Democracy as a Security Threat

One of the most common arguments among those who place the blame for the war in Ukraine on all sides is the belief that Vladimir Putin launched the attack on the neighbouring country because he felt threatened. I share that opinion, but I do not agree with the claim that this sense of threat was caused by the West and the alleged alliance between NATO and Ukraine, which supposedly aimed to bring Ukraine into the North Atlantic Alliance and NATO to Russia's borders. Based on evidence, I am convinced that on February 24, Putin attacked Ukraine because he judged that even the possibility of a European, economically successful, corruption- and oligarch-free, and democratic future for Ukraine represented a serious threat to his regime. Far from being close to that ideal before February 24 of this year, it was nevertheless evident that the majority of citizens were determined that this was the future they wanted for themselves and their children. Ukrainian democracy, though weak and imperfect, gave them the opportunity to fight for such a future. Putin simply could not allow that. What if Russian citizens started looking across the border and comparing themselves to the "khokhols," as they pejoratively call their Ukrainian neighbours? And began to realize that even in this part of Europe, a different destiny was possible than the one the omnipotent Kremlin leader has been peddling for over two decades.

The chatter about how the West betrayed and threatened Russia often centers on alleged promises about NATO's non-expansion eastward and disputes over who respected the Minsk agreements least. But understanding the full picture of complex relations between the West and the Russian Federation requires a broader view that includes the dynamics of those relations over the past thirty years. Indeed, there has been a trend of increasing tensions, especially in the last decade, but the primary responsibility for this lies in the Kremlin.

In 1994, as a greenhorn diplomat, I found myself by duty in the room at NATO headquarters in Brussels where the North Atlantic Council meets. What struck me most was the workers installing a new interpreter booth—for the Russian language. The definitive end of the Cold War, I thought. Another optimistic sentiment from the post-Berlin Wall era that aged poorly after the turn of the millennium. Nevertheless, that memory from almost thirty years ago is relevant for understanding today's relations between Russia and the West. I was far from alone in believing that the decades of tension and cold conflict were finally behind us. Many politicians on both sides of the former Iron Curtain believed the same. In Brussels and other European capitals, as well as in Moscow, there was a prevailing belief that from then on, the West and Russia would no longer be adversaries, but partners.

A year later, I began working at the Council of Europe, just under two months before the Russian Federation joined that European organization for the protection of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights. Upon joining, Russia's top officials, including President Yeltsin, signed a letter pledging that henceforth they would not threaten or harass anyone and that any internal or external conflicts would be resolved peacefully. This belief in mutual friendship and cooperation extended to the military sphere as well.

In May 1997, then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana and Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov signed the "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation, and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation." This happened at a time when the accession of the first Eastern European and Baltic states was already underway. The Russians didn’t like it, but it was more a matter of prestige and grievance—"why expand if we are friends and allies?" The Baltic states clearly didn’t want to take the neighbour at its word. Today, it's clear they were right.

Things only went downhill after the millennium. On December 31, 1999, President Yeltsin stepped down and appointed Vladimir Putin as his successor. The romance with the West was irrevocably over. What followed was a bloody second war in Chechnya, and in the summer of 2008, Russia attacked Georgia.

Nevertheless, until recently, there were no NATO military bases or troops under NATO command near Russia's European borders. That changed only after Russia occupied Crimea, when in 2016 NATO decided to deploy forces in the Baltic states and Poland. After this year’s Russian invasion of the rest of Ukraine, NATO decided to form additional multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia.

Even Ukraine's possible NATO membership, which had no realistic prospect before this February, would not have marked a turning point in NATO expansion to Russia’s borders. Norway has been a founding NATO member, the Baltic states and Poland joined in 1999, and soon Finland will join as well. All these countries border Russia, but (at least for now), Russia has not launched any "special military operations" to protect its security there.

Ukraine is clearly the exception. As I said, because the reasons lie elsewhere. This piece is neither a tribute to nor an apology for NATO, which has its own baggage. I do not deny the alliance’s past sins, but I maintain that threatening the Russian Federation is not one of them. There is ample historical evidence that the Russian bear is willing to tolerate much within its self-proclaimed sphere of influence—except democracy.

Analogies with the past can be loose, but not in this case. Putin's view of Russia and its place in the world is quite simplistic. He sees the main reason for all crises and especially for the loss of Russian power and influence in the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The main goal of his policy is to restore the previous state, repeating only slightly adapted patterns of behaviour from former Soviet imperialists. The ideological foundation is no longer Kremlin-style communism or socialism, but Putin's newly fashioned nationalist, anti-liberal paradigm, which—in alliance with the top of the Russian Orthodox Church—peddles nonsense about the spiritual purity and superiority of the Russian people. Supposedly, that justified the attack on Ukraine as the only way to defend the Russian people from the paedophilic decadence of the rotten and corrupt West.

British historian Tony Judt, in his monumental "Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945," describes in detail the thinking of Soviet leaders in the days leading up to the Soviet army’s bloody suppression of the Hungarian uprising in the autumn of 1956. Until the very end, there was a willingness to grant some of Prime Minister Imre Nagy’s demands, including the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. On October 31, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee even expressed readiness for such negotiations. What tipped the scale was not Nagy’s declaration of Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and neutrality, but the announcement of a multi-party system. The Kremlin would not tolerate that, fearing that demands to end the Communist Party's monopoly could spread to the USSR and its satellites.

The similarity to Putin's actions regarding Ukraine is obvious. What if Soviet citizens and their comrades on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain began looking at the Hungarians and realizing that a different fate was possible in that part of Europe too?

Putin tried to replay the Hungarian pattern in the fall of 2013, when he pressured then-Ukrainian President Yanukovych to revoke, at the last minute, the signing of the EU Association Agreement in favour of closer ties with Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. What followed was a citizen uprising and the Maidan revolution. Yanukovych eventually fled to Russia, and Putin took revenge by orchestrating conflict in eastern Ukraine and, weeks later, occupying and illegally annexing Crimea.

No story, and certainly no revolution, is black and white—Maidan included. I recently spoke with Ukrainian historian Georgiy Kasianov from the University of Lublin, who was critical of the role nationalists played in those dramatic days but was unequivocal in stating that provocateurs were a minority and that the vast majority of protesters took to the streets to demand a democratic future for their country, based on human rights, political freedoms, and the rule of law. This balance of power was also clearly reflected in all subsequent Ukrainian elections, in which nationalist and far-right parties fared significantly worse than in many EU countries. I should note that Kasianov expressed strong disagreement with the claim that the Ukrainian revolution was a Western-organized and financed conspiracy.

Without understanding the background and real reasons behind Russian aggression against Ukraine, we will not find a path to ending the war and stabilizing Europe. Concessions based on the "sense of threat" felt by paranoid populist authoritarianism and imperialism can only perpetuate conflict.

Putin creates and inflames a sense of external threat because it is a key tool for maintaining power. In the name of "external danger," he enacts and justifies exceptional measures against political opposition, critical media, civil society, and anyone who dares question the wisdom and authority of the Great Leader. Putin's war is a war against democracy, both at home and in the neighbourhood. The real security guarantees Russia and its citizens need are those that protect them from the destructiveness of their current leadership. But no one can provide those guarantees from the outside. The changes Russia needs will have to come from within.