Why Is Putin Succumbing To His Fury On Ukraine?

When viewed through the eyes of Putin and most Russian nationalists, who see the current "Ukrainian Crisis" as a proxy war, Ukraine; It is seen as an integral part of Russia in historical perspective. The fact that the foundations of Russian culture were laid in today's Kiev between 882-1240, especially the Russian population living in the east of Ukraine; Today, it causes Ukraine to be seen as the Russian homeland for Russians. These facts constitute the emotional and legitimating justification for the Russian interest in Ukraine. From a foreign policy point of view, the crucial point of the issue is the fact that "if it loses Ukraine, Russia will never have the chance to re-establish its global imperial past". For this reason, Putin wants to continue the old world's superpower policies and says, "You broke the Soviets, it wasn't enough, now it's the turn of the Russian Federation?" he can't help himself from saying it.

When Russian leader Putin appeared before the press last week, he answered 55 questions in total. He emphasized that he did not see Ukraine as a separate state, and that this country, which was administratively recognized as a separate state during the Lenin period, was in fact no different from other Russian lands. Stating that the people of Donbas, which is a part of Ukraine, have the right to determine their own future, Putin implied that there may be ruptures from the countries that broke away from the Soviet Union (in favor of the Russian Federation), just as in the disintegration in 1991.

Indeed, the majority of Russians see the Ukrainian people of Slavic origin as their own, find it strange that they behave as a separate nation, and therefore they state that they see this country as an artificial state. Vladimir Putin; “Ukraine is not even a country. He did not hesitate to say that half of it is Eastern European land, and the other half is given by us. This sentence, uttered by Putin, actually summarizes the Russian view of Ukraine and the current Ukraine Crisis.

As it is known, the USA after the Cold War; He tried to draw a harmonious foreign policy and power framework for the Russian Federation, the remnant of the Soviets. In the new order, the "US-Russian Federation Strategic Partnership" framework was established in 1993. Thus, the parties have adopted in principle not to interfere with each other's spheres of influence. After the USSR, the final zone of influence of Russia was mapped and accepted by the USA. In a sense, it has been accepted that as long as it does not go beyond this sphere of influence reserved for it, Russia, which is no longer communist, will not be "different" from other leading European countries in terms of American world policy and will not be "considered as a threat". While the Russians recognized America's global hegemony, the Americans declared that they recognized Russia's potential hegemony over a piece of the world made up of their former units.

Russia in this “small” playing field left to it; He proclaimed the "near environment doctrine" in February 1993. Putin, who inherited this doctrine in 2000; Eurasian domination, Russian nationalism and the "near environment doctrine", which he saw as the mainstay of his imperial strategy, deemed it necessary to cling to the claim that the former Soviet lands were a vital area of ​​interest for Russia. Moscow, which gains strength every year with Putin's policies; It has made it a priority policy to raise the issue that it cannot stay away from the developments in its immediate surroundings and that it will protect the rights of up to tens of millions of Russian citizens outside the Russian territory.

By 2004, Russia-US relations started to enter into less cooperation and more competition dimensions. As the geography of this new competition, Georgia and Ukraine have been implicitly determined between the parties. In Ukraine, as a result of the US-Russia conflict, Russian politicians predicted that if pro-Western cadres came to power, Ukraine would go a long way in joining the EU and NATO, and Russia's relations with Ukraine would deteriorate. To prevent this, the pro-Russian Yanukovych was openly supported by Moscow in the 2004 elections. However, Yushchenko's becoming the head of state after the Orange Revolution, which is alleged to be America-supported; It has negatively affected the Ukraine-Russia relations. Despite this, Russia managed to keep Ukraine partially on its own line at that time by using its energy card.

In this context, Putin has made playing the "energy security" card an essential element of his strategy in order to rebuild a strong Russia. Putin has made it his principle to act with the idea that “wherever Russian pipelines go, Russian power can reach there”. Today, this approach of Moscow is clearly seen even in the Nord Stream-2 project.

Ukraine; connecting Russia to Europe in all aspects, especially energy transmission lines, It is a key country of great geopolitical importance for Russia. Russia, which does not allow this country to go out of its sphere of influence; It does not want to compromise its approach to protect its influence over Ukraine by using its “energy card”. In addition to the energy card, the Russian presence living in the eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine, especially in Crimea, and reaching 24% in the general population, allowed Russia to intervene in the internal affairs of Ukraine and expand its influence in the policies of this country when necessary.

As it is understood, the Russian-American hegemon-sub-hegemon spheres of influence sharing in 1993 is not sufficient for Putin today. Putin, who thinks that he has taken control of the Russian natural habitat; It strives to keep Ukraine in the status of a buffer zone between NATO and the EU and Russia. After the fall of the pro-Russian government of Yanukovych in February 2014 and the subsequent strong signs that the new government would be pro-Western, Putin; found it necessary to seize the situation by turning to indirect hard power policies. Seeing the developments in Ukraine as an organized action against a legitimate government from the very beginning and evaluating the process as a coup d'état, Russia thought that it was time to activate its own "punitive method" against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russia has always believed that the West was behind the protests against the Russian-backed legitimate government that started at the end of 2013. He saw the Washington-Brussels axis as the trigger of the crisis. It has been claimed by Moscow that the square protests were directed by the American Embassy in Kiev. In the final analysis, Russia described the removal of the legitimate head of state in Kiev as a blow to Russian interests.

On the other hand, Putin closely saw the difficulty of bringing a pro-Russian government back to power in Ukraine, and thus used 'military power' instead of 'economic power'. In the first stage, Putin annexed Crimea. Thus, by taking this peninsula, he ensured that the Russian naval base would remain with him and captured the starting point he needed to land in the Mediterranean. With this military operation, he further increased the pressure on Kiev. After Kiev, backed by American support, announced that it would continue the military struggle for the rest of the country, Putin moved to the second phase of his policy towards Ukraine. In this context, it started to support the pro-Russian supporters in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts with covert military aid and concentrated Russian military power in the region in order to prevent the Ukrainian government forces from entering these two regions.

Russia hopes to re-establish control over Ukraine and regain its former imperial power status. It has started to be seen as vital for Moscow to completely exclude the possibility of Ukraine's membership to NATO and even EU membership from the agenda of Ukrainian politics. He calculates that if Russia loses its influence over Ukraine, it will be excluded from Europe and reduced to a regional power on an Asian scale.

Moreover, it has been a priority for Moscow not to allow the "rise of Ukraine" as Ukraine is seen as a model as an alternative to the current Russian governance model. In the face of a stable, independent, democratic and economically developed Ukraine model, it is considered that the survival of Putin's Russia, which is the implementer of authoritarian state capitalism governed by guided democracy, may become problematic.

Trying to influence American policies with his concentration in the Donbas region on the Ukrainian border, Putin openly repeated in his last press conference that he actually did not want war. Indirectly blaming the United States, Putin implied that he wanted to use the Ukraine Crisis as a bargaining chip in order to stop the US deploying its missiles in the Russian habitat. According to the statements made by NATO, the American and Russian talks will be held on January 12, 2022, in line with the "requests" submitted by the Russians to the American side after the Biden-Putin meeting on 8 December. Instead of saying "no" to all of the Russian requests, the USA hopes that the Ukraine Crisis will be resolved in the field of diplomacy and that the Russian presence on the border will be reduced to a reasonable level in the meantime. Russian diplomacy, under the experienced foreign politician Lavrov, has turned to the strategy of reaching the closest result to its traditional power-based interests.

The possibility of a win-win solution between the parties seemed on the horizon. However, the statements that the approach of "Ukraine will not be made a member of NATO" is not accepted by NATO, despite Russian wishes, has started to dominate the Western world in recent days. Probably with the effect of this, Putin's uncontrollable, angry anti-American outbursts in the last days, who managed to bring the American side to the table, made something happen. It can also be read as an indication that it is not gone.