Full disclosure: I am a supporter of NATO – having spent weeks, in total, patrolling its European borders and playing in its war games. And I was a fan of Mikhail Gorbachev, having worked for him in Moscow when he tried to introduce his country’s newspapers to the idea of a ‘free press’.
Neither of which means that my views on Ukraine are worth any more than many others who have written on the subject. But it may mean that I have at least as good an insight as some of them about the Russians, and Vladimir Putin.
And the first thing we need to understand about ‘Vlad the Invader’ is that his concern was not about NATO (which he rightly fears) but about democracy. He sees the idea of a former Soviet state, able to communicate in its own terms with the EU, as a threat to his plan to reinstate the USSR as a mighty empire. It is, after all, the biggest country on earth, covering 11 time zones. To Putin, it should include the millions of former citizens who were given freedom to rule themselves by Gorbachev.
Why he feared NATO became clear as soon as his invasion started. His planned blitzing of Ukraine targets stalled when it quickly became apparent that his aircraft were easy targets for hand-held missiles on the ground; that his tanks could be destroyed by a single shell and that his ground forces had an inept command structure, no re-supply system for ammunition (or food) and an unwillingness to obey orders.
In other words, his armed forces do not represent the threat that we – in our annual Blue versus Orange (we were not allowed to be ‘Red’) NATO exercises – assumed to be the ‘enemy’ capability.
Few know that after Gorbachev had met President George H. Bush in Malta in 1989 (or, rather, on board the Soviet cruiser SS Maxim Gorky, anchored in a stormy sea off Marsaxlokk Harbour) the Russian president talked about joining NATO.
Putin’s concern was not about NATO but about democracy- Revel Barker
A lesser known fact is that Putin raised the possibility of NATO membership with President Bill Clinton in 2000 and a NATO-Russia council was created two years later, meaning that the two sides could at least talk to each other on a civil basis.
So, no: the invasion was not about Ukraine buddying up to the allies, so much as its having the freedom to do so, even if actual membership was not an option. Putin has learnt quickly how much the West (call it NATO if you like because it is most of it) will do to support an independent non-aligned nation from the outside.
What he wants is his empire – the one in which he grew up – back. The nations of what we now call ‘the former Soviet Union’ should not have self-rule: they should be ruled by him.
The man certainly has charisma. He wowed US President George W. Bush and was best friends with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had grown up in East Germany while Putin was stationed there as a KGB officer. Even Gorbachev had seen him, originally, as a democrat and the former great pacifist had formed his own democratic party to play along in elections that Putin would be expected to win fairly.
But the boy from what was then called Leningrad will be 70 in October. He wants his place in the history books. How will he be remembered, now? For one thing, he has certainly re-energised NATO. He has also ended Swiss neutrality, and German pacifism, and reinvigorated the EU.
In doing so, he has wrecked the Russian economy, possibly for ever, and caused the massive emigration of thousands of educated (and very rich) citizens.
He wanted his ‘Russian’ sheep back inside the fold. But what he has done, in his megalomania, is to ensure the concept that he believed was Gorbachev’s great mistake: he has confirmed Ukraine as a nation.
Perhaps equally important, he has exposed his armed forces as unfit for purpose. In next year’s NATO war games, the Orange side can just go to the nearest pub. Operation Orange Squash, they can call it.