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The February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s Russia reads like a tragic plot from Adolph Hitler’s war book of aggression. This latest invasion is the second in eight years. Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 following the fall from power of the pro-Kremlin government of Viktor Yanukovich, which saw his army annexing Ukraine’s ethnic Russian territory of Crimea, was reminiscent of Hitler’s annexation of the predominantly Germanic Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia in 1938. And just as the League of Nations did not do much to punish Hitler for his violation of the sovereignty of a member nation, the United Nations similarly did not do much beyond condemnations and economic sanctions to rein in Putin’s war of aggression in Crimea. And just as Hitler took the pacifist posture of the League of Nations as a sign of weakness, went ahead to occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia and followed it up by invading Poland in 1939, Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is in defiance of the international system of the rule law and everything the UN represents. In the same way Hitler’s war of aggression on the European continent resulted in a Second World War, Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has set the world on edge for a third round of war.
The present Russo-Ukrainian war is premised on Putin’s insistence that Ukraine should not be admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a military alliance that is led by Russia’s long-time adversary, the United States of America. Following the first invasion in 2014 and the annexation of Crimea by Putin’s Russia, Ukraine has increasingly sought security and economic cooperation with the European Union and NATO in order to enhance its own strategic national economic and security interests. With the election of Vlodomyr Zelenski, a pro-EU and NATO political figure as President in 2019, Ukraine has since been fast-tracking its full integration into a Western economic and security alliance, which, unfortunately, Putin considers a hostile move that is against the national security interest of his country. In response to Ukraine’s move towards EU and NATO, Putin is carrying out pre-emptive strikes against Ukrainian military and civilian targets, just as Russian troops are moving rapidly towards Kiev, the nation’s seat of power to effect a regime change.
Opinions are sharply divided worldwide over the propriety or otherwise of the Russian military action in Ukraine. Those with a realist view of the situation are of the firm opinion that Russia reserves the right to take pro-active steps, including violating the sovereignty of other nations, if it feels its national security is threatened. In this regard, they point to America’s response to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when it was faced with similar circumstances as Russia in 2022. Those who hold this realist opinion are finding it difficult to condemn the Russian aggression in Ukraine and are actually providing historic justification for it. But, for me and some others like me that are not well honed in the art of realist diplomatic sophistication, I chose to view Russia’s war on Ukraine through the prism of humanism.
I am neither a member of the Putin regime nor even a Russian citizen and, as a citizen of the world, I will not defend Putin’s war in Ukraine on the justification of national security imperatives. I shall be taking a firm stand on the side of the international system of the morality of the rule of law, which guarantees nations of the world the right to existence, liberty of association and protection from aggression. And human lives should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of a dubious national security goal through a war of aggression that violates the sovereignty of member nations of the United Nations. The invasion of Ukraine by nuclear-armed Russia is an unprovoked war of aggression against a weaker nation that has lived in fear of the terrifying shadow of its bullish neighbour since 2014. Putin’s action in Crimea in 2014 denies it any right to protest Ukraine’s membership of NATO just as it justifies Ukraine’s desire to enter into the NATO alliance in order to protect it from Russia’s constant threat of aggression. However, a closer scrutiny of the political situation in Russia is suggestive of Putin’s regime security and not Russian national security as the motive for the war, because, at the time of Russia’s invasion Ukraine has not been admitted into NATO and the EU.
Putin, 69, former KGB officer, succeeded Boris Yeltsin as the second President of the post-Soviet Russian Federation in 200o. He has held on to power with a vice-like grip ever since. And he plans to spend more years in power. Putin, whose current term in office comes to an end in 2024, could remain in power until 2036, following a constitution amendment that has removed term limits on his presidency. Throughout his reign as the ruler of Russia, Putin has diminished his country into a corrupt, brutal and third-world civilian dictatorship where citizens’ democratic rights and liberties are severely limited. Over the years, Putin has been preoccupied with the recreation of the old Russian empire around the former Soviet republics as his own sphere of influence, a move that has precipitated a period of cold peace between Russia and America. This strategy has proved politically useful for Putin, as members of his generation who, like him, were not happy about the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, form the core of his support base among the Russian people. It was Bertrand Russell who said, “War is the chief promoter of despotism, and the greatest obstacle to the establishment of a system in which irresponsible power is avoided.”
To continue to hold on to power in the wake of a gradual democratic re-awakening among the post-Soviet generation of Russia, Putin the strongman must be seen to be fighting the revival of the Russian empire and defending the Russian homeland across the Caucasus, from South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia to Crimea and Donbas region in Ukraine. Putin must be stopped from using Ukraine as a guinea pig in his laboratory of political self-preservation that is carefully disguised as the preservation of Russian national security interests.
Unlike the League of Nations, the United Nations and the global community of humanity should stand firm in the condemnation of Putin’s attempt to annihilate the people of Ukraine for freely making a choice of security alliance that was necessitated by Russian aggression. To prevent Putin from beating Zelenski and preventing him from crying out, NATO and EU should admit Ukraine now and defend its millions of children, women and the aged from perishing under the heavy bombardment of Russia in the same manner Hitler was stopped by the allied powers when the world failed to dissuade him from further aggression through pacification.
