By Jade McGlynn
"Foreign Policy"
In the early hours of February 24, the Kremlin launched a new, large-scale war in the heart of Europe. Images from the suburbs of Ukrainian cities offer a panorama of a chaotic scene: people covered with blankets and sheltered in the basements of buildings, patriotic slogans written on the walls, cries of traumatized children.
In the face of such horror, it is natural to attribute these crimes to a madman, a leader completely detached from reality. Russian President Vladimir Putin's pre-invasion speech, in which he openly declared his desire to recreate the Soviet Union by claiming that it was Vladimir Lenin who invented Ukraine, does not contradict this assessment, at least on the face of it.
History has long been Putin's "language of war," his way of making analogies and justifying Russia's modern aggressions. The Russian government's lies that its current violence against the Ukrainian people is actually just a special operation to "de-Nazify" Ukraine is simply an extension of the Kremlin's claim that after the Euromaidan revolution of 2013-2014, in The "Nazis" came to power in Kiev.
It is hard to accept that the Kremlin really believes its own propaganda, that the Jewish president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Nazi. For a more explanatory narrative, showing some kind of "logic" in the Kremlin's way of thinking, it is more useful to examine another widely used historical analogy for Russia's war against Ukraine: Kosovo and the 1999 NATO bombings. in the then Yugoslavia (Serbia plus Montenegro).
Protecting the local population from genocide, stopping a nationalist government from spiraling out of control, affirming human rights, preventing Nazi-worthy atrocities: These were the core messages in Putin's speech in his declaration of war.
They deliberately mirror the arguments used by NATO leaders for bombing Yugoslavia more than two decades ago. And this is not a coincidence.
In Putin's speech on February 21, the day he announced Russia's recognition of the Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics, the Russian president referred to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and support for Kosovo as a point of support and a justification. According to him, NATO fabricated a fake genocide in Kosovo to legitimize its intervention; and now he is doing the same. This parallelism was not only about setting a precedent, but also about sending a message: if the West can redefine the borders for Kosovo, then we Russians can redefine the borders for the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. Eastern.
The Kremlin's analogies comparing Eastern Ukraine to Kosovo show that the Russian government's goal in Ukraine is to restore the Cold War security architecture so that the West no longer has the exclusive power to redraw borders and changed regimes.
Likewise, Moscow aims to destroy the West's ideological supremacy – the withdrawal of its values from other countries – by claiming that it is based on little more than self-interest and profit. Russia's understanding of NATO's 78-day war against Serbia is completely different from that of many Western countries, which see it as a humanitarian intervention that prevented, and was even a response to, genocide.
If you look at the most popular history portal on the Russian Internet, which is funded by the Kremlin, you will read that the crisis in Kosovo was not caused by the deliberate incitement of nationalist tensions or the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians and others by Slobodan Miloshevic.
Rather, according to the Russians, it was caused by the United States, with the support of NATO and some European Union countries, which were exploiting Russia's post-Soviet weakness and destroying its old ally, Serbia.
Russia has long seen the Balkans as part of its sphere of influence, and its fraternal relations with Serbia have historically been decisive for the exercise of its power in this region. And although Russia contributed to an international effort to send peacekeepers to Kosovo, it openly supported Yugoslav forces there, and even attacked the airport in Pristina, preventing the landing of NATO planes.
Although tactically meaningless, the act was rich in symbolism, conveying Russia's opposition to NATO policy, and a renewed desire to defend its interests. Russia perceived NATO's actions as a deliberate humiliation, and as a denial of Russia's status in the region and beyond.
This view has become more entrenched over the past 23 years, with Putin describing the war as an illegal act by NATO, which deliberately humiliated Russia. And if Kosovo was Russia's lowest point of weakness, with the invasion of Ukraine, we are now witnessing the reversal of the situation.
The Kremlin's continued claims of genocide in Donbass, and the creation of a refugee crisis there by bribing Donbass residents to go to Russia, are seen as attempts to echo the West's actions in Kosovo.
This can also be seen in the Kremlin's military tactics, with attacks across Ukraine on infrastructural, civilian and military targets, as well as during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The Kremlin has long used the collective national trauma caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union to present itself as the avenger of past humiliations.
Using the case of Kosovo in Ukraine, Russia is showing (above all itself) that it has returned to the status of a great power, which is aiming to undo the post-Cold War security architecture, towards a new world order, in instead of revising the current rules.
If, for Putin, Yugoslavia was the first colorful revolution, then Ukraine can be seen as a Russian revolution, as it is trying to undo Ukraine as a state, regardless of the damage it is causing to the people or the social structure of this country.
In the first 24 hours after the invasion, the Western reaction was very strong. Since then, the West has taken drastic action, imposing sanctions on Russia's Central Bank, excluding most Russian banks from the SEIFT system, and providing Ukraine with weapons for its own protection.
But it is hard to see how these measures can change the situation on the ground unless Western countries show Putin that they are willing to take measures against him that have real costs to their economic interests, including a Marshall Plan and sequestration. of assets linked to the Kremlin, and their transfer to the Ukrainian resistance./bota.al
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