A Twitter rant from the deputy chair of Putin’s security council should leave us with no illusions and no ambiguity as to Moscow’s intentions toward Ukraine.
From the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there has been a fundamental disconnect in how outside observers see the war. Is it fundamentally a Russian effort to extinguish the sovereignty of Ukraine, either de jure by annexing it into Russia, or de facto by installing a puppet government, disarming it, and cutting it off from trade and security assistance from the West? Or is it fundamentally a territorial war in which Russia seeks to carve off the eastern provinces of Ukraine (those with the largest ethnic Russian populations, securing a broader land corridor to Russian-occupied Crimea) while leaving the remainder of the state standing?
The correct answer, of course, is “both.” Russia aims to take territory from Ukraine, and if there is any hope of a negotiated settlement that stops short of satisfying the full war aims of both sides, that may yet involve Russia retaining some of that territory. It is also arguable that the moment of maximum peril for Ukraine — the threat of losing its sovereign capacity to choose its own government, retain its right of self-defense, and exercise an independent foreign policy — has passed, and that Russia no longer represents any more of a real threat to eliminate those things than Nazi Germany represented a real threat to rule France or invade England in the fall of 1944. Arguable, but much contested.
None of those “yes, but” factors, however, change the essential reality: Russia entered this war with the aim of capturing control of all Ukraine, not just some of its land. And the regime of Vladimir Putin still desires and aims for that end. We know because Dmitri Medvedev just told us so. Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president before Putin’s return to open power in 2012 and now serves as deputy chair of Putin’s security council, speaks for Putin’s government, or at least as its bad-cop face to the world. He was last heard from in late March rattling the saber of nuclear retaliation as a threat against an anticipated Ukrainian offensive. On Saturday, he posted an extended rant on Twitter — including on his English-language account, which is obviously intended for foreign consumption — explicitly arguing that Ukraine “will disappear,” advocating for why this should happen, and branding the Ukrainian government as a Nazi regime. It is worth reading the whole thing to get the full effect. There is nothing concealed here, nothing disguised — Medvedev is basically doing the full Nikita Khrushchev “we will bury you” speech here, missing only a table on which to pound his shoe:
WHY WILL UKRAINE DISAPPEAR? BECAUSE NOBODY NEEDS IT
1. Europe doesn’t need Ukraine. The forced support of the Nazi regime, by the American mentor’s order, has put Europeans into a financial and political inferno. All for the sake of bandera’s unterukraine, that even the snobby, insolent Polacks don’t take for a valid country, and time and again toss in the issue of its western areas anschluss. There’s a nice perspective ahead: to permanently put the nouveau-Ukrainian blood-sucking parasites on the decrepit EU’s arthritis-crippled neck. That’ll be the final fall of Europe, once majestic, but robbed off by degeneration.
2. The US doesn’t need Ukraine. True, the military and sanction campaigns are attempted for PR by political blabbermouths, who long ago attested to their impotence and imbecility. Average Americans don’t understand what “Ukraine” is, and where “it” is. Most of them won’t show this “power” on the map on the first take. Why won’t the US establishment focus on inflation and job issues, or emergencies in their home States, instead of a country 404, unbeknownst to them? Why does so much dough go across the ocean? Sooner or later, they’ll ask for that. Then, storming of the Capitol in January 2021 would seem like scout games.
3. Africa and Latin America don’t need Ukraine. The hundreds of millions spent by US on pointless fights in Ukraine, could finance many development programmes for Latin American and African states. Latin America is gringos’ backyard – that’s what they’ve been rubbing in for decades. Africa’s had its share of suffering from the genocide, and colonial dependence, imposed by former western slave traders. That’s why the people of African huts and Latin American favelas ask a very reasonable question: for their former suffering and present-day loyalty, why is somebody else rewarded – very, very far away?
4. Asia doesn’t need Ukraine. By Russia’s example, they see “colour” technologies at work to eradicate the largest competing powers. They understand what scenario the America-led collective West has for them if they disobey. “Help us to overcome Russia, and we’ll soon come to you”, the utterly brazen Western leaders tell them. Such gigantic countries as India, China, and other Asia-Pacific states face the big enough challenge of post-pandemic economic recovery, let aside the drugged clowns, with their whining for aid. “We are not interested in you”, Asia tells their messengers, responding to the calls to support Ukraine and confine Russia. The country, geopolitically many times closer to Asian powers, the one that historically has proven itself a reliable strategic partner. Do Asian giants need such headache coming from former colonisers?
5. Russia doesn’t need Ukraine. A threadbare quilt, torn, shaggy, and greasy. The new Malorossiya of 1991 is made up of the artificially cut territories, many of which are indigenously Russian, separated by accident in the 20th century. Millions of our compatriots live there, harassed for years by the Nazi Kiev regime. It is them who we defend in our special military operation, relentlessly eradicating the enemy. We don’t need unterukraine. We need Big Great Russia.
6. Finally, its own citizens don’t need the Nazi-headed Ukraine. That’s why out of 45 million people there’re only some 20 million remaining. That’s why those who stayed want to leave for any place: the hated Poland, EU, NATO, to be America’s 51nd state. Joining the Antarctic with its pinguins will also be fine. As long as it’s quiet, and the food’s good. The ruling junta’s criminal ambitions forced Ukrainians to beg and roam around the countries and continents, searching for a better life. All that is for an obscure European perspective. Or rather, to let the harlequin in a khaki tricot and his band of thievish Nazi clowns to put the money stolen from the West into their offshore accounts. Would ordinary Ukrainians need that? Nobody on this planet needs such a Ukraine. That’s why it will disappear.
This is Lord Haw-Haw stuff, complete with throwing chum into American partisan waters about January 6, and all the old Soviet whataboutism regarding the sins of the West — sins now seen in the Western academy as the center of the histories of America and Europe. This should leave us with no illusions and no ambiguity as to Moscow’s intentions toward its southwestern neighbor. It wants “Big Great Russia,” the end of the “accident” of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of “unterukraine,” which the Russian regime does not acknowledge as a real nation.