Lee Fang is a journalist with a longstanding interest in how public policy is influenced by organized interest groups and money. He has previously written for The Intercept and The Nation.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation pressures Facebook to take down alleged Russian “disinformation” at the behest of Ukrainian intelligence, according to a senior Ukrainian official who corresponds regularly with the FBI. The same official said that Ukrainian authorities define “disinformation” broadly, flagging many social media accounts and posts that he suggested may simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.
“Once we have a trace or evidence of disinformation campaigns via Facebook or other resources that are from the U.S., we pass this information to the FBI, along with writing directly to Facebook,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Department of Cyber Information Security in the Security Service of Ukraine.
“We asked FBI for support to help us with Meta, to help us with others, and sometimes we get good results with that,” noted Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the person who was probably Russia’s influence.'”
Vitiuk, in an interview, said that he is a proponent of free speech and understands concerns around social media censorship. But he also admitted that he and his colleagues take a deliberately expansive view of what counts as “Russian disinformation.”
“When people ask me, ‘How do you differentiate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very difficult in such an informational flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Everything that is against our country, consider it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our victory, it is important to have that kind of understanding, not to be fooled.”
In recent weeks, Vitiuk said, Russian forces have used various forms of disinformation to manufacture fake tension between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the four-star general who serves as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s military.
Indeed, recent reports have focused on the relationship between the two Ukrainian leaders. The German newspaper Bild reported that Zelenskyy and Zaluzhnyi had argued regarding tactics deployed in the battle over Bakhmut. Vitiuk said that any notion of conflict between Zelenskyy and his military chief, however, is false.
“They try to create problems in Ukraine, and they try to sow the seeds of misunderstanding between Ukraine and our partners that support us,” said Vitiuk.
Vitiuk, a senior official in Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency, spoke to me this week at the RSA Convention in San Francisco, an annual gathering that brings together a collection of cyber security firms, law enforcement, and technology giants.
In April, I had an email exchange with Clarke. Below is the transcript.
Natylie Baldwin: You point out in the beginning of your book that Ukraine’s economy had significantly declined by 2018 from its position at the end of the Soviet era in 1990. Can you explain what Ukraine’s prospects looked like in 1990? And what did they look like just prior to Russia’s invasion?
Renfrey Clarke: In researching this book I found a 1992 Deutsche Bank study arguing that, of all the countries into which the USSR had just been divided, it was Ukraine that had the best prospects for success. To most Western observers at the time, that would have seemed indisputable.
Ukraine had been one of the most industrially developed parts of the Soviet Union. It was among the key centres of Soviet metallurgy, of the space industry and of aircraft production. It had some of the world’s richest farmland, and its population was well-educated even by Western European standards.
Add in privatisation and the free market, the assumption went, and within a few years Ukraine would be an economic powerhouse, its population enjoying first-world levels of prosperity.
Fast-forward to 2021, the last year before Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” and the picture in Ukraine was fundamentally different. The country had been drastically de-developed, with large, advanced industries (aerospace, car manufacturing, shipbuilding) essentially shut down.
World Bank figures show that in constant dollars, Ukraine’s 2021 Gross Domestic Product was down from the 1990 level by 38 per cent. If we use the most charitable measure, per capita GDP at Purchasing Price Parity, the decline was still 21 per cent. That last figure compares with a corresponding increase for the world as a whole of 75 per cent.
To make some specific international comparisons, in 2021 the per capita GDP of Ukraine was roughly equal to the figures for Paraguay, Guatemala and Indonesia.
What went wrong? Western analysts have tended to focus on the effects of holdovers from the Soviet era, and in more recent times, on the impacts of Russian policies and actions. My book takes these factors up, but it’s obvious to me that much deeper issues are involved.
In my view, the ultimate reasons for Ukraine’s catastrophe lie in the capitalist system itself, and especially, in the economic roles and functions that the “centre” of the developed capitalist world imposes on the system’s less-developed periphery.
Quite simply, for Ukraine to take the “capitalist road” was the wrong choice.
NB: It seems as though Ukraine went through a process similar to that in Russia in the 1990s, when a group of oligarchs emerged to control much of the country’s wealth and assets. Can you describe how that process occurred?
RC: As a social layer, the oligarchy in both Ukraine and Russia has its origins in the Soviet society of the later perestroika period, from about 1988. In my view, the oligarchy arose from the fusion of three more or less distinct currents that by the final perestroika years had all managed to accumulate significant private capital hoards. These currents were senior executives of large state firms; well-placed state figures, including politicians, bureaucrats, judges, and prosecutors; and lastly, the criminal underworld, the mafia.
A 1988 Law on Cooperatives allowed individuals to form and run small private firms. Many structures of this kind, only nominally cooperatives, were promptly set up by top executives of large state enterprises, who used them to stow funds that had been bled off illicitly from enterprise finances. By the time Ukraine became independent in 1991, many senior figures in state firms were substantial private capitalists as well.
The new owners of capital needed politicians to make laws in their favour, and bureaucrats to make administrative decisions that were to their advantage. The capitalists also needed judges to rule in their favour when there were disputes, and prosecutors to turn a blind eye when, as happened routinely, the entrepreneurs functioned outside the law. To perform all these services, the politicians and officials charged bribes, which allowed them to amass their own capital and, in many cases, to found their own businesses.
Finally, there were the criminal networks that had always operated within Soviet society, but that now found their prospects multiplied. In the last years of the USSR, the rule of law became weak or non-existent. This created huge opportunities not just for theft and fraud, but also for criminal stand-over men. If you were a business operator and needed a contract enforced, the way you did it was by hiring a group of “young men with thick necks.”
To stay in business, private firms needed their “roof,” the protection racketeers who would defend them against rival shake-down artists—for an outsized share of the enterprise profits. At times the “roof” would be provided by the police themselves, for an appropriate payment.
This criminal activity produced nothing, and stifled productive investment. But it was enormously lucrative, and gave a start to more than a few post-Soviet business empires. The steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, for many years Ukraine’s richest oligarch, was a miner’s son who began his career as a lieutenant to a Donetsk crime boss.
Within a few years from the late 1980s, the various streams of corrupt and criminal activity began merging into oligarchic clans centred on particular cities and economic sectors. When state enterprises began to be privatised in the 1990s, it was these clans that generally wound up with the assets.
I should say something about the business culture that arose from the last Soviet years, and that in Ukraine today remains sharply different from anything in the West. Few of the new business chiefs knew much about how capitalism was supposed to work, and the lessons in the business-school texts were mostly useless in any case.
The way you got rich was by paying bribes to tap into state revenues, or by cornering and liquidating value that had been created in the Soviet past. Asset ownership was exceedingly insecure—you never knew when you’d turn up at your office to find it full of the armed security guards of a business rival, who’d bribed a judge to permit a takeover. In these circumstances, productive investment was irrational behaviour…
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s opening remarks:
Good afternoon, colleagues.
Today we will discuss one of the President’s priority goals – to improve the living standards of our citizens.
Fulfilling the social obligations to our people is our direct responsibility. This effort should not be influenced by any external threat or risk, including sanctions from unfriendly states.
We are working in several key areas in this effort – reducing poverty, providing targeted support to needy families with children, and increasing real salaries and incomes. We are also improving the wellbeing of our pensioners and other socially vulnerable citizens.
As the President noted, there should be no one that can barely make ends meet if they are employed. Therefore, the Government continues supporting the incomes of our citizens. Under the President’s instructions, we have raised the subsistence level twice in a special procedure – starting on June 1 last year and again the beginning of January of this year. The overall increase was over 13.5 percent. By doing this, we have maintained the real incomes of 15 million people.
We are also consistently increasing the minimum wage at a rate that is higher than inflation. It has increased since the start of this year and is now 16,242 roubles. Moreover, on January 1 of next year we will adjust it for inflation again on the President’s instruction, this time by 18.5 percent, which will raise the salaries of 4.8 million people. We are helping the regions bring the salaries of public sector employees in line with the President’s May executive orders. These employees work in many diverse areas, from healthcare and the social sphere to education, science and culture. Their salaries should be increased to the level determined by the President. We will continue this policy through this year, fully implementing the decisions envisaged in the President’s executive orders.
Another area is the programmes on reducing poverty in the regions of the Russian Federation. The majority of regions have such programmes. The local officials know better who needs assistance and how to provide it. In some cases it’s a social contract, in others retraining or upgrade courses. A flexible approach like this that considers the local specifics will allow the regions to meet their personnel needs more quickly.
The President emphasised that protection for maternity and childhood and support for families are indisputable values for each of us.
We continue to assist low-income families with children; there is an integral system for state support. The law on the unified monthly benefit in connection with the birth and upbringing of a child entered into force at the beginning of this year. Over 5 million children under 17 and 190,000 pregnant women, for whom this measure was designed, have used it.
We will continue improving the system of guarantees for our people through the social treasury to make sure they receive all of their support benefits on schedule and in full, and remotely, if they so wish, without excessive red tape and bureaucracy.
Colleagues,
I suggest discussing the objectives we need to fulfil in the near term for improving the living standards of our people.
The following article was made possible by paid subscribers. Support independent journalism on whistleblowers and press freedom and become a subscriber with this limited offer for World Press Freedom Week.
On World Press Freedom Day, the United States State Department abandoned its policy of not commenting on the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and essentially backed the prosecution against him.
Matthew Lee of the Associated Press asked State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel “whether or not the State Department regards Julian Assange as a journalist who would be covered by the ideas embodied in World Press Freedom Day.”
“I’m not asking for the [U.S. Justice Department point of view. I’m asking for what the State Department thinks,” Lee said.
It was not the first time Lee had posed this question. In 2021, on World Press Freedom Day, Lee asked if President Joe Biden’s administration was looking into the Assange case, “his detention, his extradition, the request for extradition here, the charges against him?”
“I realize you can’t speak for DOJ, but from the State Department’s perspective, is the current position still – does that still hold? Do you believe that Mr. Assange is a journalist?” Lee added. “And given the importance you place on accurate and factual information being disseminated, do you believe that the information that was published based on the U.S. government documents that he obtained and put out was either unfactual or inaccurate?”
Jalina Porter, who was a spokesperson for the State Department, avoided the question. “So to your specific on Julian Assange, we’ll have to get back to you on that.”
But now, with Biden going around repeatedly declaring that “journalism is not a crime,” Patel read a prepared response.
“The State Department thinks that Mr. Assange has been charged with serious criminal conduct in the United States, in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in our nation’s history,” Patel declared. “His actions risked serious harm to U.S. national security to the benefit of our adversaries.”
Patel continued, “It put named human sources to grave and imminent risk and risk of serious physical harm and arbitrary detention. So it does not matter how we categorize any person, but we view this as something, he’s been charged with serious criminal conduct.”
The response was lousy and stale. The State Department basically dusted off a few talking points from 2010, when WikiLeaks first published U.S. State Embassy cables that exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy.
To be clear, Assange’s “role” was that of a publisher who received documents from U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. A 2011 review by the Associated Press of sources, which the State Department claimed were most at risk from the publication of cables, found no evidence that any person was harmed. The potential for harm was “strictly theoretical.”
Lee appropriately pushed back on the idea that being charged with “serious criminal conduct” made Assange a person unworthy of support on World Press Freedom Day.
“Yeah, but anyone can be charged with anything. Evan Gershkovich has been charged with a serious criminal offense in Russia, and you say that he is a journalist, and he is obviously,” Lee replied. “And I just want to know whether or not you, the State Department – regardless of any charges that he faces – believe that he is a journalist, or he is something else.”
Patel contended the two cases are “completely different.” He said, “The United States doesn’t go around arbitrarily detaining people, and the judicial oversight and checks and balances that we have in our system versus the Russian system are a little bit different.”
The U.S. government subjected nearly 800 people to rendition, indefinite detention, and torture and brought them to Guantanamo Bay military prison, which was established a legal blackhole for alleged terrorism suspects. It’s still open, continues to hold detainees not charged with any crimes, and in fact, the United Nations recently condemned the US for keeping Abu Zubaydah in arbitrary detention, which “may constitute crimes against humanity.”
Yes—the U.S. does arbitrarily detain people. Just not people the U.S. thinks should be free from arbitrary detention.
“Okay. So, basically, the bottom line is that you don’t have an answer. You won’t say whether you think he is a journalist or not,” Lee stated.
The State Department cannot say that US officials do not believe Assange is a journalist because they know that puts them at odds with civil society organizations that they frequently partner with on press freedom issues and campaigns to free detained journalists.
Gershkovich’s case is not meaningfully different from the case against Assange. Russian intelligence accused Gershkovich of “collecting state secrets.” Like the U.S. government, the Russian government claims the authority to detain a journalist to make an example out of them and send a message that they will protect their military information from further disclosure.
Few may know, the State Department intervened in the extradition process to help the Crown Prosecution Service win their appeal after a district judge ruled that extraditing Assange would be oppressive for health reasons. Diplomats offered empty “assurances” that Assange would not be mistreated in U.S. custody and leaned on the United Kingdom to approve Assange’s extradition to preserve the close partnership between the U.S. and the U.K.
Now, on the same day, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about Assange. “Advocates on Twitter today have been talking a great deal about how the United States has engaged in hypocrisy by talking about how Evan Gershkovich is held in Russia on espionage charges but the United States has Espionage Act charges pending against Julian Assange.”
The reporter who asked this question also suggested the US had lost the “moral high ground.” Unlike the State Department, the White House did not feel compelled to take this question seriously. “Look, I’m not going to speak to Julian Assange and that case from here,” Jean-Pierre blurted.
CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK member Tighe Barry, and others in the peace group probably deserve credit for forcing the State Department to respond to a question about Assange with something more than “no comment.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in a World Press Freedom Day event hosted by the Washington Post. As he sat down to talk with Post columnist David Ignatius, Benjamin stepped on to the stage. “Excuse us. We can’t use this day without calling for the freedom of Julian Assange.”
The Post muted the audio for the video broadcast as security swiftly dragged Benjamin offstage. Security was so rough that it made Blinken uncomfortable. He stood up from his seat and told them, “Take it easy. Take it easy. Take it easy, guys.”
Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee tied his Assange question to the protest, noting the case had been “raised perhaps a bit abruptly at the very beginning of [Blinken’s] comments.”
Perhaps, that is why the State Department had a canned response ready. Or maybe the State Department flack had an answer prepared because all the advocates chatting about US hypocrisy bother the department.
There is more political support in the world for ending the case than ever before, with parliamentarians in the U.K., Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and a handful of U.S. representatives urging the Justice Department to drop the charges. U.S. officials are afraid to engage reporters and defend the case in public.
Confrontation works. Letters to the Justice Department that demand an end to the case are welcome, but they do not have the capacity to provoke an immediate response as CODEPINK’s protest apparently did.
Flemming Rose, Editor-in-chief of Frihedsbrevet (Denmark), 4/22/23 (Machine translation)
For this week’s ‘Free Thought’, I have spoken with the British historian Geoffrey Roberts about an article he recently published in the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies under the title “Now or Never: The Immediate Origins of Putin’s Preventive War on Ukraine”.i We also talked about the historical craft, how the war in Ukraine will be viewed in 50 years, and what secret documents Roberts would like to see if he could get access to the Russian archives.
Geoffrey Roberts has researched and written about the history of diplomacy for many decades. In particular, he has dealt with the processes leading up to the outbreak of the Second World War and to the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, which involved the division of Eastern Europe into spheres of interest between Germany and the Soviet Union. He is the author a voluminous work entitled Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War 1939–1953, which was based on his studies in the Russian archives. Roberts is also co-author of a book on the wartime relationship between Churchill and Stalin and has written a biography of Georgy Zhukov, Stalin’s most important general during World War II. Most recently, Roberts has written a book entitled Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books.
Reasons for War
Why did Vladimir Putin decide in February 2022 to invade Ukraine and start the biggest land war in Europe since World War II? And when did he make that fateful decision?
There are many opinions about that. It is one of those events that historians will write thousands of articles and books about for decades to come.
Some believe that Putin is driven by the ambition to restore the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire. Others point out that Putin is motivated by the desire to gain control of what is called “the Russian world”, which includes regions where the Russian Orthodox Church and Russian language and culture dominate.
Still others point to Putin launching the war to consolidate his power at home and save his regime from internal threats and opposition.
A fourth claim is that the decision to go to war was the work of an isolated, maniacal dictator. A dictator surrounded by puppets who was convinced the Russian army would be welcomed by a majority of the Ukrainian population.
A fifth explanation says that Putin feared a democratic Ukraine with a political order alternative to his authoritarian regime in Russia, which could lead disaffected Russians to rebel against the Kremlin.
Geoffrey Roberts rejects all these explanations. He believes that Putin went to war to prevent Ukraine from developing into an increasingly strong and threatening military bridgehead for NATO on the border with Russia.
According to Roberts, for Putin the decision to invade Ukraine was not only about the immediate situation; it was about a future in which he feared Russia would face an existential threat from the West. In that context, Roberts states, it is not decisive whether Putin is morbidly paranoid or whether his fantasies have no root in the real world. The key is what Putin actually thought and on what basis he made the decision to go to war; for Roberts as a historian, it is about uncovering the logic and inner dynamics of Putin’s reasoning that preceded the war.
Roberts does this by reviewing Putin’s public comments and statements from spring 2021 until the invasion in February 2022, comparing them with what he has said since.
His method is empirical, meaning that he reconstructs the story based on what Putin says and does. Roberts identifies a common thread of elements and talking points that recur all the way through the narrative – the fear of NATO expansion, concern about NATO missile defense in Poland and Romania, the transformation of Ukraine into an anti-Russia and a NATO armed outpost on the border with Russia, criticism of Ukraine for discrimination against pro-Russians and not implementing the so-called Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, which were an attempt to regulate the conflict between the Ukrainian central government and the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
According to Roberts, throughout the run up to the February 2022 invasion, Putin maintained that the Minsk agreements were the only mechanism available to deal with the dispute between Kiev and the Donbass rebels. Roberts also cites Putin’s ‘infamous’ summer 2021 essay on the historical unity of Russia and Ukraine, in which he laments alleged discrimination against Russians in Ukraine, declaring:
“We will never allow our historic lands and people close to us to be used against Russia.”
In autumn 2021, the rhetoric sharpened, and on November 18, i.e. a month before Moscow submitted its formal security demands to NATO, Putin proposed legally binding security guarantees from NATO in relation to Ukraine. When his demands were published, they went even further and were not only about Ukraine, but also about the infrastructure NATO had built in its new member states.
Russia’s demands were rejected by the West at the end of January 2022. A few days later, Putin said at a press conference in the Kremlin:
“It is stated in Ukraine’s doctrines that they will take Crimea back, if necessary by force. It’s not just something Ukrainian representatives say publicly, it’s written down in their documents. Imagine then that Ukraine becomes a member of NATO. It is being loaded with weapons and more offensive weapons will be deployed on its territory, just like in Poland and Romania – who is going to stop it? Imagine Ukraine launching an operation against Crimea or Donbass. Crimea is Russian territory. We see that case as settled. Imagine that Ukraine is a member of NATO and begins a military operation. So what should we do? Fight against NATO? Has anyone even thought about that? Apparently not.”
Roberts hypothesizes that it was the fear of a nuclear-armed Ukraine that prompted Putin to attack at the last minute. The historian refers to Volodymyr Zelensky’s speech at the security conference in Munich five days before the invasion, in which the Ukrainian president aired the idea that Ukraine should acquire tactical nuclear weapons in order to defend itself. None of the Western leaders present objected, according to Roberts, even though such an initiative would have been a violation of the international agreement on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Three days later, Putin was asked whether he considered Zelensky’s words to be bluster or a real statement of intent.
Putin replied: “We reckon that his words were primarily directed at us. I would like to say that we have heard them. Ever since Soviet times, Ukraine has had broad nuclear capabilities. They have several nuclear power plants and a nuclear industry which is quite developed and they have a school to educate people. They have everything to be able to solve that problem much faster than the countries that are starting from scratch.”
He added:
“The only thing they lack is systems for enriching uranium. It’s just a matter of technology. It is not an insurmountable task for Ukraine. It can be done quite easily, and the presence of tactical nukes in Ukraine and missiles with a range of 300–500 kilometres means they can hit Moscow. It is a strategic threat to us and that is how we perceive it. We have to and will take it extremely seriously.”
Roberts summarizes:
“On the eve of the invasion, many astute and well-informed commentators convinced themselves that the supposedly realistic and pragmatic Putin would not risk such an attack. What they missed was the crystallization of Putin’s apocalyptic vision of a future, nuclear-armed Ukraine embedded in NATO and intent on provoking a Russian-Western war. Arguably, it was that long-term nuclear threat that finally prompted Putin to go to war.”
Putin’s Preventative War
According to Roberts, from Putin’s point of view it was a preventive war, which sounds completely crazy from the perspective of the West, but which nevertheless drove the Russian president. Putin’s Russia is not the first, and will hardly be the last, country to go to war on such a basis.
German Emperor Wilhelm II was motivated by a similar logic when, in July 1914, he urged Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia before its nationalism became too threatening to the Hapsburg empire.
Adolf Hitler saw his attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 as an attempt to eliminate an emerging strategic and ideological threat from the “Jewish-Bolshevik” regime in the east.
In the same vein, Great Britain and France proclaimed Egypt’s leader Gamel Abdel Nasser a new expansionist and totalitarian threat in the Middle East, and in 1956 they put preventive obstacles in his way by taking control of the Suez Canal, while US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had otherwise vowed not to enter the civil war in Vietnam, was so obsessed with the so-called domino theory – meaning that if one country fell to the communists in Southeast Asia, others would follow – that he chose to get involved in the war as a preventive measure to stop the red peril from spreading.
A more recent example of a preventive war is US President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was justified by the fact that Saddam Hussein’s regime had to be liquidated before the dictator in Baghdad got his hands on weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them with.
Roberts comments:
“Pre-emptive action to avoid an even bloodier conflict in the future is a standard justification for aggressive war, one that is often accompanied by illusions of a quick and easy victory. To say that Putin believed he had been backed into a corner by Ukraine and the West is not to endorse his perceptions and assessment of the situation.”
The Interview
The all-out attack came as a shock. Did the war catch you out?
“I wasn’t that surprised, but I was shocked. When Putin in December 2021 presented his proposal for a security agreement with the West that included legally binding guarantees for Russia, I thought to myself he had backed himself into a corner, because if the West did not give him anything in the way of serious negotiations, he would have to respond with military means. Hence I was not surprised as such by the military action, more by its scope and size. I had been expecting a limited operation in eastern Ukraine, so the all-out attack came out of left field.”
In response to the widespread perception in the West that Putin is full of lies and what he says cannot be trusted, Roberts stresses that, yes, politicians do lie and pretend, and Putin is no exception, but what politicians say in public often reflects a core of their real beliefs.
Roberts elaborates:
“Politicians lie to their own populations, but less so to each other on the international stage. Here they usually try to communicate something to the other party. When you as a head of state have to make critical decisions about war and peace, it is crucial that your position is understood by the other party. Therefore, I believe that you can take Putin at his word in this context.”
How will posterity view the war? How do you think historians will look at the war in Ukraine 50 years from now? Which narratives will dominate?
“I believe that as in the discussions about the causes of the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War, there will be a debate between, on the one hand, those who politicize and allow ideological considerations to guide their understanding of the causes of the conflict, and, on the other, those who see history as a past that you try to bring to life by studying the documents of that time without a predetermined political or ideological agenda.”
Roberts adds:
“But unlike the current debate about the causes of the war in Ukraine, I think those who stick to history without politicizing it too much will stand stronger as time goes on, because in a few decades there will, hopefully, be much more documentation to substantiate one or other interpretation of the causes of the war. Historical documents that confirm or deny things that are claimed – without evidence – in public today.”
If you could see a classified document that could shed light on why and how Putin decided to go to war, which document would you most like to see?
“I would like to see the Russian General Staff’s operational plan for the invasion because it would shed light on Moscow’s strategic goals, military preparations and calculations.”
Anything else?
“I would also like to see minutes of Putin’s meetings with his inner circle to see if a future nuclear threat from Ukraine was considered in the confidential decisionmaking process. I’m by no means certain, but my impression is that the nuclear factor, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It wasn’t the only factor, but that’s the way I read the evidence of Putin’s public comments.”
You are a historian and you usually write about the past, spending your time digging in archives and reading confidential documents. What is it like to be a historian writing about current events?
“You lack perspective. Over time, some aspects of an historical event will appear more important than when it occurred. Some believe that makes all history relative to present-day standpoints but I disagree with that. I find that relativity – changing perspectives on the past as time marches on – helps to enrich our understanding. Equally, as a historian you can put yourself beyond your own contemporaneity and look at the past from the perspective of people in the past, with an historical awareness in the deepest sense of the term.”
Roberts continues:
“The second challenge of writing about contemporary events as a historian is that you lack the documentation and the evidence that you can later find in the archives, and which were once secret or confidential. One is forced to rely on what is available in the public space. In Putin’s case, it is what he says and does. It is undoubtedly a limitation.”
Despite these limitations, and knowing that posterity will uncover new evidence and documents, Roberts feels on fairly safe ground when it comes to Putin’s officially stated motivations for going to war.
He says:
“It is often the case that the secret and confidential documents end up confirming the motives articulated publicly by decision-makers while an event was taking place. I could have reconstructed the Soviet side of the story of the Hitler-Stalin Pact based on the Soviet newspapers of the time and Stalin’s statements. Despite countless contemporaneous claims to contrary, the Russian archives reveal that when Stalin said something in public, he usually meant it. I feel pretty confident that my review of Putin’s thinking and motivations based on public sources will be broadly confirmed once we get access to classified documents. This does not mean that Putin was right, but that is how he saw what was going on, and those are the considerations and calculations that informed his decision for war.”
Ukraine and Finland
One of the perspectives on the war that Roberts believes will change over time concerns the view of Ukraine’s situation and future if the country ends up losing Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
He says:
“If the war stops and there are negotiations and a peace agreement, it will – as it looks now – probably mean that Ukraine will lose land in the east, but in return will receive guarantees for its sovereignty and independence as a state. Many will say ‘oh no, that’s terrible. It shows that aggression pays,’ but I think that in the long run Ukraine’s loss of land will prove less important when the history of the war is written.”
What do you mean?
“I think that the focus will eventually shift from the losses Ukraine has suffered to what Ukraine has managed to preserve; namely its existence as a sovereign state that will hopefully recover after the war and will continue to be economically supported by the West. It will have security guarantees and maybe become a member of the EU”.
It sounds a bit like the history of Finland after the Finnish-Soviet war of 1939–40, which Finland lost, but over time it is the story of Finland’s survival and success as a sovereign state that counts the most.
“Yes, that’s a good comparison. I think the narrative will shift from a focus on what Ukraine has lost to what Ukraine has won and achieved. I hope so, but if the war continues for much longer, I am worried that Ukraine will collapse as a state.”
The most avoidable war in history
Geoffrey Roberts sees the war in Ukraine as one of those wars that could have been avoided. He calls it perhaps the most avoidable war in history.
He says:
“If Putin had calculated the situation differently and understood the costs, I am not sure he would have gone to war. Or if the West had concluded an agreement with Russia on European security, or if Ukraine had implemented the Minsk agreements on regulating the conflict in Donbass, or if NATO had not expanded in the way it ended up doing.”
What do you mean by the last one?
“Originally, I supported the expansion of NATO, because I saw it as part of the establishment of a European security system that would include everyone – including Russia. The expansion of NATO wasn’t a problem as such, it was that the process ended up isolating Russia. Russia should have been part of NATO in some form. I only became an opponent of NATO expansion when the alliance turned against Russia.”
When does that happen?
“The major turning point occurred in 2008 with the war in Georgia and NATO’s decision to include Ukraine and Georgia as members at some point in the future. The process probably became irreversible in 2010, when Russia under President Medvedev proposed a new, inclusive security order in Europe, which was rejected by the West. And then followed the crises in Libya and Syria and the Arab Spring, and in 2014 came Ukraine, which burned all bridges between Russia and the West.”
What makes you think that Putin only made the decision to go to war at the last minute?
“We cannot be sure; further documentation is needed, but I base my assessment on two indicators. Firstly; the meeting of Putin’s Security Council on February 21st, a few days before the invasion. It was about the recognition of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent republics and the negotiations with the West. When you listen to the comments of those present, you get the impression that no decision had been made to go to war; and if it had been made, there are several in Putin’s inner circle who knew nothing about it. Of course, it may well be that Putin had made the decision long before, but just didn’t tell anyone about it.”
And what is the other indicator?
“This is Putin’s speech to the nation after the Security Council meeting. It is an emotional speech in which there are several spontaneous elements. That, I think, indicates that this is a decision he has just made rather than the presentation of something he had resolved to do been several days – if not weeks – before.”
