One January day 32 years ago, the young KGB officer Vladimir Putin was sitting in a train compartment, on his way from Berlin to the Soviet Union. Together with his wife and two children, he was literally chased out of East Germany.
– KGB OFFICER: Vladimir Putin began his career as a KGB officer Photo: ZUMAPRESS.com/MEGA
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It was only a few weeks since one Soviet-friendly regime after another had collapsed in Eastern Europe. The whole communist world that Putin had grown up with, in which he had planned a career, was crumbling.
A great humiliation
Many experts point to this defeat in explaining Putin’s political backlash reflexes. The theory is that the humiliation at the time was so strong that much of Putin’s life has been about making the most of what happened at the time.
– RESEARCHER: Ståle Ulriksen at FHS / Sjøkrigsskolen Photo: The Armed Forces
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– Yes, it is clear that this is important, says Ståle Ulriksen. He is a researcher and teacher at FHS / Sjøkrigsskolen.
– Putin could rightly say that several of the things that happened at the end of the Cold War were unfair.
Senior researcher Helge Blakkisrud in Nupi emphasizes another point.
– Putin learned that a strong and seemingly stable state can disintegrate. He understood that this can happen again if you are not careful, says Blakkisrud,
Both he and Ulriksen are referring to what is happening AFTER the Soviet Union lost control of the so-called “satellite states” in Eastern Europe. The shaded countries in the first map.
For Putin had barely returned home before the Soviet Union itself, the world’s largest country with 286 million inhabitants, began to disintegrate.
At record speed.
In turn, 15 Soviet republics, including Ukraine, declared independence. Finally, the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991. Thus, Moscow was the capital of Russia alone, a country with 148 million inhabitants. A little more than half of the original great power.
The map that now appeared (above) was untidy and poorly thought out.
– The dissolution of the Soviet Union went too fast, says Ulriksen and points out as one example that one should take the time to clean up the Crimean issue.
– It is true that Crimea was placed under the province of Ukraine in 1954, almost as a gift to the Ukrainian Nikita Khrushchev, who then sailed up as the new leader of the Soviet Union, Ulriksen points out.
– This argument is often dismissed as Russian propaganda?
– Yes, but it is also one of several examples of areas where the boundaries were drawn regardless of whether the inhabitants might have had it differently. Had referendums been held then, we might have seen fewer conflicts today in the area that was once the Soviet Union.
– The problem is that Boris Yeltsin was not able to address this, says senior researcher Blakkisrud at Nupi.
He emphasizes that no boundaries are natural.
– All boundaries are drawn up more or less arbitrarily, there are always some who end up on the wrong side. Also within Russia’s borders, there were ethnic minorities who wanted independence. Had Yeltsin started tinkering with the borders, the country could quickly have been further weakened, he says.
The next 7-8 years became chaotic for Russia and neighboring countries. An alcoholic Boris Yeltsin ruled Russia while the economy deteriorated.
When Vladimir Putin took over as president on New Year’s Eve 1999, the NATO defense alliance was already expanding eastward. For the new president, it was a further humiliation that countries that were previously dominated by the Soviet Union, now merged with the old archenemy the United States.
– PUTIN AND JELSTIN: Vladimir Putin with incumbent Russian President Boris Yeltsin, less than a year before Putin took office. Photo: ITAR-TASS
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– NATO enlargement looks fierce on the map, was this an aggressive act by NATO?
– It is a big discussion, says Ståle Ulriksen and refers to the American John Mearsheimer, who for years has warned that NATO enlargement could eventually provoke a war.
In particular, Mearsheimer has been critical of NATO initiating long-term negotiations, so-called “intensified dialogue”, on membership with Ukraine and Georgia.
– I think that all countries must decide for themselves. The great powers will not decide who small states will cooperate with, says Ulriksen.
Helge Blakkisrud agrees that this debate looks very different from Moscow.
– Russian authorities believe that promises were made that NATO would not expand eastwards in exchange for the Soviet Union agreeing that West Germany and East Germany could merge.
– WAR PRESIDENTS: Barck Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have all led the United States and NATO through wars that have provoked the Russians. Photo: KEVIN LAMARQUE
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In the first years after NATO expanded eastward, the Alliance participated in several controversial wars.
The bombing of Serbia and Libya in 1999 and 2011 and the failed invasion of Iraq have provoked and intimidated the Russians.
– The bombing of Serbia in particular must have made an impression on a young Putin, Ulriksen says. Then NATO attacked Russia’s traditional allies in the Balkans without a mandate from the UN. Remember that it was to defend Serbia that Russia entered the First World War.
This conflict forced Serbia to give up the province of Kosovo. Less than ten years later, the country was recognized by the United States and a large number of countries. As «a one-time case».
For Blakkisrud, who is an expert on non-recognized states, this is an important paradox:
– Residents of Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, provinces seeking secession from Ukraine and Georgia, experience this as double standards. That Kosovo is recognized, but not them.
Putin’s first war was settled with separatists in Chechnya. Putin inherited the conflict from Yeltsin and the provincial capital Grozny was completely bombed out when the war ended.
In the middle of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Putin invaded Georgia, aiming to defend the unrecognized states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Here, too, Ulirksen reminds that the crisis can be traced back to the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union:
– The majority in the two breakaway republics never wanted to belong to Georgia. And Georgia has never really had control over them. A lot would have been different if the problem had been solved already in 1991, he says.
Think the train is gone for Putin
What about today’s war. Can Putin win it?
– I think it’s too late. In 2014, things might have gone differently, as there was strong Russian support in cities such as Mariupol and Kharkiv. But after eight years of war in eastern Ukraine, the will of the people in Ukraine has changed dramatically, says Blakkisrud.
– Putin may be able to win militarily, but he will have big problems controlling the population
– Can the Ukrainians give in to the upper hand?
– No, I think they will stand up for a long time in the cities, quarter by quarter, says Ulrksen.
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