Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, more than 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Stephen Hadley
A Kremlin strategy commonly attributed to the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, is still in use today by the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Soviet expert Peter Vanneman, in his 1990 book “Soviet Strategy in Southern Africa: Gorbachev’s Pragmatic Approach,” describes this strategy, informally known as “Two steps forward, one step back”:
“After pressing forward for a while, the Russians seek a ‘peredyschka,’ a respite, a breathing space… In the interim, Moscow usually indulges in fine-tuned probing for advantage, while seeking, above all, to extract the maximum advantage from public diplomacy opportunities,” Vanneman writes on page 104.
That 29-year-old description should be immediately recognizable to anyone who has been observing the Kremlin’s military intervention in Ukraine over the past five years, and certainly to Stephen Hadley, the board chair at the United States Institute of Peace, and a former U.S. national security adviser.
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine on Jan. 18 in an article entitled “It’s Time to Stand Up to Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine,” Hadley gives a similar outline of Putin’s approach:
“Putin’s tactics follow a familiar pattern: identify an opportunity to advance his view of Russian interests, mount a limited military operation to exploit that opportunity, and see whether it provokes any serious international condemnation or military response. If not, up the stakes and expand the operation.”
Breaking that approach down into a sort of imperialist foreign policy algorithm results in:
- Look for an area of weakness for opportunity to advance expansionist agenda.
- Launch limited probing military action.
- Stop, and assess reaction from enemies. If reaction is weak, go to step 4, if strong, go back to step 1.
- Scale up military action in identified area of weakness, then go to step 3.
If implemented, this algorithm produces an ever-aggressive, expansionist policy: a wave of activity, followed by a slight retreat, and then another wave, reaching slightly higher, like an advancing tide creeping up a shore.
And it’s a good model of the Kremlin’s behavior for centuries, at least since the formation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. From 1551 until 1700, Russia grew on average by 35,000 square kilometers a year, according to Professor Richard Pipes, on page 83 of his book “Russia under the Old Regime.”
Following the Kremlin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine in international waters of the Black Sea on Nov. 25, during which it captured three Ukrainian navy vessels and their 24 crew, we are at step 3 in the algorithm.
As Hadley, Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise advises, now is the time for the West to give a strong response to Kremlin aggression to prevent it from progressing to step 4. A quick review of Russia’s actions in Ukraine shows why this is the case.
The West’s failure (and Ukraine’s occasional inability) to push back strongly against Russian aggressive behavior has brought us to the current situation: At first, Ukraine was unable to respond to Russia’s infiltration of Ukrainian protest movements in the east (through the sending of Russian so-called “political tourists” to lead, finance and encourage anti-Maidan rallies.)
Faced with that obvious weakness, Russia quickly went on to invade and occupy Crimea. There was then a pause, but by early April 2014 the Kremlin judged it safe to push on, and launch a fake “civil war” in the Donbas. After initial successes, Ukraine’s military response almost caused the defeat of Russia’s proxy forces in the Donbas, and the Kremlin was forced to send in its regular troops to halt the Ukrainian advance. There was then a pause for assessment with the Minsk accords in September 2015, and then almost immediately the Kremlin began to test for weakness, with the taking of Donetsk airport in January 2015, and when there was no strong reaction from the West, going on to seize the town of Debaltseve in February 2015 after the signing of the Minsk II protocol.
Since then, Ukraine’s growing military strength and a weak but consistent and still unified Western response has left the war in the Donbas largely in stalemate, especially as Putin’s attention was diverted by another expansionist opportunity, in Syria, in September 2015.
However, Russia has now identified another opportunity – the Azov Sea, and having committed its outrage against Ukraine, for the first time openly using its own forces to attack the Ukrainian military, it is now assessing the West’s reaction.
That reaction has been weak, Hadley warns: “In the nearly two months since Russia attacked the Ukrainian naval vessels, there has been almost no international response. As a result, Russia may believe it will face little resistance to further attacks on Ukrainian territory or territorial waters, much as it concluded in 2008 prior to attacking Georgia or in 2014 when pivoting from annexing Crimea to attacking the Donbas.”
An adequate response to Russia would include a mix of firm economic, military, and diplomatic actions to dissuade the Kremlin from escalating again, Hadley says.
That said, an adequate response would only send the Kremlin back to step 1 of its imperialist algorithm, and the best the West can ever do is to contain Kremlin ambitions by remaining strong, united, and resolute.
But that has always been the case, and will continue to be so, until the Russian people can rid themselves of the parasitical Kremlin system of government that their country hosts.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Heiko Maas
In the five years since Russia launched its war against Ukraine, several new words have entered English to describe Kremlin political and propaganda tactics. One of the most notable of these is “whataboutism” – a word used to describe a debating tactic commonly used by Russian propagandists to deflect criticism of the Kremlin by bringing up an unrelated, but analogous action by the United States or the West.
Another is “Schroederization” – the corruption of a Western politician by Kremlin money, named after former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, now head of the boards of Kremlin-controlled energy companies Nord Stream and Rosneft.
And a recent neologism is “sideism,” a more specific contraction of the earlier “bothsidesism” – meaning to provide false balance, or present both sides of an argument as being equally valid.
An egregious example of sideism was given by German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas during his visit to Ukraine on Jan. 18. Maas, referring to Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine, said “both sides must work to de-escalate” the conflict.
The politely bemused look on Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin’s face as he sat next to Maas at their joint press conference on Jan. 18 said it all. Ukraine has for five years been defending itself against an unprovoked invasion and occupation of its territory by Russian covert and proxy forces, and on Nov. 25 saw three of its navy ships and 24 of its sailors captured in an unprovoked attack by Russia in international waters of the Black Sea. Yet Ukraine is to somehow de-escalate in the face of this Russian aggression? What nonsense is this? Is Ukraine supposed to scale back its efforts to resist Russian aggression?
The absurdity of Maas’ statement was underlined by the fact that, while advising Russia to release the 24 Ukrainian prisoners of war it captured on Nov. 25, and which it is now prosecuting as criminals, Maas did not explain how Kyiv should “de-escalate” the Russian invasion and occupation of its territory, or “de-escalate” Russia’s ongoing breaches of the 2003 Azov Sea treaty, or “de-escalate” Russia’s daily violations of the Minsk peace agreements.
By indulging in this ridiculous sideism, Maas is undermining Ukraine and advancing Moscow’s propaganda narrative. That makes him Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the order of Lenin.
It is a rule of thumb in journalism in that in a story with two competing narratives, the truth usually lies between the two.
But that’s just a rule of thumb and it’s not always true, and it’s not true in the case of Russia’s war on Ukraine that the two sides are equally responsible for the war. There is only one side – Russia – that started the conflict, by sending agents into Ukraine to foster false political divisions, by staging a covert invasion and occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and by launching a fake “civil war” in the Donbas.
And there is only one side that can de-escalate – Russia. Asking Ukraine to “de-escalate” is tantamount to asking that it scale back its defenses in the face of continued aggression from Russia. No wonder Klimkin looked startled.
