In the evening of February 24, 2022, Putin launched military operations against Ukraine. The narrative he has devised is one that captures shaping of a new era in modern international politics. Putin sets forth a long list of reasons, justifications, and historical invocations, to motivate the Russian military troops, to outline his policy vision, to convince the international community of the legitimacy of his war, and to undermine the morals of the Ukrainian public and the Ukrainian armed forces.
“For 30 years,” Putin reminisces in his speech, “we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe.”
“In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic Alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.” Putin demands his people to look back to history to see how Russia, according to him, has been disrespected.
In a familiar confrontational tone, Putin lays out to the international community as well as the Russian citizen the historical path that has led this war. In this article we explore 5 key themes that have emerged from his address that evening, their implications within the context of the Ukrainian conflict, and what they might hold for the future.
1. For Putin, war is unavoidable. Its goals are bigger and sit beyond just a simple geo-political strife over small regions east of Ukraine, where Russian loyalists have been fighting for independence from the Ukrainian Republic.
2. Any sacrifices, whether military or economic, shrink in comparison to the strategic and existential threat posed on the entire Russian Federation by the accelerated Western armament of Ukraine. For Putin, the Slavic neighbour has become a trojan horse for advancing the Western sphere of influence ever closer to Moscow. As he puts it: “the ongoing efforts to gain a military foothold of the Ukrainian territory are unacceptable for us. Of course, the question is not about NATO itself. It merely serves as a tool of US foreign policy. The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape. Fully controlled from the outside, it is doing everything to attract NATO armed forces and obtain cutting-edge weapons.”
In saying this, Putin aims to strip the Ukrainian army of any moral agency, a “mercenary”, a “tool” for the “Western bloc”; or at the very least, amenable to Western influence. Whilst his narrative does not tell the whole picture, Putin is not concerned with telling full truths: he picks a lead that best fits his narrative to deplore both the Ukrainian political regime and army. This has clearly manifested in his rhetoric addressing the Russian media as soon as the operation was launched.
3. Putin’s message is clear: the West’s expansion needs to be stopped. He tells the parable of a victimised Russia, peaceful and patiently taking up with America’s aggressions. “As for our country,” Putin says, “after the disintegration of the USSR, given the entire unprecedented openness of the new, modern Russia, its readiness to work honestly with the United States and other Western partners, and its practically unilateral disarmament, they immediately tried to put the final squeeze on us, finish us off, and utterly destroy us. This is how it was in the 1990s and the early 2000s, when the so-called collective West was actively supporting separatism and gangs of mercenaries in southern Russia.”
It is the US that is standing on the wrong side of history and must deal with the consequences, Putin asserts: “we made yet another attempt to reach agreement with the United States and its allies on the principles of European security and NATO’s non-expansion. Our efforts were in vain. The United States has not changed its position. It does not believe it necessary to agree with Russia on a matter that is critical for us. The United States is pursuing its own objectives, while neglecting our interests.”
And Putin chooses his words carefully. His rhetoric aims to tell a story in which Russia is the wounded victim, and he goes on to “expose” the hidden imperial agendas of the West. He uses strong and charged analogies and adjectives, such as “euphoria”, or “empire of lies” when talking about the US; the West is only working for its own narrow interests, “arrogant”, acting globally with “absolute superiority”, controlled by a group of Western politicians whose aspiration is total “global dominance” with “impunity”.
Putin reminds his putative audience of the invasion of Iraq to illustrate America’s “empire of lies”: “They used the pretext of allegedly reliable information available in the United States about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To prove that allegation, the US Secretary of State held up a vial with white power, publicly, for the whole world to see, assuring the international community that it was a chemical warfare agent created in Iraq. It later turned out that all of that was a fake and a sham, and that Iraq did not have any chemical weapons. Incredible and shocking but true. We witnessed lies made at the highest state level and voiced from the high UN rostrum.”
But for Putin, these lies and deceptions did not end there, but in fact have been inching in on his nation: “This array includes promises not to expand NATO eastwards even by an inch. To reiterate: they have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us. Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent. This type of con-artist behaviour is contrary not only to the principles of international relations but also and above all to the generally accepted norms of morality and ethics. Where is justice and truth here? Just lies and hypocrisy all around.”
However, Putin may have committed a circular fallacy by drawing parallels to the military interventions carried by the United States in the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, to justify his own aggression against Ukraine. As he recalls these examples to demonstrate how the US waged wars illegally without the UN Security Council’s sanction, one cannot help but wonder how Russia’s invasion is any different to these examples, as the Russian military forces use “combat aircraft and missiles in the heart of Europe” to destroy vital infrastructures. Regardless, Putin casts his sweeping conclusion: “Overall, it appears that nearly everywhere, in many regions of the world where the United States brought its law and order, this created bloody, non-healing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism. I have only mentioned the most glaring but far from only examples of disregard for international law.” He explains, perhaps paradoxically, that the operation is set to save the region from a “similar fate” faced by other countries, most notably Syria.
Moreover, he does not miss to address the Russian population who would experience the effects of the economic sanctions first-hand. He describes the Russian population as “decent” and “resilient”; he asks they defend the Motherland against the NATO eastward expansion towards the Russian borders. “We lost confidence for only one moment, but it was enough to disrupt the balance of forces in the world,” he reminds his compatriots.
He asks the nation to recall the sacrifices made by their ancestors defending their Fatherland against the Nazis, and he recalls the nation’s historic glory and the lessons to be learnt from past misfortunes. He warns: “The attempt to appease the aggressor ahead of the Great Patriotic War proved to be a mistake which came at a high cost for our people. In the first months after the hostilities broke out, we lost vast territories of strategic importance, as well as millions of lives. We will not make this mistake the second time. We have no right to do so.”
In addition, Putin prepares the Russian nation for the sacrifices to come, drawing comparisons to the conflict instigated by Western-supported separatist groups right after the collapse of the Soviet Union: “What victims, what losses we had to sustain and what trials we had to go through at that time before we broke the back of international terrorism in the Caucasus! We remember this and will never forget.”
4. Nevertheless, Putin may well realise the challenges awaiting Russia’s economy in the face of draconian Western sanctions. Whilst Russia is home to the second largest military forces in the world according to many intelligence rankings, its economy remains heavily undermined. Acutely aware of the risks looming over the Russian population of yet larger and more severe set of sanctions to that which followed the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Putin seeks to reassure the citizens, almost sounding as though he is already predicting the outcomes of the operation before it had started: “It is true that they have considerable financial, scientific, technological, and military capabilities. We are aware of this and have an objective view of the economic threats we have been hearing, just as our ability to counter this brash and never-ending blackmail. Let me reiterate that we have no illusions in this regard and are extremely realistic in our assessments.
“Today’s Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states. Moreover, it has a certain advantage in several cutting-edge weapons. In this context, there should be no doubt for anyone that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.”
5. Turning to the international community, Putin asserts this war is one that is “just” and “pre-emptive”. Now that Putin has made the case for America’s post-Cold War imperial project and Russia's peacekeeping efforts, he goes to argue there was no other alternative but to go to war: “A military presence in territories bordering on Russia, if we permit it to go ahead, will stay for decades to come or maybe forever, creating an ever mounting and totally unacceptable threat for Russia.
“For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.”
Putin’s address was carefully crafted. On the surface he may seem to be rationalising going to war. Yet, a more careful reading reveals a bigger vision for a “new world”, a world in which Russia assumes its natural position– in Putin’s eyes at least –as a global power and a force to be reckoned with, restoring a bygone glory from a past Soviet era.
