What does Vladimir Putin really want

18th-century Russian Empress Catherine the Great once famously said, “I have no way of expanding my borders except by protecting them.” Under his reign, the empire continued to grow, including New Russia (the region north of the Black Sea, now part of Ukraine), Crimea, the Caucasus, Belarus, and the Baltic regions. Empress Catherine, like many of her predecessors, saw a Russia, surrounded by ambitious powers, vulnerable to external threats. And his axiom has remained a guiding principle for many of his famous successors, from Joseph Stalin, who defeated the Nazis and expanded Soviet borders, to Vladimir Putin, who annexed Crimea in 2014 and now borders Ukraine with nearly 100,000 Soldiers have been mobilized. ,

Russia, the world’s largest country by land mass, lacks natural borders except for the Arctic Ocean in the north and the Pacific in the Far East. Its vast land range extends from Northern Europe to Central and North East Asia. The country’s stronghold, running from St Petersburg to Moscow to the Volga region, lies in the plains and is vulnerable to attacks. There is practically no natural barrier that would prevent an invading army from reaching the Russian heartland from its western borders (Europe). Over the past two centuries, Russia has seen two devastating invasions from the West – the 1812 invasion by Napoleonic France and the 1941 invasion by Nazi Germany. Russia defeated them both, but after suffering heavy material and human losses. After World War II, Russia re-established its control of the Rim lands in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which it hoped would protect its heartland. But the dissolution of the Soviet Union upset its security calculations, deepening its historical insecurities. This insecurity is the source of what historian Stephen Kotkin calls the “defensive aggression” of Russian President Putin.

editorial | Talking to Russia: On Putin and NATO

NATO’s endless expansion

When the Soviet Union collapsed, which Mr Putin called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, Russia lost more than three million square kilometers of sovereign territory. The entire Rim land was gone, and the Heartland was vulnerable to future dangers. In the last months of the Soviet Union, to calm the nerves of a badly bruised but still breathing Russian bear, the West promised that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “would not extend an inch to the East”. “. The United States and the United Kingdom reiterated the pledge after the collapse of the Soviet Union. But despite the promises, NATO continued to expand. In March 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (all members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact) joined NATO, in an expansion for the first time since the end of the Cold War. Five years later, seven more countries – including the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which share borders with Russia – were taken into the alliance. Russia saw this as a direct challenge to its security. If in the early 1990s, NATO’s border with Russia was limited to the northern strip of Norway, now, the distance from NATO’s Estonian border to Saint Petersburg, the second most populous city in Russia that used to be the tsarist capital, Less than 160 kms.

Russia felt threatened but was not able to respond. For Mr. Putin, who in 2000 inherited a weak state with a weak economy and a directionless foreign policy, the first task was to fix the state. But in 2008, when the US promised Georgia and Ukraine membership at the Bucharest summit, Russia, which was coming out of a post-Soviet retreat, reacted overwhelmingly. For the Kremlin, both Ukraine and Georgia are important to its national security calculations. The distance from the Ukrainian border to Moscow is less than 500 kilometers. NATO has already come close to St. Petersburg. And if Ukraine joins the coalition, the heartland will be in even more danger.

Also, take a look at the Black Sea, which was seen by traditional Russian rulers as a Russian lake. Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, all Black Sea Basin countries, are members of NATO. Ukraine and Georgia are the other countries that share the Black Sea coast apart from Russia. Russia was already feeling squeezed at its entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, on the Black Sea front. If Ukraine and Georgia also join NATO, Russia fears that its dominance over the Black Sea will end. So, in 2008, Mr. Putin sent troops to Georgia over the separatist conflict in South Ossetia and Abkhazia; And in 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly regime was toppled by pro-Western protesters, he moved to annex the Crimean peninsula, expanding Russia’s Black Sea coast, thereby protecting his fleet based in Sevastopol in Crimea. Hui. It was Mr Putin’s loudest statement that Russia was ready to take unconventional measures to halt NATO expansion in its backyard.

restore rim land

In recent years, Mr. Putin has tried to turn every crisis in the former Soviet region into a geopolitical opportunity for Russia. South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the self-declared republics that broke away from Georgia, are controlled by Russian-backed forces. In Ukraine, the eastern Donbass region is in the hands of pro-Russian rebels. In 2020, when protests erupted in Belarus following a controversial presidential election, Mr Putin sent aid to the country to restore order. In the same year, Russia sent thousands of “peacekeeping troops” to end the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, re-establishing its strategic dominance in the Caucasus. Earlier this year, Belarus’s leader Alexander Lukashenko, backed by Mr Putin, created a migrant crisis on the Polish border of the EU. And this month, as violent unrest broke out in Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest and richest country, its leader turned to Russia for help, and a willing Mr. Putin immediately sent troops (the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or Under the banner of CSTO) ) to quell the protest.

The current geopolitical realities also favor Russia. The humiliating US withdrawal from Afghanistan has deepened the Central Asian republics into Russian embrace. While Europe has been vocal in its rhetorical opposition to Russia’s aggressive moves, it is heavily dependent on Russian gas, which limits its response. Furthermore, the inability of the West to inflict any serious damage on Russia on Crimea has further enraged Mr. Putin.

defensive aggression

For years, the West, the winner of the Cold War, discounted Mr. Putin as a languid tactician who doesn’t understand strategy. Mr Biden called him a “killer” after taking office last year. But while the West’s response to Russia lost what academic Walter Russell Mead called “a heady fog of grand fanfare”, Mr. Putin was relentlessly rebuilding lost Russian influence in the Rim lands. By destabilizing Georgia and Ukraine and re-establishing Russia’s hold in Belarus, the Caucasus and Central Asia, Moscow has effectively stopped NATO’s further expansion into its backyard. The West can no longer ignore him. Rather, it faces an urgent question of how to stop it as Russia prepares for its next action on Ukraine.

After failing to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, NATO is unlikely to go to war with Russia over Ukraine. The Kremlin also knows this. One weapon readily available to Western policymakers is greater economic sanctions. But Mr. Putin, who has already deepened Russia’s ties with China, a Cold War rival, is willing to pay the economic price to meet his strategic goals, to strike a balance against the economic coercion of the West. , whatever happens. This sets the stage for an ongoing crisis in the Russian Rim land. Putin’s defensive offensive will continue until the West re-establishes its resistance.

stanly.johny@thehindu.co.in