THG 23: My Take on One Year of Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Looking back at the public and private debates I engaged in around the subject

So, the war that was supposed to be over by the end of February 2022 is still raging one year on. Moreover, at this point, things look all set to deteriorate as the warring sides dig in for a protracted war. It is now thus worthwhile to look back at the various aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I have written almost a dozen columns on the subject for Nepali media outlets Kantipur and Setopati. In this post, I’ll take stock of all the things that I’ve said about the war over the year. Before that, though, let’s revisit this prescient guest post dealing with this war:

Francesco Sisci: Will Putin lose alone, or will he take Russia with him?

In my columns intended for Nepal’s largely left-leaning audience, I’ve tried to debunk the following claims being endlessly peddled by people in both the left and the far right spectrum of the political field:

1. This is not Russia-Ukraine war but Russia-NATO war and even a prelude to China-NATO confrontation. So, the Ukrainians are the mere pawns and collateral damage in the larger geopolitical game.

2. Vladimir Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine last year this month after his ‘legitimate security concerns’ were ignored by the West. So, Russia and Putin are not to blame for the loss of lives in this protracted war; those who forced his hand to the war are. As such, the same people whose wars led to death of millions in Iraq and Afghanistan have no business of lecturing Putin on human rights.

3. Russia is, despite fighting against the military might of Europe and North America, winning this war, even though more slowly than expected.

My pushback against the leftist and far rightist claims about this war, though, was not limited to media outlets. I’ve had some of the most somber arguments about the war through email exchanges with some scholars. Here are some excerpts of my arguments in those emails:

(On NATO being a bigger threat to world peace than Russia, Early August 2022)

They may have a huge arsenal but NATO as an entity was almost dead between 2016 and 2020 with Trump at White House. Now the whole organization can be easily held hostage by a member like Turkey. US, the decisive force in NATO could not even dislodge Nicolas Maduro from power in Venezuela, the US's backyard, when it genuinely tried. Every single NATO member is now fumbling to prevent mass unrest caused by high prices unleashed by Putin's war among others. China is rapidly closing the gap in its military might with the US and NATO.

There were times when NATO could savagely bomb Yugoslavia without fear of any retribution. But can you imagine that today? They bombed Hussein and Gaddafi but the result were so horrifying for every side including themselves that the world has changed forever and they have weakened themselves substantially precisely through those misadventures.

Do you think Joe Biden--who cannot convince a senator from his own party to support his policy agenda and faces electoral drubbing right now--can summon the NATO alliance to anything looking like 'beating the entire world to submission and death', even if he wants to? Besides, I believe the Bush-Blair delusion about changing the world through bombing has passed in every single NATO country.

Instead, many NATO countries like Italy are now bracing with the possibility of pro-Putin far-rightists getting power like in Hungary.

This debate was triggered by a piece that I wrote in Kantipur revising the blood-stained history of the Russians all the way from Stalin’s regime . In the piece I have quoted philosopher Slavoj Zizek from his The Guardian piece ‘Pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine.

In the same email debate I link Zizek’s arguments like this:

First, as Zizek clearly does in his piece, I too reiterate that the US-led invasion of Iraq, executed by NATO, was wrong and unjust. It had devastating consequences. I was outraged by it then and I am outraged by the memory of it now. I have never wished it away and there is no question of any sane person praising it, given every outcome it led to.

The problem with the evolving pro-Putin leftist-far rightist coalition is that it argues as if the injustice and excesses from one side justify the other. Their simplistic message is this: NATO killed innocent people; Putin is killing innocent people, so it is sad but justifiable or at least tolerable.

I know you do not subscribe to this and have always regretted the loss of lives in Ukraine. But many in the left and far right section of political spectrum do. The leftists among them are reassured when people like Chomsky and Lula speak along same lines; the rightists when people like Bolsonaro or Viktor Orban do. Either way, it bolsters the position of Putin in the global public debate and psychological warfare about the ongoing war.

Mix that with the massive overestimation of NATO prowess and we are likely to head further in wrong direction about the emerging world order with China at the helm.

As time passed, the brutality of Putin’s invasion grew. Our debates became less frequent. Exasperated with Putin’s endless onslaught and the deafening silence from the left on the evolving situation, I pressed on with my arguments:

(Early January 2023)

Putin's latest assault on the civilian infrastructure in Ukraine--so as to kill as many Ukrainians as possible by freezing--surpasses even the grimmest of milestones in this gory invasion.

But I think that is not quite surprising. What surprises me more is the apparent persistence of the conviction among the Left camp across the world that, somehow, Putin is still the victim of 'NATO'--forced to bomb Ukraine to 'save Russia'--and not a bona fide aggressor.

I have now come to suspect that the groupthink among the leftists may be a direct result of their Stalinist thirst for blood, nurtured by a pathological need to justify a narrative whatever the facts, just as Stalin and Mao did during their reigns.

If they had any sense of justice and humanity they claim to have all along, and indeed to monopolize, they would have woken from the delusional stupor they are in. I think the scholarship of Chomsky is also a mere veil upon his deeply flawed and calcified views on a changing world in which he is ready to provide a murderous dictator the dignity of a victim.

I now suspect that from Lenin to Stalin, Mao to Pol Pot, Castro to Sung, Prachanda to Biplab, they have never been sincere about really working for the poor and downtrodden. Most of the leftist scholars have done a great disservice to people by providing a cover of respectability for the murderous rampages they've instigated to attain and retain power.

I had some other email exchanges on the subject which were, though, much more friendly. Here is a part of the statement from one of the other scholars I was corresponding with:

(Aprill 2022)

Yes, there are many double standards in the world, and liberal democracies have their flaws, of course. 

However, two wrongs don't make a right. 

The fact that the US and other western countries have done bad things in the past cannot justify the horrific destruction that Putin has unleashed in Ukraine. 

Compared to the unjust actions of the West, the Russian war on Ukraine falls into a different category -- as it is completely unprovoked, disproportionate, and poses the threat of a nuclear conflagration, possibly even a 3^rd World War. No wonder, Russia was completely isolated in the UNGA with only 4 odious dictatorial regimes supporting its actions -- Belarus, Eritrea, Syria & DPRK.

And unlike Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. the impact of the war in Ukraine is global -- with the food & energy supply & prices impacting the whole world. 

I couldn't agree more with you that the genuine & legitimate aspirations of the people of Ukraine, the Baltics and Balkans cannot be subservient to Russia's self-declared "legitimate" security concerns & sphere of influence.

For Nepali speakers among you, here are my pieces about the war:

In Setopati:

युक्रेनीहरूलाई किन ज्यानभन्दा स्वतन्त्रता प्यारो? (Why freedom is dearer than life for the Ukrainians)

रूसलाई यसरी बर्बाद पारे पुटिनले (This is how Putin devastated Russia)

किन एक ठाउँ उभिँदै छन् विश्वभरका वामपन्थी र उग्र दक्षिणपन्थीहरू? (Why is the left standing with the far right globally?)

क्रूर रूस, बहादुर युक्रेन र मनकारी छिमेकी (Brutal Russia, Brave Ukraine and the Hospitable Neighbors)

युक्रेन युद्धको भूराजनीतिः दोष रूसको कि नेटोको? (Geopolitics of Ukraine war: Is it Russia’s guilt or NATO’s?)

In Kantipur:

वामपन्थीहरूको अस्तित्वको संकट (The Left’s existential crisis)

स्टालिनको बर्बरता दोहोर्‍याउँदै पुटिन (How Putin is repeating the Stalinist brutality)

युक्रेन युद्धमा अनुदार विश्वव्यवस्थाको झलक (A glimpse of illiberal world order in Ukraine conflict)

युवा-सपनामाथि पुटिनको प्रतिबन्ध (Putin bans the dreams of the youth)

I am not in a position to compile the list of relevant reading materials from among the hundreds of them that I’ve gone through over the year. But some names of analysts who stand out and deserve a mention here are: Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic (whose anthology of essays ‘Twilight of Democracy’ was among the books I read this year), the analyst Fiona Hill, the philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the historian Yuval Noah Harari and THG guest author Francesco Sisci.

Special mention in this post belongs to the Ukraine SITREP room in clubhouse that ran continuously for many months under the The Big Picture club set up by Pyotr Kurzin. It was in that room that we could listen to the Ukrainian and Russian voices firsthand from the ground. Listening to ordinary people from Poland, Romania, Britain, Germany, Australia, India, the US and many other countries in the room was a very effective way to learn how the conflict was impacting people from various parts of the world.

One voice of a lady from Russia, in particular, showed us the devastating toll the loss of faith in media caused by the war propaganda—and the ecosystem of fake or skewed news in general—was taking. She would not welcome the war but would not repudiate it either. She doubted the veracity of the side of the story given by Russian state media but thought that the information ecosystem in the so called ‘free’ west was equally dubious and untrustworthy. To sum up, she had grown so cynical that she would trust nobody and no institution.

My own sole contact inside Russia, a friend whom I’d first met in a trip to India and had followed up with email exchanges, stopped replying to me after a couple of short and terse exchanges during the early months of the war.

With this, let’s end this post and brace for a sharp escalation in fighting during the upcoming spring offensives of the war with all the devastating outcomes including a further wave of rise in living costs, poverty, hunger and so on. In the meantime, let’s also hope this conflagration does not lead to an even broader conflict and the fighting comes to an end at the earliest.