16]
This is not a new development, as from the very start of his regime, Putin has “aimed to restore pride in Soviet history.”[17] A 2007 poll found that seventy one percent of the population believed the founder of the Cheka (the precursor to the KGB, and founded shortly after Lenin and the Bolshevik’s took power) “had protected public order and civic life”, two-thirds believed that Stalin had been good for the country, and another survey found that forty two percent of the respondents “would like the return of a “leader like Stalin.”[18]
In 2011, the Russian Tv programme “The Court of Time” presented various historical figures and episodes from Russian history in mock-trials and then allowed the millions of viewers to vote on their verdict. In one such programme, ninety one percent of viewers agreed with the verdict that the break-up of the Soviet Union was a “national catastrophe.”[19]
Motyl suggests towards the end of his article that if some form of resource rich strategic group emerges post Putin, it may “entice” Russians to participate in collective actions (“democracy”) regardless of their beliefs. What motivations the security apparatus that has captured the Russian state may have to do so, Motyl does not discuss. It appears as wishful thinking, at best.
I would argue instead that the history, culture and institutional makeup of Russia suggest a period of internal regression followed by attempts at consolidation and future aggression may follow Russian failures – in Ukraine or following a degree of national implosion. It is a pattern which would seem all to familiar to Nordic, Central, and Eastern European countries.
A fundamental mistake European thinkers and leaders made prior to the full-scale invasion was that somehow, Russia, was just like us. If only we could sell more cars in Moscow, open another branch in St Petersburg, they would somehow turn into “good Europeans”.
A Different Country
A number of authors remind us that Russia, beyond a strictly geographical sense, is not European.
Marshal Poe, in his excellent book “The Russian moment in world history”, argues that “the similarities between the West and Russia are painfully superficial, particularly for Russians… Historically speaking, Russia is not a European country.”[20] At the same time, Russia shares “virtually nothing in common with any of the major Asian cultures, so it could hardly be considered Asian.”[21] Russia, quite simply put, is Russian.
For Poe, this means a few specific civilisational traits and a unique developmental path. First and foremost, the political system of autocracy – the unconditional rule of one. In Russia, the autocrats, the tzars, power was limited by custom alone. For Russia, autocracy proved “important because it provided the warrior elite with what military planners call unity of command… Autocracy enabled the warrior class to undertake reforms that more complicated and fragile political systems could not safely attempt.”[22]
Despite the availability of western political philosophy its political ideals never took root in Russia, even by the 19th century. Poe suggests that there are four obvious explanations. Firstly, that the autocratic elite “had no real interest in surrendering its authority to other groups; secondly the elite could “always legitimise its monopoly on political power and its hesitancy to embrace liberal reform with reference to the European threat; thirdly, the “obvious utility of autocratically led modernisation in the context of Western modernisation and a weak Russian society”; and lastly – “it is clear that one of the primary anchors of autocracy and its program was that Russians identified with both in a deep, cultural sense.”[23]
By the mid-nineteenth century, the Russian tradition could be summarised in official doctrine as “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationalism”.
Autocracy, writes Poe, allowed the Russian ruling class to “pursue an alternative path to early modernity, one characterised by a tightly controlled public sphere, a regulated command economy, and a state-engineered army.”[24]
I would argue that the fundamentals of the unique Russian system have not been altered, despite the revolutions in 1917 and 1991.
Two examples following the collapse of the Soviet empire serve as an illustration. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet KGB became the Russian KGB and expanded from twenty thousand to more than one hundred thousand personnel. It, Stephen Kotkin writes, testified “to the undertow exerted by institutional legacies [my italics], and to the sheer number of Soviet state personnel that Russia inherited.”[25] Russia, Kotkin argues, “did not undergo sustained liberal reform; it was simply not possible, given the social and institutional landscape inherited from the Soviet period…”[26]
By 1995, Samuel Huntington in his book the Clash of Civilisations, asserts, that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had stopped behaving like Marxists and began behaving like Russians. As a result, “the gap between Russia and the West broadened.”[27]
History, culture, and institutions matter.
Francis Fukuyama reminds us that “the thymotic[28] [the desire for recognition] origins of religion and nationalism explain why conflicts over “values” are potentially much more deadly than conflicts over material possessions or wealth.”[29] Differentiating values create misunderstandings, points of contention and may, ultimately, lead to war. Putin’s views on Ukraine and the dissolution of the USSR are examples of how differentiating value systems lead to cultural, and literal, clashes.
Similarly, Fukuyama deepens the point made by Poe with regards to the cultural aspect of the Russian civilisation. Culture, he writes, “can constitute an obstacle to democracy”, and cultural factors fall into several categories.[30] These can be summarised as a “sense of national identity, religion, social equality, the propensity for civil society, and the historical experience of liberal institutions.”[31]
Several of these factors simply did not exist outside of the framework of the Russian autocratic system – a deeply unequal, top-down system which shunned the liberal development found in Western Europe. Indeed, Fukuyama makes the point that “the dividing line between culture and politics, between peoples and states, is not all that clear. States can play a very important role in forming peoples, that is, in establishing their “language of good and evil”, and creating new habits, customs and cultures de novo… the importance of peoples and their cultures underscores the limits of liberal rationalism…”[32]
In a similar vein, Samuel Huntington makes the argument that “the West was the West long before it was modern. The central characteristics of the West, those which distinguish it from other civilisations, antedate the modernisation of the West.”[33]
Included in its core characteristics of Western civilisation, Huntington lists the Classical legacy of Ancient Greek philosophy and Roman Law; Catholicism and Protestantism – western Christianity – “the most important characteristic of Western civilisation”; Rule of Law; Social Pluralism; Representative bodies; and Individualism.[34]
Russia, Huntington reminds us, “had no or little exposure to the defining historical phenomena of Western civilisation.”[35] Russian civilisation was instead a product of “its indigenous roots in Kievan Rus and Moscovy, substantial Byzantine impact, and prolonged Mongol rule. These influences shaped a society and culture which had little resemblance to those developed in Western Europe under the influence of very different forces.”[36]
Why It Matters
The arguments put forth above paint a rather bleak picture. Despite suffering greatly in Ukraine, the political will remains intact in the Kremlin.
Wishful thinking, hoping that forcing Ukraine to swap land for peace will somehow guarantee their safety is not borne out by history.
The implosion of the Soviet Union was not some popular revolt by the average Russian to turn away from their history or culture to “join Europe”. Rather, as multiple authors make clear, this was a revolution from the top. Figes reminds us that “popular opinion had been in favour of a union. It was leaders and élites who had ended it.”[37] Archie Brown, in his Magna Opus The Rise and Fall of Communism, writes that “ it was the combination of new ideas, institutional power (the commanding height of the political system having fallen into the hands of radical reformers), and political choices (when other options could have been chosen) which led to the end of Communist rule in Europe.”[38]Kotkin points out that the Soviet Union “suffered no serious civil disorders until it began to reform…”[39]
Change, if it comes to Russia, will most likely be from the top, and from within, the system. Those within whom have tried to radically reform the system have in many ways instead weakened the state. Europe needs to bear this in mind with regards to our collective safety.
The Russian leadership have different rationals than those found in European capitals. We would do well to heed the lessons of history, culture and the importance of institutions when trying to shape the future. Russia and Putin are not some mysteries wrapped in enigmas – in fact, Putin is quite clear with regards to his goals in Ukraine. Total subjugation. Bucha bears witness to what that means for Ukraine.
In mid-February the EU Commission published its new strategy for EU eastern regions bordering Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The strategy states that “Strengthening the prosperity and resilience of these regions is not only an expression of EU solidarity in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also a strategic investment in Europe’s security, competitiveness, and future stability”..[40]
It is a start. European nuclear deterrence and vastly increasing our support for Ukraine is surely the most effective deterrence from further Russian aggression that Europe can muster. Ensuring that Ukraine emerges victorious is in our own naked self-interest. Wishful thinking vis-á-vis Russia will lead us nowhere but to ruin.