The Russian Empire of Putin’s Dreams

One of the stated top priorities for Russian President Vladimir Putin is being able to defend Russia against what he deems a hostile aggressor, NATO. In that objective, Ukraine plays a fundamental role. Leaders of the Russian Empire, from Ivan the Terrible to Putin himself, have made Ukraine pivotal to their strategic control.

I am a Ukrainian, born and raised, and though the actions of the Russian Federation are impossible to stomach for me, I realized that without unpacking this region’s history, where it draws its borders and why, it will be difficult to decipher the motivations behind the violent attack Russia launched on its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine. If we set aside the moral implications of the savagery this war has brought on a civilized and peaceful nation, what remains is a game of RISK that involves a cold analysis of strategic positioning. When Putin sees this part of the world, which territories are most important to conquer?

For centuries, the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, comprised nearly one-sixth of the world’s landmass. The regions we know today as Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Belarus, Finland, the Caucasus, and the Central Asian and Baltic states fell under a single Soviet umbrella for most of the 20th century.

Each republic maintained regional identities but was united under one nation and a single ruling party. Citizens of this giant country lived without borders, and families often spread across the land for generations. For this reason, the people of these territories have a profound connection, rooted in their shared history and national pride, because for generations this region was widely considered a formidable global superpower.

These glorious days of Mother Russia were plastered in every schoolbook and dutifully recited by every citizen until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and those territories became 15 independent republics.

Russia overnight lost more than half the population it had governed, a loss Putin has lamented regularly, including in his 2014 state television address. “Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones,” Putin stated, “overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest, ethnic groups in the world to be divided by borders.”

After World War II, two competing military alliances emerged. On one side was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and on the other, the Warsaw Pact Organization (WPO). NATO’s original members were the USA, Canada, and most of Western Europe, and its stated goal was to promote democratic values and coordinate on defense to prevent conflict in their respective regions.

In the East, the WPO comprised the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and East Germany until 1990. These states created a buffer zone between NATO and its biggest rival during the Cold War, the Soviet Union.

The Warsaw Pact countries’ strategic position largely covers what is known as the North European Plain. From northern Germany in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east, this area is incredibly rich in resources and almost entirely flat, making it easily accessible to invaders throughout history.

From the Soviet Union’s perspective, controlling as much of the western parts of the Plain as possible was imperative to secure its resources and gain a tactical advantage in a possible conflict with NATO.

During the Cold War, Moscow was in just that position, dominating the largest portion of this Plain, from the Ural Mountains all the way to East Germany. This was one of the key factors for Russia’s formidable dominance on the world stage.

Then, suddenly, in 1991, Moscow’s geographical advantage changed dramatically with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That same year, the WPO disbanded, leaving Russia without a cover.

In the years that followed, every former WPO member and several former Soviet republics joined NATO. This includes Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, and Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Estonia in 2004.

This dramatic takeaway from what used to be the Soviet Union and its proxies is what Putin has claimed over and over again is the greatest shame of the Russian Empire’s collapse.

“There’s been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007, when he [Putin] put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO,” said Fiona Hill, a former official of the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European Affairs.

NATO did not take Putin’s concerns as a precaution and maintained an “open door” policy for joining the alliance—meaning new members are welcome to join if they meet certain economic, political, and military criteria. In 2008, NATO signaled that it would consider Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership aspirations in the future. Then, in 2009, Albania and Croatia officially joined the alliance.

Putin did not miss this antagonistic tug-of-war between Eastern and Western alliances. He had already observed NATO’s willingness to apply violent means, as when the Western alliance inserted itself into the Kosovo War in 1999, between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and a Kosovar Albanian rebel group known as the KLA.

NATO tried to negotiate a diplomatic solution, but it proved fruitless. The matter was brought to a vote at the U.N. Security Council but was blocked by Russia and China. As the death toll mounted, justifying the campaign as a “humanitarian war”, NATO intervened by sending aerial bombing campaigns, which continued unabated for nearly three months against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The war came to an end on June 11, 1999, when the Yugoslav armed forces agreed to withdraw from Kosovo.

“The very real suffering in Kosovo warranted international involvement,” said Michael Barutciski of Forced Migration Review, “yet deciding the appropriate international response required careful analysis. NATO’s decision to bomb cities throughout Yugoslavia transformed an internal low-intensity conflict into a regional humanitarian crisis.”

Given this display of aggression, it is hard to blame Putin for believing that NATO is a dangerous adversary or that its advance to the edge of Russia’s border is hostile. It is also worth noting the manner in which Putin has imposed himself onto Ukraine’s soil, sounding tragically similar to NATO’s reasoning for intervention in the Kosovo War.

“We have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, conducted in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries [by the West], continues today. They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position,” said Putin in his speech announcing the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula, in 2014.

To counter this Western alliance trend, Russia formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, and Armenia, but notably not Ukraine, which has remained the largest neutral territory between NATO and the CSTO. Through this lens, it is easy to see why Ukraine’s geography will always be a core interest to Moscow.

If Ukraine can be pulled into the CSTO, it pushes Moscow’s defensive lines to the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest and limits its exposure across the North European Plain to Poland’s eastern border. Even though NATO’s Baltic members, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, also lie across the Plain, the CSTO could easily overtake them by encircling them and cutting them off from the rest of NATO, given Belarus’s position to the south.

Conversely, if Ukraine joined NATO, it would push the West’s borders far into the North European Plain and stretch the new CSTO defensive line across 1,500 miles of vulnerable, flat land. What’s more, it would only be 185 miles away from Volgograd, which, if taken, would shut down the entire Volga River and cut off Russia’s prized oil and gas resources. This is actually not an imaginary fear, as it nearly happened during WWII, when Hitler tried to capture the city in what became known as the Battle of Stalingrad.

Belarus, for its part, also has a vested interest in Ukraine not joining NATO, as it would then be surrounded by NATO states on three sides. Russia would likely be unable to defend it should war break out.

In short, Ukraine’s entrance into the CSTO as a member, or at the very least permanent neutrality, is essential to Russia’s defense. Putin, 73 and in power for over 26 years, sees securing Russia’s geographic integrity as both a matter of personal legacy and a way to deliver demonstrable progress for the Russian Federation.

“Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to Russia’s left and right. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilizational space, where Russia unites the civilizational communities of East and West,” said Vladimir Yakunin, a long-time associate of Putin from his KGB days and the head of the Russian Railways, one of the country’s most strategically significant companies.

We now find ourselves being mocked by a tyrant who threatens us with nuclear Armageddon unless he gets what he wants, a “Russky Mir,” which directly translates to a “Russian World.” This means re-gathering all the Russian speakers from the places that once belonged to the Russian tsardom. Acknowledging the role of Western alliances in Putin’s bloody crusade is critical, and a sober perspective on his big-picture strategy is essential to understanding where we go from here. Watching my country be picked apart in this war is unbearable. Watching this happen throughout the world is unthinkable.

Originally published on 16 March 2022 in the Santa Monica Corsair. The text above is the author’s revised version.