The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History

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Plokhy, who grew up in Zaporizhzhia and began his academic career in Dnipropetrovsk (both in Ukraine), keeps his outrage about Russia’s aggression on a tight leash. There are no polemics in this book. The historian lets the facts speak.

At the time of writing this review, we still await the big Ukrainian counter-offensive. On its success or failure will depend the future course of the war. In February, when the detailed planning for the Big Push was already starting, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told me how nervous he was about it. Such frankness is typical of him. A charming, natural-seeming former actor, he has brought his professional abilities to the job of representing Ukraine at the highest level: providing the roar, he says, channelling Winston Churchill. The Russo-Ukrainian war, Plokhy argues, marks the end of the unipolar world that had come into being after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin had hoped for multipolarity, with several great powers asserting their spheres of influence. However, what the historian sees emerging instead is a new confrontation between East and West.Men han skriver utomordentligt väl om vilka faktorer som bidragit att forma Putins beslut att invadera Ukraina. Halva boken handlar om uppspelet till invasionen inklusive krigets verkliga start 2014 med invasionen av Krim och Donbas. Han reder bland annat ut varför Moskva för fram tanken på att man har rätt till Ukraina. Den historiska fiktion som Putin baserar sitt angrepp på saknar grund. In zijn nawoord laat Plokhy de wens wellicht wat te veel de vader van de gedachte zijn als hij schrijft: “There are clear indications that the Ukrainian nation will emerge from this war more united and certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history. Moreover, Ukraine’s successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia’s own nation-building project. Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country’s identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the tsarist past but also with the anachronistic model of a Russian nation consisting of Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. By paying an enormous price in wealth and the blood of its citizens, Ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of Eastern Europe and challenging Moscow’s claim to primacy in the rest of the Soviet space.” (294)

The invasion flowed from Putin’s warped imperial thinking. He believed Ukraine to be a part of “historical Russia”. In summer 2021, he published an essay setting out his so-called ideas. After two decades in power, Russia’s dictator-president had become increasingly obsessed with his long-dead predecessors. Portraits of Peter I and Catherine II “made their way” into the Kremlin’s antechamber. Whatever happens, historians will draw on this book when assessing the history of this war. Alongside journalists such as Anna Arutunyan, Luke Harding and Owen Matthews, Plokhy has provided an invaluable first draft of a history of this war. In exchange, it received economic aid and the beautiful words of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994: Russia, the United Kingdom and the US would respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty – and refrain from using military force or economic coercion against the country. These promises, of course, turned out to be worthless. Critics who dismiss the bulk of the book as “just a competent assemblage of press cuttings” completely miss how crucial such work is. Without a chronological narrative of this war, more analytical work is impossible. Anders dan in Rusland wist het parlement in Oekraïne met vallen en opstaan wél een sterke positie te verwerven tegenover de uitvoerende macht. De vreedzame machtswisseling na de presidentsverkiezingen van 1994, van Leonid Kravtsjoek naar Leonid Kuchma, was een belangrijke eerste mijlpaal in de democratische ontwikkeling van de voormalige sovjetrepubliek. Voor de goede orde: Kuchma bleek als president allesbehalve een voorbeeldige democraat. Net als Jeltsin in Moskou, probeerde hij de grondwet naar zijn hand te zetten. Anders dan Jeltsin, slaagde hij daarin echter niet. Tien jaar later, in 2004, lukte het Kuchma evenmin om Viktor Janoekovitsj, de corrupte pro-Russische gouverneur van Donetsk, tot zijn opvolger te benoemen. Hoe corrupt en verdeeld Oekraïne ook was, de meeste Oekraïners eisten democratie en velen bleken bereid hiervoor hun nek uit te steken tijdens de eerste Maidan-protesten na de gemanipuleerde verkiezingen van 2004. Rusland raakte langzaam maar zeker de greep op Oekraïne steeds meer kwijt.

Relinquished nukes and worthless promises

De vraag of sprake was van een ‘intelligence failure’ of ‘error of judgment’ dringt zich niet alleen aan Russische kant op, maar ook aan Oekraïense. “Among those most surprised by the Russian all-out invasion was the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky,” aldus Plokhy. (155) Tot op het laatste moment hoopte Zelensky dat de onderhandelingen tussen zijn chef-staf Andrii Yermak en Poetins vertrouweling Dmitry Kozak een oorlog konden afwenden. “But Kozak failed to convince Putin to accept Ukraine’s assurances not to join NATO and called Yermak that morning to demand a surrender. Yermak swore and hung up. The negotiations were over.” (156) De Oekraïense militaire top verwachtte evenmin dat Rusland Oekraïne over de gehele linie zou binnenvallen. “To the end,” erkende de Oekraïense bevelhebber van het noordelijke district, generaal Dmytro Krasylnykov, “we believed that our enemy would not intrude with large-scale aggression on every front across all lines.” (157) In het zuiden van Oekraïne richtten de voorbereidingen van de Oekraïense autoriteiten zich bovendien op een herhaling van het Krim-scenario van 2014: “The Ukrainians were preparing for a police exercise, not a military operation.” (203) Plokhy onderstreept dat een grote meerderheid van de Oekraïners hoe dan ook niet geloofde dat een oorlog op handen was, in weerwil van alle Amerikaanse waarschuwingen. De schok en de verontwaardiging waren navenant groter. In the melee, the outnumbered separatist were trapped in a building where a fire broke out and 48 separatists died. This was clearly a tragedy but not an indication that the separatists were innocents or that Naziism was involved. Perhaps Putin made the link to Naziism because the event was one week before Russia's annual Victory Day, a celebration of the German defeat in 1945. (see here) Well a barrier is one thing, but a springboard is a whole other thing. Putin might not mind a barrier but when the Ukrainian constitution was changed on 7 February 2019 to include the strategic objectives of joining the EU and NATO, then for Putin the barrier was now very clearly becoming a springboard. It was very interesting to read how Crimea was "transferred" to Ukraine for economic reasons, and Putin's supposed reasoning for raiding Ukraine. It is vital that the West keeps up support for Ukraine. Russia must, in no way, be allowed to claim any sort of victory at any time and for any reason. Having given up its nuclear shield, Ukraine tried to follow the lead of other countries in the post-Soviet space that successfully found protection under the umbrella of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Plokhy’s account of the crucial Bucharest summit in 2008 provides an important corrective to popular narratives, promoted by Moscow’s relentless disinformation campaign.

Plokhy is the foremost chronicler of early and modern Ukraine and the author of numerous books. They include The Gates of Europe, Lost Kingdom, The Man With the Poison Gun and Chernobyl, a compelling account of the 1986 nuclear disaster, which won the 2018 Baillie Gifford prize. His work is rigorous and objective, and also wonderfully readable and lucid. More than eighteen months later, Ukraine is still fighting, and Plokhy’s blue blazer hangs on a hook behind his office door at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, where he serves as director, as well as Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history. His scholarly work covers much of modern and early modern Eastern Europe—particularly Russia, Belarus, Poland, and Lithuania—but his driving interest has always been Ukraine and its fascinating, tangled, often tormented history. The Russo-Ukrainian War, published in May, chronicles the first 10 months of the conflict. This was an unconventional undertaking: unlike the histories Plokhy is used to producing—written from a contemplative distance, after the explosions have ended and the outcomes are known—this book unfolds amid the chaos it seeks to explain, a chaos in which his friends and loved ones are caught up, with no clear ending in sight. The work is punctuated by grief.

Autocratic Russia and democratic Ukraine

Aber selbst wenn sich die Hoffnungen der Ukraine auf unangefochtene Souveränität nicht erfüllen, hat Russland sich entlarvt. Es wird schwierig werden, die Welt davon zu überzeugen, dass man seiner Regierung/Regime trauen kann. I was working away from home, living out of a hotel room when Russia invaded Ukraine, in February of 2022…