15.02.2022, 11:16
A Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could Destabilize Russia's Political Order
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OP-ED | WAR & PEACE
A Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could
Destabilize Russia’s Political Order
Members of Ukaraine's State Border Guard Service stand at
the border crossing between Ukraine and Belarus on
February 13, 2022, in Vilcha, Ukraine.
C H R I S M C G R AT H / G E T T Y I M A G E S
BY
Volodymyr Ishchenko (https://truthout.org/authors/volodymyr-ishchenko/), Truthout
PUBLISHED
February 14, 2022
https://truthout.org/articles/a-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-could-destabilize-russias-political-order/
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A Russian Invasion of Ukraine Could Destabilize Russia's Political Order
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T
he U.S. and U.K. o
cials and media have long been warning against the
“imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine. Whatever the prospects of such
an invasion are, it also raises an important question about the character of the
Russian political regime and how the invasion may change it.
Let us hypothetically assume, as many have
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-05/ukraine-newsarmy-underfunded-not-ready-to-stop-a-russia-invasion), that Russia can
defeat the Ukrainian army and occupy a large part of Ukraine (especially the
southeastern and central regions). The question is what to do with this part of
Ukraine. The problem is not the unlikely massive Ukrainian guerrilla war against
the Russian army. The problem is that the Russian state, such as it is now, has
little to o er Ukrainians as well as to the world.
Whatever one thinks is lying behind the current escalation — resurgent Russian
imperialism exploiting a window of opportunity, Ukraine’s alleged attempts to
solve the Donbass question by force, the expansion of NATO, attempts to
undermine the Nord Stream 2 (a gas pipeline connecting Germany and Russia),
domestic politics in the U.S. and U.K., or any combination of the above — Russia
is currently doing very little to convince us that the media campaign about the
“imminent invasion” has no real grounds, aside from simply saying so.
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Installing a pro-Russian government in Ukraine would certainly solve some of
these issues for Russia. However, we should not assume that Russia is ready to
bear the costs of a military invasion (some of them discussed below), or that the
ongoing escalation is a part of such an attempt. Yet we can recognize that Russia
seems interested in promoting the belief that it is capable of launching an
invasion, regardless of what it actually plans to do within the strategy of its
coercive diplomacy.
Why Guerrilla War in Ukraine Seems
Unlikely
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According to a recent poll (https://kiis.com.ua/?
lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1079&page=1), 33 percent of Ukrainians are ready for
armed resistance in the event of Russian intervention in their city, while another
22 percent are in favor of nonviolent resistance. Yet both gures should be
viewed with skepticism.
First, other polls show that there are not so many Ukrainians who are ready to
sacri ce their quality of life to prevent the Russian invasion. For example, at the
end of November, only 33 percent of citizens supported (https://kiis.com.ua/?
lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=1074&page=2) the imposition of martial law in
response to a possible Russian military build-up along Ukraine’s borders, while
58 percent opposed it.
Second, the results of such polls only show citizens’ professed intentions, but do
not predict their actual behavior. Many people tend to give answers that are
socially expected from patriots and “real men” (“of course, I’ll ght, I’m not a
sissy!”). For example, according to a poll (http://www.kiis.com.ua/?
lang=ukr&cat=reports&id=302&page=1) conducted in April 2014, 21 percent of
residents of the southeastern regions (more pro-Russian than the western
regions) answered that they are ready for armed resistance in the event of an
invasion by Russian troops in southeastern Ukraine. Yet only a very small part of
these several million people went into battle when the war in Donbass began
shortly afterward.
By occupying Ukraine, Russia would increase
the risk of destabilization from within and
weaken itself. The polls suggest that a largescale war with Ukraine would not be popular
among Russians.
The Anglosphere media publications currently depicting Ukrainians (including
women (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/28/choice- ghtland-women- ocking-join-ukraine-army-record-numbers/) and children
(https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-crisis-children-aged10-26149883)) as prepared to ght the Russian army poorly represent the reality
of most Ukrainians. Only a small number of people would really ght. These
would be the remnants of the army and police, some of the veterans and
volunteers who have already fought in Donbass, and right-wing radicals (such as
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the notorious Azov (https://violence-marker.org.ua/en/2021/12/29/azovneeds-a-war-an-interview-with-michael-colborne) movement). Their
resistance to the Russian troops would, of course, not be as strong as in
Afghanistan, but not as weak as in separatist Donbass since 2014. However, the
resistance would be enough to make the established political regime in proRussian Ukraine one of the most repressive in the entire former USSR.
What Would Happen in Pro-Russian
Ukraine?
Add to this the low legitimacy of a hypothetical pro-Russian government among
the Ukrainian population. Since the government will immediately fall under
Western sanctions, it will have to be formed from people who do not have much
property in the West. There is not much choice in the Ukrainian political elite.
Therefore, the new government would consist of some old o
cials dismissed
during the Euromaidan revolution (some left for Russia but many remained in
Ukraine) and representatives of marginal political parties. The list
(https://www.gov.uk/government/news/kremlin-plan-to-install-prorussian-leadership-in-ukraine-exposed) of a possible pro-Russian
government published recently by the U.K. Foreign O
ce hardly represents
(https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/01/24/londons-ukraine-coupclaims-strain-both-belief-and-consensus-a76125) any serious plan but it
shows which problems Russia would meet in forming a loyal government in
Ukraine.
The initially passive population would likely meet with ever more repression, and
additional di
culties due to the Western sanctions. Add here the new
government with little legitimacy. The main resistance to the pro-Russian
government would most likely not be armed, but unarmed. Its base would be the
middle class in the big cities, whose situation would likely deteriorate most
steeply.
At the same time, Ukraine would fall now into the same political space as Russia
and Belarus and would actually strengthen internal opposition to the
governments of those countries (instead of alienating, as happened during the
earlier violent
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1879366520928363) and
nationalist
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(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1060586X.2020.1753460?
journalCode=rpsa20) Euromaidan protests). By occupying Ukraine, Russia
would increase the risk of destabilization from within and weaken
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/08/ukraine-putinrussia-invasion-public-opinion/) itself. The polls
(https://carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/86013) suggest that a large-scale
war with Ukraine would not be popular among Russians.
It is not clear which social group would bene t from the occupation and on
whom the pro-Russian government could rely. Russia’s ability to o set the
impact of sanctions and repression by improving the living standards of the tens
of millions of Ukrainians is very limited. Although wages and pensions are being
increased in annexed Crimea and Russia is investing heavily in the peninsula, its
general economic situation is still comparable
(https://russian.eurasianet.org/%D0%BA%D1%80%D1%8B%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D1%8D%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%B6%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BD%D0%B8) to the poorest regions of
Russia. The mobilization and radical redistribution of resources that would be
necessary to ensure any semblance of social legitimacy in hypothetical proRussian Ukraine would be incompatible with the patronage capitalism of postSoviet Russia.
Some U.S. government o
cials are concerned
(https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-jake-tapper-ofcnn-state-of-the-union/) that Putin is trying to restore the Soviet Union. They
generally ignore that such a restoration would require far more than military
expansion — it would require a radical transformation of contemporary Russia.
Passive Revolution?
Some left-wing authors have tried to explain
(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0309816810378154) the postSoviet transformation as a case of passive revolution. This term was made
famous by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci used it for various
processes, but foremost for the Risorgimento, the uni cation of Italy in the 19th
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century from a patchwork of small states and territories under the foreign
dynasties’ control. As we know, it did not take place as a popular revolution
under the hegemony of the progressive bourgeoisie, but through the military and
diplomatic actions of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont. Could it be that Putin is
now performing a “function of Piedmont” in the post-Soviet space, using
military power to compensate for the political weakness of the patronage
bourgeoisie and the left movement whose members dreamed of reuniting the
Soviet Union?
An attempt to take over Ukraine
would present the Russian ruling
class with the choice of either
taking the high risk of
destabilizing its rule or radically
revising its foundations.
There are fundamental di erences. In Italy, passive revolution produced a
stronger, modern and independent state. A transition to bourgeois order and a
nation-state took place. The revolutionary transformations were carried out
“from above” to prevent the Jacobin revolutionary threat to the feudal
aristocracy “from below” (as during the French Revolution).
The problem is that there is no post-Soviet passive revolution, in the sense of
forced modernization under threat of a new “Jacobin” social revolution. The
post-Soviet transformations are an ongoing crisis
(https://lefteast.org/ukraine-in-the-vicious-circle-of-the-post-sovietcrisis-of-hegemony/) that actually began long before the collapse of the Soviet
Union. These transformations actually signal stagnation and de-modernization
instead of modernization. No post-Soviet maidan revolutions
(https://www.ponarseurasia.org/how-maidan-revolutions-reproduce-andintensify-the-post-soviet-crisis-of-political-representation/) threatened the
post-Soviet ruling class of patronage capitalists; they merely helped one faction
of that class to replace another faction.
“Civilizational” Identity Politics
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The problem with Russia today is not that it is supposedly restoring the “Soviet
Empire.” The problem is that Russia is trying to conduct a Great Power foreign
policy but is no longer the Soviet Union.
Today’s Russia does not o er anything like the universal progressive project that
once attracted Third World countries and mass movements to its side, even when
fewer and fewer people believed in the Soviet Union itself, and whose
modernization successes still evoke massive nostalgia
(https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/communistnostalgia-in-eastern-europe-longing-for-past/) even in countries where it
was imposed by force (as in Eastern Europe). Now Russia compensates for a lack
of “soft power” appeal with the “hard power” of coercive diplomacy.
This is related to the notorious Russian “whataboutism.” When one has di
culty
articulating advantages one has over their opponent, one tends to rely on the
normalization of negative characteristics and actions to which one supposedly
has the same “right” as everyone else in the club. For example, justifying Crimea
annexation because, earlier, NATO bombed Yugoslavia and recognized Kosovo
independence. This is a symptom and consequence of the still unresolved postSoviet crisis of hegemony (https://lefteast.org/ukraine-in-the-vicious-circleof-the-post-soviet-crisis-of-hegemony/) — incapacity of the ruling class for
leadership in pursuing common interests with subaltern classes and other
nations. For a truly hegemonic rule, it is not enough to say that “they are no
better than us”. It is crucially important to convince that “we are indeed better
than they are.”
After the Putin-Biden summit in Geneva, which followed the Russian-Ukrainian
escalation in the spring of 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
published an article (https://eng.globala airs.ru/articles/the-law-the-rightsand-the-rules/) criticizing the selective application of “international rules” by
Western powers. According to Lavrov, the “rules” are arbitrary and established
by a small circle of nations. They are not based on international law and are not
deliberated in established platforms such as the United Nations. Lavrov
formulates this criticism in the language of “democracy.” He argued that the
West is sensitive to violations of “internal” democracy but does not want an
“external,” international democracy that would recognize the right of Russia and
other non-Western powers to their own sovereignty and national ideology. The
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West does not recognize the reality of the multipolar world, he wrote. The recent
joint statement (http://kremlin.ru/supplement/5770) signed by Putin and Xi
Jinping begins with essentially the same argument.
What Lavrov claims here, however, is not democracy but a kind of
“civilizational” identity politics. The demand for recognition of the multipolar
world — in contrast to the world under Western hegemony — isn’t grounded in
any positive project for the good of humankind, which Russia would represent
better. Instead, Lavrov simply calls for the right of the self-assigned
representatives appealing to civilizational identities to be accepted and treated as
equals on the international level based exclusively on their distinct identity
claims.
What Can Russia O er to Ukraine and the
World?
Last summer, Putin published the famous article
(http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181) on Ukrainian-Russian
history and relations where he claimed that Ukrainians and Russians are “one
and the same people.” In Russian and Ukrainian languages, the word “people”
means both a culturally distinct ethnic group as well as a political nation. This
article has been often interpreted
(https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putins-new-ukraineessay-re ects-imperial-ambitions/) as Putin’s refusal to accept Ukraine’s
sovereignty and justifying the invasion threat. However, this is a misleading and
simplistic interpretation. Putin suggests that the desirable relations between
Russia and Ukraine could be as between Germany and Austria. In Putin’s vision,
Ukraine and Russia could be two states for “the same people,” allowing di erent
versions of regional cultural identities to be expressed and to peacefully coexist,
albeit separately due to complicated historical developments.
However, this is not the only possible model of two states for “one and the same
people” and perhaps not even the most obvious one for Putin himself,
considering how long he worked in East Germany. Remarkably, he does not
articulate the relationship between Russia and Ukraine as something like that
between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic
Republic (GDR), which also o ered two states for the divided German people but
with fundamentally di erent models (and where an analog of the lost GDR would
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not necessarily be Russia). In Putin’s narrative, Ukrainians and Russians are
“one and the same people” arti cially divided by foreign powers. He says “A,”
but he does not say “B”: “Our state is better than yours for the same people. We
o er a better model and let the strongest survive.” Putin does not say this, not
because he recognizes Ukraine’s sovereignty, but because he cannot o er a
fundamentally better model for Ukraine than Ukraine’s predatory oligarchic elite
and nationalist civil society.
Many accuse Russia of revising the international order. In reality, Russian
revanchism is not revisionist (https://www.ponarseurasia.org/whenrevanchism-does-not-equate-to-revisionism-taking-stock-of-the-new-us-russian-great-power-rivalry/), but a conservative defense of the status quo:
an attempt to hold on to Great Power status. Here lie the limits of the
international appeal of current Russian rhetoric. The world needs change and
solutions to major global problems rather than the conservation of the status
quo.
In a much-discussed speech at the Valdai Club last year, Putin articulated
(http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66975) his vision as “healthy
conservatism,” with his primary concern being to prevent “us from regressing
and sinking into chaos.” However, when asked about universal values, not only
for Russian “civilization” but for all humanity, he remained very brief and
unspeci c.
An attempt to take over Ukraine would present the Russian ruling class with the
choice of either taking the high risk of destabilizing its rule or radically revising
its foundations. So far, there are no signs that they are now ready for the second
scenario. Yet, however this crisis ends — short of escalating toward nuclear
world war — it will increase the tensions between Russia’s Great Power claims
and its backward political and social order.
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Volodymyr Ishchenko (https://truthout.org/authors/volodymyrishchenko/)
Volodymyr Ishchenko is a research associate at the Institute of East European
Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. His research focused on protests and social
movements, revolutions, radical right and left politics, nationalism and civil
society. He authored a number of peer-reviewed articles and interviews on
contemporary Ukrainian politics, the Euromaidan uprising, and the ensuing
war in 2013-14 — published in Post-Soviet A airs, Globalizations and New Left
Review, among other journals. He has been a prominent contributor to major
international media outlets, such as The Guardian and Jacobin since 2014. He
is working on a collective book manuscript, The Maidan Uprising: Mobilization,
Radicalization, and Revolution in Ukraine, 2013-2014.
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