Russia in Global Affairs

In February 2022, many policy analysts, including this author, expected that the saber-rattling on both sides of the Russia-West geopolitical divide was simply a means to strengthen the bargaining position of both parties in the imminent forthcoming negotiations. History has proven that was not the case.

For thirty years, staunch supporters of the confrontational approach worked to strengthen the image of the Other as an enemy to be faced sooner or later on the battlefield. Now the advocates of this point of view are triumphant as they see the current events as proof that they were right from the very beginning.

“In a word, Kiev is a Russian city and, in particular, a city of Russian culture,” Sergey Hrushevsky concluded. “And as long as this city, the heart of Little Russia, is Russian, then the whole region... will always maintain a living affection and love for the great Russian culture.”

The outbreak of war in Ukraine, considered by many as highly improbable until very shortly before the Russian military invasion, is not “surprising.” It is part of the West’s historical struggle to foresee the Kremlin’s decisions and to understand its objectives, both internal and external.

Strategic frivolity, that is, the ability to create risky situations for the sake of solving particular issues, is a characteristic sign of the confidence of states that a major conflict between them is either unrealistic or can be relatively easily settled by diplomatic methods. However, history shows that diplomacy and even direct communication at the highest level may not always work.

As America behaves, so Russia feels justified in pursuing like-minded behavior aligned to its own security interests, that the West has routinely rejected or simply ignored.

It is worth recalling that, back in May 2014, the Verkhovna Rada recognized the need to prioritize reconciliation. Adopted just five days before the presidential elections, had this policy actually been implemented, Ukraine’s subsequent history might have been very different.

Historical arguments are heavily used by both Ukraine and Russia in pursuing their political goals at the national and international levels. The current state of relations between the two countries predetermines further instrumental use and misuse of history for the purposes of propaganda and hybrid war.

Abstract Ukrainians and Belarusians used to match Anthony David Smith’s notion of a demotic ethnie, an ethnic group without the upper strata. For centuries both…