Moscow wants more than simple territorial expansion

Russia’s Vladimir Putin clearly wants

 to dominate all of Europe

By Stephen Blank 

Since Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine back in February, speculation has run rampant about the Russian president’s objectives. While objectives change in the course of any war, Mr. Putin himself has admitted that the invasion of Crimea was a strategic decision that, therefore, had strategic objectives in mind. Those objectives also relate to the current fighting in the Donbas region (encompassing Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces). As such, Russia’s conduct repudiates the speculation in Washington that Russia’s Ukraine policy is something of an improvisation. Rather, U.S. policymakers would be well-served in trying to figure out the factors driving Mr. Putin’s decision-making, both at home and abroad.

For example, few observers gave grasped that one core legitimating factor of the Russian state, in all of its historical guises, is that it is the sole heir of Kievan Rus, medieval Russia, whose original center was the present-day Ukrainian capital of Kiev. In this narrative, Ukrainemerely plays the role of Russia’s errant “younger brother,” and its claims to independence are dismissed out of hand. If Ukraine made a decisive break with Russia and opted for affiliation with the West, its example would more than simply stimulate demands for reform withinRussia; it would serve to undermine Mr. Putin’s claims to be the legitimate heir to Russian Orthodoxy and history. Inasmuch as religion and history are now major props of an increasingly repressive and fascistlike Russian state, this delegitimization would seriously compromise the foundation of Mr. Putin’s political project.

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