There are several academics whose work on Russia and the former Soviet Union I have found to be excellent and reliable. These include the late Stephen F. Cohen, Richard Sakwa, Paul Robinson, Dominic Lieven, and Nicolai Petro (among a few others). I had been looking forward to reading Petro’s latest work, The Tragedy of Ukraine, which couldn’t be more timely.

Petro dives into the complex history of Ukraine and its relationship to imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. He emphasizes the point that, unfortunately, has to be repeated constantly in the west that this conflict did not begin on February 24, 2022. As Petro writes:

“[T}he current conflict is merely the latest in a series of conflicts that have bedeviled this area of the world for more than a century. These include: the great power rivalry between Russia and the West; the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; and finally, the conflict within Ukraine itself over its national identity, its relationship to Russia, and its role in the world. It is, in sum, a conflict about who gets to define Ukrainian identity.” (p. 1)

He goes on to explain the internal divisions within the borders of post-Soviet Ukraine. In western Ukraine, the Galician influence predominates and this is predicated upon the rejection of not only Russian culture, but of virtually any active relationship with Russia, including trade. This attitude is considered by its adherents to be “decolonization” and representing the only way for Ukraine to be truly Ukrainian. It is an ideology based on exclusion and an ethnic definition of identity.

In the southeastern part of modern day Ukraine, there is what Petro calls the Maloross identity, which has close historical and cultural ties to Russia that are of major importance, though this population didn’t necessarily want to become part of the Russian state prior to the events of 2013-2014 and the subsequent civil war. According to Petro, the Maloross Ukrainian identity saw itself as distinct from but complementary to Russia and its culture. It rejected the view that Ukraine must choose between Europe and Russia, preferring instead a partnership with both. On one side, the Galician ideal was for Ukraine to serve as a bulwark of the west against Russia, while the Maloross ideal was for Ukraine to serve as a bridge between both.

This was the core of the problem after the illegal overthrow of the democratically elected government in Kiev in 2014, a government that subsequently implemented policies on behalf of a Galician ideal. The residents of the Donbas (Maloross) saw the change of government as an illegitimate coup and genuinely feared and rejected the Galician policies it began to undertake.

Petro acknowledges that Ukraine has had a rocky path as an independent country since 1991, experiencing economic decline and high inequality, despite having emerged from the Soviet era as one of the most developed and resource-rich republics of the USSR*. Moreover, there are region-dependent differences in terms of economics in the country (e.g. industrial v. agricultural, etc.) This has been another factor that has contributed to the complicated divisions and instability within Ukraine.

As the conflict of 2014 has escalated over the years, the history of Ukraine has become weaponized by both sides to varying degrees:

“At its heart this is a debate about power – the power to define Ukrainian identity. In this power struggle both sides appeal to history, which since 2014 has become a minefield that must be navigated very carefully. The issue of whether to interpret a millennia of common history with Russia – as a colonial imposition to be rejected, or an imperial heritage to be proud of – has often been used to keep the conflict between these two competing Ukrainian national identities burning.” (p. 38)

Ukraine, along with Russia, constituted a “loose federation of East Slavic tribes – warrior-traders – ruled by the Rurik dynasty from 9th to 13th century”. Ties were buttressed by a shared Orthodox religion due to Prince Vladimir choosing that religion for people of the Kieven Rus area in the 10th century. By the time of the Mongol invasion of the 13th century, the area had degenerated into rivalries among various princes who’d lorded over a dozen or so independent areas.

The Mongol massacre killed about 2/3 of the population. Some of the survivors managed to flee closer to what is modern-day Moscow and those who remained were forced into subjugation. Slavic bonds were ruptured by the Mongol takeover. Those from the southern part of the Kieven Rus region later became known as Ukrainians and were cut off and later ruled over by Poles and Lithuanians .

In the mid-17th century (1654), the Pereyaslavl Treaty united Ukraine to Russia as an autonomous region and in turn led to a 13-year war between Russia and Poland which resulted in the division of Ukraine between Poland and Russia (Britannica). From then on, the Ukrainian-speaking parts of Poland-Lithuania were progressively conquered by the Russian Empire, leading many Orthodox Ukrainians to strongly identify with Russia . From the late 18th century on, Russians referred to Ukraine territory as Malorussia or “Little Russia” viewing Ukraine and the Ukrainian language as having emanated from the greater Russian history and culture and later sought to standardize it to Russian.

The Western parts of modern-day Ukraine were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries while the southeastern portion was part of the Russian Empire. An independent Ukrainian state emerged very briefly in the years of the Russian Revolution and early civil war period, but the project failed in 1919. From then until WWII, parts of Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Soviet Russia – the latter becoming a Soviet Republic ruled by the Communist Party. Russian/Soviet rule of Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries created complex patterns of migration with significant parts of southern Ukraine settled by Russians, including those who came to work in the mines and factories of the Donbas region, bringing the Russian language with them.**

Petro points out that many contemporary Russians view the Russians (Great Russians in the north), Ukrainians (Little Russians in the south), and Belarusians (White Russians in the west) as one people as promulgated by the writings of Innocent who was the 17th century Abbott of the Kieven Orthodox Monastery. Innocent’s assertion was based on territorial unity, religious (Orthodox faith) and linguistic/literary unity throughout these areas, and the governing princes of all territories having descended from the Ryurik line.

An alternative historical view – the western Ukrainian/Galician view – was put forth by an academic named Mikhail Grushevsky (1866-1934) who taught at the University of Kiev and asserted that “Ukraina-Rus” emerged on the territory of modern-day Ukraine much earlier and had descended from the ancient steppe culture of Scythia leading to “divergent patterns of development in Ukraine and Russia’ which included “a distinct line of statehood for Kievan Rus that in the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, and later in the Zaporozhian Sich, before it was finally incorporated into the Russian Empire by Catherine the Great.” (p. 39)

Ukrainian nationalists do not think Rus should equate with Russia but that Russia should be referred to as Muscovy and that Moscow did not emerge as the new center of a common people from Kiev due to the Mongol destruction of Kiev in the 13th century, but as a “poisonous” phenomena that kept Kiev from its proper glory.

This conflict, given its historical and ideological roots as well as its brutality, would appear to be implacable. But, here, Petro provides a possible means of avoiding a never-ending cycle of hatred and revenge once the sides cease actual physical fighting. Essentially, Petro thinks a truth and reconciliation commission should be put in place. He provides examples of successful but somewhat different models of such commissions in South Africa, Spain and Guatemala.

But another argument offered for this solution goes much further back – the role of the Greek tragedy, which – contrary to what many may believe – played a far more crucial role in Greek life than merely as a source of entertainment. He explains that Greek tragedy focused on the human emotions that play an important role in intractable conflicts that cause suffering and that the exploration and acting out of tragedy fostered understanding, compassion and healing among the different sides to a conflict, thus seeking to break the cycle of hatred and vengeance.

The tragedies acted out in Athens deliberately took on controversial topics, provided moral guidance, and taught its audience how to be better citizens, with the idea that qualities like moderation and prudence were skills that could be taught to everyone. Themes addressed included the negative consequences of hubris, arrogance, and inequality. The danger of self-righteousness, the problem of creating a larger moral wrong when attempting to correct a perceived existing moral wrong, was recognized. According to Petro: “tragedy trained citizens to recognize and avoid policies that could lead to disaster.” (p. 10)

Petro uses the Greek tragedy playwright Aeschylus as an example:

“Aeschylus wants the audience to see that creating a harmonious social order requires former enemies to become stakeholders in society.” (p. 30); He explains that the process involves: 1) raising awareness that the effort of reconciliation will require all of society to effectuate, 2) catharsis or purging, and 3) dialogue. This will lead to genuine justice rather than the continuing cycle of revenge.

Petro also states that Ukraine, in order to attain long-term stability, must eventually base its sense of identity and loyalty on civic patriotism rather than ethnicity, religion or culture:

“While nationalism values above all else cultural, religious, and ethnic unity, patriotism values above all else the people’s common liberty, which is enshrined in the republican ideal of equality before the law.” (p. 131)

If you’re looking for a thought-provoking book that explains the complex history of Ukraine, its relationship to Russia, and the underlying causes of the current conflict, I highly recommend this one.

*An excellent book that delves into this specific aspect of post-Soviet Ukraine can be found here and more about it will be discussed at this blog in the future.

**This historical summary is taken not just from information in Petro’s book, but also Richard Sakwa’s Frontline Ukraine and Anatol Lieven’s “Ukraine Should be a Bridge, Not a Battleground.“

By Patrick Lawrence, Sheerpost, 1/4/22

It is never very easy to understand what is going on in the world if you depend on The New York Times for an accounting of daily events. This is especially so in all matters to do with Russia, China, or any other nation The Times has on its blacklist because the policy cliques in Washington have these countries on their blacklist. Rely on The Times for its reporting in these cases and you are by definition in the dark. No exceptions. This is what the once-but-no-longer newspaper of record has done to itself and to its readers over, I would say, the past 20–odd years. It is now nothing more than an instrument of the imperial ideology emanating from our nation’s capital.

It follows that we must always take care to read The Times, odious as we may find it, in the same way millions of Soviet citizens over many decades made it a point to read Pravda. As noted severally in these commentaries, it is important to know what we are supposed to think happened on a given day before going in search of what happened.

Never were these assertions truer than they were as 2022 turned to 2023. On December 30, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping gathered by video for one of their regular summits. The Russian and Chinese presidents have now met, in person or electronically, 40–odd times by my count. A day later Putin delivered his customary New Year’s address to the Russian people. These were momentous events by any measure. They declared Moscow’s and Beijing’s historic commitment to constructing nothing less than a new world order. The world turned in 2022, to put the point another way. But you could not possibly know this if you read The Times’s accounts and nothing more.

Here I must single out the reporting of Anton Troianovski. While I do not approve of attacking a journalist in ad hominem fashion, it is meet and just, as the New Testament would put it, to single out Troianovski as the worst Moscow bureau chief The Times has had in place at least since Andrew Higgins, Troianovski’s immediate predecessor, who was in turn the worst bureau chief since Neil MacFarquhar, who preceded Higgins and was worse than his predecessor, and let us leave it there, as this list of worse-than-the-worst extends back many years.

In the method just outlined, I read first of the Putin–Xi summit, which was unusually long and pointed, in a piece Troianovski filed afterward from Moscow. I then read the detailed readouts issued by the Chinese and Russian governments, which are respectively here and here. Then I was astonished to discover the sheer irresponsibility of Troianovski and his employer. Even correspondents who serve more or less openly as propagandists can sink lower than what you thought was their low point, I had to remind myself…

Read full article here.

By Daniel Larison, Responsible Statecraft, 1/2/23

The nuclear disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine was one of the great success stories of the end of the Cold War, and it was one of the most significant victories for the cause of nonproliferation.

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, these newly independent states had to manage the problem of the Soviet nuclear legacy left behind in their lands. Their disarmament was bound up with their status as independent, sovereign countries as they sought and needed to be integrated with the rest of the world.

The commitment of the non-Russian republics to disarm saved the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and upheld the principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and their eventual disarmament is one of the underappreciated achievements of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

While all three states were always willing to get rid of the nuclear weapons they had inherited from the Soviet Union, the paths that they took to disarmament were somewhat different with respect to the terms and timing of removing these weapons and their delivery systems from their territories. The Ukrainian case is the most involved of the three, and because of the war in Ukraine it is also the most salient today in current debates about disarmament and nonproliferation. It is therefore fortunate that there is a new book that can expertly guide us through this complicated and important history.

Mariana Budjeryn’s Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine is an excellent study of how the process of disarmament unfolded. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including some Ukrainian sources not tapped before, Budjeryn details in great depth the internal deliberations of the Ukrainian government and the intensive rounds of negotiations among the U.S., Russia and the three non-Russian republics.

The book should become a standard reference for anyone working on this issue and on nonproliferation more broadly, and I expect that it will.

Budjeryn shows how the Ukrainian government realized that they had no practical alternative to disarmament if they were going to be a full-fledged member of the international community, but they also believed that their country should not give up the weapons without receiving something in return. The Ukrainian government took a nuanced position on the question of disarmament, as they were committed to denuclearization but wanted, for reasons of sovereignty and leverage, to emphasize that they “owned” the weapons on their territory even if they couldn’t and wouldn’t use them.

This insistence on ownership created some tensions in relations with both the U.S. and Russia, and opened Ukraine up to untrue charges of “backsliding” on its commitments. But in the end, Ukraine was never in a position to keep the weapons and did not want to keep them.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is how the three non-Russian republics leveraged the U.S. desire to ratify and implement START into securing themselves places at the negotiating table. Russia would have preferred to keep all arms control discussions bilateral, but since START could not be implemented without the cooperation of the other states it became necessary to include them.

This created some interesting contradictions in Washington’s dealings with these states. On the one hand, Washington accepted that the three non-Russian republics were successors to the Soviet Union for the purposes of arms control under START, but it would not accept that they were successors to the Soviet Union’s status as a nuclear weapons state.

The U.S. bottom line was that there should be no additional nuclear weapons states emerging from the collapsed Soviet Union. The NPT was clear that there could only be five nuclear weapons states, and the U.S. was not going to compromise on this point. This meant that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had to commit to joining the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states while simultaneously assisting the U.S. in eliminating part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that they had in their countries.

It took some time to get all three across the finish line with the ratification of both treaties, but it is a credit to their governments and to the Bush and Clinton administrations that they kept this process moving forward to a successful conclusion.

If Ukraine’s disarmament is discussed today, it is often mentioned as a supposed cautionary tale of what other states shouldn’t do. Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion began, John Ullyot and Thomas Grant declared Ukraine’s disarmament to have been a mistake: “If you abandon your nuclear program and entrust your security to formal guarantees and conventional deterrence, you gamble with your future. If you give up your nukes, you give up your national security ace-in-the-hole.”

Bill McGurn of The Wall Street Journal asked rhetorically, “If Ukraine hadn’t given up its nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, would Vladimir Putin have dared invade?” This line of thinking is misguided for several reasons.

As Budjeryn shows, there really was no serious option of keeping the inherited nuclear weapons without exposing Ukraine to international opprobrium and isolation, and the cost of building up an indigenous nuclear weapons program to maintain their own arsenal was prohibitive. She sums up the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s view at the time: “The negative repercussions of the nuclear option would far outweigh the positive.”

It is a mistake for people today to indulge the fantasy that Ukraine could have kept these weapons without suffering severe negative political and economic consequences, and it gives encouragement to would-be proliferators that our collective commitment to nonproliferation is waning.

Another problem with the counterfactual is that there is no guarantee that Ukraine would have been made more secure if it had paid the high price to retain these weapons. If anything, possession of what would have been the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal probably would have made Ukraine more of a target for interference and intervention, and the resources it would have had to pour into its nuclear weapons program would have come at the expense of its other defenses.

Budjeryn quotes Boris Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, as saying, “For Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons would have been to go against the entire world order.” When critics of disarmament argue that Ukraine should have somehow kept this arsenal, they are ignoring the enormous, immediate costs that Ukraine would have faced for doing so. Ukraine would not only have been putting its good relations with the U.S. and its allies at risk by keeping these weapons, but counterintuitively it would have also risked its own survival.

Budjeryn concludes: “If Ukraine had refused to join the NPT and kept a part of its nuclear inheritance, it would not be the same country it is today but with nuclear weapons. Indeed, it is doubtful whether it would be a country at all.”“Inheriting the Bomb” is essential reading for anyone interested in issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. It is exceptionally well-researched and well-written, and it deepens the reader’s understanding of the complex problems that were created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also reminds us of the importance of careful, patient diplomacy in managing multiple potential crises peacefully.

Link here.

by MK Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 12/28/22

Consequent upon the Ukraine war, as the Sea of Azov becomes an inland sea for Russia, bracketed by the Crimean Peninsula and the mouth of the River Don, the sea and rail networks of the region extend to Iranian hubs on the Caspian Sea and ultimately lead to the Indian Ocean. A feature article in Bloomberg last week titled Russia and Iran Are Building a Trade Route That Defies Sanctions brings to centre stage this “sanctions-busting” project in the region.

Last month, Mehr News Agency reported that a first 12 million–ton shipment of Russian grain bound for India already transited Iran. The time has come for the inland trade corridor known as the International North-South Transport Corridor or the INSTC, which was launched in 2000 to connect the Baltic Sea with the Indian Ocean.

Ironically, the West’s “sanctions from hell” against Moscow roused the INSTC to life. Moscow is currently finalising the rules that would give ships from Iran the right of passage along inland waterways on the Volga and Don rivers!

The INSTC was conceived as a 7,200 km-long multimodal transportation network encompassing sea, road, and rail routes to move freight between Russia, Central Asia and the Caspian regions, Iran and India. At its core, this is a Russian-Iranian project who are stakeholders in countering the West’s weaponisation of sanctions.

But there is much more to their congruent interests. The Western sanctions motivate them to look for optimally developing their economies, and both Russia and Iran are pivoting to the Asian market, and in the process, a new trading bloc is forming that is completely free of Western presence. “The goal is to shield commercial links from Western interference and build new ones with the giant and fast–growing economies of Asia, ” Bloomberg noted.

Speaking to a group of senior Russian editors on Monday in Moscow, Foreign Minister Lavrov said, “Rest assured that in the near future, we will see a serious drop in the West’s ability to ‘steer’ the global economy the way it pleases. Whether it wants it or not, it will have to sit down and talk.” This is the crux of the matter — force the western powers to negotiate.

In the near term, INSTC’s takeoff will depend on some big projects. On Monday, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak spoke about an energy grid involving Russia, Iran and Central Asia and the South Asian region.

Novak said, “A constant influx of national currencies gives confidence to the market. At the beginning of the year, we faced a situation where it was not very clear what to do with these currencies. At the moment, they are traded on the stock exchange and ensure mutual trade turnover… If at the beginning of the year this flywheel swayed very hard, then in just a few months it became commonplace, and we began to trade steadily in national currencies.” De-dollarisation provides an underpinning of the INSTC. This is one thing.

Second, Novak made the disclosure that Russia and Iran may reach an agreement on swap supplies of oil and gas by the end of this year. As he put it, “If we talk about perspective, this includes exports of gas to Afghanistan, Pakistan — either using the infrastructure projects of Central Asia, or through a swap from the territory of Iran. That is, we will receive their gas in the south of the country [Iran], and in exchange we will supply gas to the north for Iranian consumers.”

Novak added, “We expect around 5 mln tons [of oil] per year and up to 10 bln cubic meters [of gas] at the first stage.” Pakistan is interested in sourcing Russian gas. Novak referred to Russia’s agreement with Azerbaijan, which is set to increase gas supplies, and “when they increase gas production, we will be able to discuss swaps.”

Pakistan has an inherent advantage, as all the participating countries of the INSTC except India also happen to be members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. At some point early enough, the two designated Iranian ports in the INSTC — Bandar Abbas and Chabahar — will likely get linked to Gwadar Port, which is the gateway to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor [CPEC] leading to Xinjiang, and an important component of the BRI.

Clearly, the INSTC will spawn a web of international economic corridors. Iran is destined to become the hub of converging strategic interests with significant economic dimensions that will determine new alliances and impact the geopolitics of South and West Asia in the 21st century.

The US has been waging an information war to debunk the CPEC and fuel anti-China sentiments in the Pakistani public opinion. But it is a hopeless endeavour to malign the INSTC as a geopolitical project and impractical to threaten regional states from associating with what is an intercontinental trade route that is no single country’s franchise. After all, how to sanction a trading bloc?

The facts speak for themselves. The INSTC trials carried out to transport containers from Mumbai to St Petersburg using the trade corridor are able to reduce the delivery time of cargo from 45 days to 25 days at 30% cheaper rates than via Suez Canal, justifying the hopes for enhanced connectivity and utility of the corridor. Clearly, the trade potential of INSTC is immense.

However, Russia and Iran are determined to decouple the West. Lavrov said on Monday, “We can no longer rely on these people. Neither our people nor history will forgive us if we do… we too openly and naively put our faith in the assurances that we heard in the early 1990s about a common European home and the need for an international division of labour that would rely on the best performance and competitive advantages of each country, so that, by pulling our efforts together and saving resources, we would be able achieve the best and cost-effective results. All of that was empty talk.”

Iran and Eurasian Economic Union [comprising Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan] have reportedly finalised the terms for a free trade agreement involving more than 7,500 types of commodities. A market as big as $700 billion is opening up to Iranian products and services as of the next Iranian year [starting March 21, 2023].

The FTA encourages free movement of goods and services, and provides for common policies in the macroeconomic sphere, transport, industry and agriculture, energy, foreign trade and investment, customs, technical regulation, competition, and antitrust regulation. It will be a game changer for the INSTC, transforming the power dynamic in the vast Eurasian landmass and the Gulf region. The INSTC signifies a strategic axis between Russia and Iran built around a trade route heralding a non-western trading bloc of free-wheeling regional states with common interests in resisting western hegemony.