Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine a foreseeable event that could have been predicted by the past actions of Vladimir Putin, a war plan that had been hanging in his head for years?

Or is it a terrible break with that past, the result of Putin’s separation from reality during two years of pandemic isolation?

Analysts, politicians, security and military experts are now arguing about it.

“I wouldn’t succumb to the temptation to look back and say, ‘We missed something that was obvious all along. It wasn’t obvious,” said Ben Noble, professor of Russian politics at University College London and co-author of “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?

“And that’s why a lot of people are shocked, not only internationally, but also domestically, including members of the political and economic elite in Russia.”

Precious N Chatterje-Doody, professor of politics and international studies at the Open University, UK and author of “Russia Today and Conspiracy Theories”, also believes that it is wrong to place a grand premeditated plan in Putin’s actions.

“One of the constant characteristics of Putin’s leadership of the state has been that he likes to blur things and have multiple options. And looking back, he looks like a master chess player who had it all planned out from the start,” she said. “I don’t think that’s generally true. I think he’s a pragmatist. So he has several options. It keeps people guessing. And then he kind of reacts to situations as they happen.

It is impossible to read Putin’s mind. But Chatterje-Doody, Noble and other political scientists, journalists and writers, who have studied the country’s politics closely, identify the political forces in Russia that the Putin government harnessed to build the authoritarian state we see today. . Here is the breakdown.

Why does Putin claim there are powerful Nazis in Ukraine?

“This is often misunderstood in the West, especially since Russia has never taken into account its totalitarian past, with massive repressions in the 1930s under Stalin, basically a genocide of its own people,” said Olga Khvostunova, Russian journalist and researcher at the Institute of Modern Russia, New York.

Instead, Putin began to point out that Russia is a descendant of the mighty Soviet Union, the regime that saved the world from Nazism and crafted its rhetoric around it, especially during times when it suffered from political unpopularity, Khvostunova said.

Instead of offering a unifying vision of the future that could lead to a better post-Soviet Russia, Putin recycled the past. “What he offered as a unifying platform for Russians was the vision of the past, which is, by the way, a very important part of fascist ideology – the great past that we need to restore,” he said. Khvostunova.

Putin’s campaign focused on glorifying the Soviet regime’s victory over Nazism, but distorted or downplayed the story of mass repressions and massacres.

“It’s basically the idea that Soviet soldiers paid for the liberation of the world from the Nazis and with their own blood, and that’s used as a sort of constant refrain. It’s like a key feature of national identity contemporary Russian,” Chatterje-Doody said.

Diverting contemporary events into World War II tropes has also been a key part of Putin’s narrative of the invasion of Ukraine. Like the most effective political propaganda, it has sometimes resonated because it contains a grain of truth. During the 2014 pro-democracy protests in Kyiv that toppled a pro-Russian president and the ensuing war in the eastern Donbass region, neo-Nazist-aligned military units like the Azov Battalion were part of the Ukrainian National Guard. In the 2019 elections, Ukraine’s far-right could not even garner enough votes to enter parliament, and a Jewish comedian was elected president in a landslide victory.

“What better way to cast doubt on the dominant narrative in the West than to choose genuinely true information and make it sound more meaningful than it is,” Chatterje-Doody said.

Strengthening the state against foreign interference

Since 2012, Russia has had a law that allows the government to label NGOs and individuals receiving funds from abroad as “foreign agents”, obliging them to declare each of their purchases in stores.

This legislation is fueled by a narrative of foreign interference that holds outside powers responsible for destabilizing the country.

“By claiming that the national opposition is a traitor, the authorities can turn around and say, ‘You are members of the opposition, but you are acting as agents of the West. You are traitors. You are not members of the loyal opposition,” explained Noble, a professor at University College London.

But it is in the last two years that the law has been applied much more aggressively against independent Russian journalists and newsrooms like Meduza, TV Rain and Mediazona.

Noble said the underlying message to the Russian population is powerful. “You are not a critical independent journalist pointing to the real problems of the country. You are creating false narratives and you are being paid and supported by people in the West. And the goal, your goal and those of your payers, the puppeteers, is to undermine the country.

Protecting “traditional values”

The government’s repressive turn has crystallized in campaigns against the LGBTQ community, portraying them as liberals bent on destroying “traditional family values”. In 2013, Putin criminalized the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”.

Putin’s “anti-awakening” has built support among right-wing and conservative politicians and influencers internationally. Russia has become the major power behind the World Congress of Families – a network of right-wing Christians opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion. Putin has close ties to far-right European politicians, including Marine Le Pen of France’s National Rally party, former Italian deputy prime minister and leader of Italy’s far-right League party Matteo Salvini , and Milos Zeman, the President of the Czech Republic.

“It’s a pretty savvy communication strategy in many ways because this anti-political correctness or anti-revival movement is actually gaining a lot of traction in the West, especially online,” Chatterje-Doody said. “And when you look at how the Russian regime tries to use the online environment – sowing the seeds of dissent by using particular little facts and weaving them into something bigger – it’s a very big social debate. in which he can get involved.”

Understanding Putin’s arc of thought brings some clarity to current events, according to Sam Greene, director of the Russian Institute at King’s College London.

“It’s about understanding how it happened that Vladimir Putin ended up in a position where this war makes sense to him – it doesn’t make sense to anyone else but it makes sense to him,” he said. said Greene. “It also helps explain why it’s so hard for ordinary Russians, who don’t like war, to do anything about it.” – Rappler.com

Mariam Kiparoidze is a reporter/producer at Coda Story.

This article was republished from Coda Story with permission.