Mark, many congratulations on the new book. There is a lot of myth surrounding Russia’s history, not least from Vladimir Putin. How much of its military past is in the average Russian’s consciousness?
More, honestly, than we might anticipate from a Western standpoint. Kids lark around decommissioned Second World War anti-tank guns in the playground, and may join the annual ‘Immortal Regiment’ march holding pictures of relatives who died in that ‘Great Patriotic War.’ On Victory Day, martial music will be playing on loudspeakers in city centres and young couples may be sporting matching pilotka army sidecaps. Murals depicting everyone from Prince Dmitry Donskoi (of the 15th century) to Marshal Georgy Zhukov (of the 20th) adorn walls. History very feels much closer, and this is encouraged by the state.
Putin’s statement before the invasion of Ukraine made a number of astonishing claims. Will you be sending him a copy of your book?
Hah, I doubt it would get my indefinite ban on travelling to Russia lifted!
If one looks at Kievan Rus and the era so interesting to Putin, is there not an argument that Ukraine should annex Russia, not the other way round?
The relationship between Ukraine and Russia is so complex, such that it is depressing to see so much discourse around it drifting to the two, equally inaccurate extremes: either the kind of view Putin espouses, that Ukraine was never a nation, or at least not until Lenin created it artificially in 1917, or conversely that Ukraine has always been a nation, facing a centuries-long Russian campaign to humble or destroy it. As ever with history, the truth it at once more complex and nuanced. Kyiv was indeed the ‘Mother of Russian cities’ in the early days of the Rus’, and for most of its history, what we now call Ukraine was really torn between Muscovy, the Crimean Tatars, Poland and Lithuania. Of course, nations and borders emerge and fix over time, and today there undoubtedly is a Ukrainian people and nation. Whether Kyiv could lay claim to Moscow, well, let’s just say it’s no more indefensible than Putin’s belief that Ukraine doesn’t exist.
We’ve seen the Russians willing to throw huge amounts of troops into the fighting in Ukraine, regardless of losses. Is this the latest approach by the Russian leadership that we’ve seen throughout the wars in your book?
It’s possible to exaggerate the extent to which Russia (and the USSR) has relied primarily on sheer numbers to win wars in its history. In many engagements, after all, they had equal or even smaller forces. Besides, even when they do rely on quantity, that is hardly unique to the Russians. It is, rather, in part a reflection that they were often outgunned by their enemies and therefore had to use numbers, and in part a pathology of authoritarian regimes. It is not that they do not at all have to care about what their people think – it is striking that Putin is holding back from another mobilisation, aware of how disruptive and unpopular the first one was – but that they enjoy a much higher threshold at which point they have to care. Up to a point, Putin, like Stalin or Peter the Great, can afford to use his soldiers as human ammunition, but only up to a point.
The Soviets were in Afghanistan for a decade, but their losses were approx. 15,000 dead, a fraction of the casualties in Ukraine. Will we see Russian families as a new political faction in the country?
To a degree, we already are. Just as the Soldiers’ Mothers movement became a political force in the 1980s, we have already seen mothers and wives of soldiers in Ukraine calling for their menfolk to be allowed home, and these protests have been treated with kid gloves: the Kremlin doesn’t want images of riot police clubbing down mothers on social media. Just as with the Afghan War, the real risk is that, when the veterans finally come home, it is they – angry, traumatised, probably denied the proper medical and psycho-social care they need, trained to fight and left to die – who will be something of a wild card in Russian politics, as likely to be stormtroopers of the nationalist ‘turbo-patriots’ as agents of radical reform.
The war in Ukraine looms over all discussion of Russia. With a new Trump administration about to take office, do you envisage a conclusion to hostilities and a compromise agreement in 2025?
This has been an unpredictable war as is, and Trump is a most unpredictable figure. To be blunt, whatever he may say about his determination to impose a ceasefire, I doubt even he knows for sure right now what he’ll do. I could perhaps see a ceasefire, but that’s well short of a lasting peace. This would require Putin to be willing to see what’s left of Ukraine go its own way – but also the West to offer Ukraine either NATO membership or comparable security guarantees. Honestly, I’m not sure which of those I think less likely.
The Crimean War in the mid-19th century was a costly victory for Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire (not forgetting the Sardinians). What lessons can we draw vis a vis the war in Ukraine, if any?
The main one is that the Crimean war was won not so much at Sevastopol or Balaclava but in the Baltic and Northern Seas, where the Royal Navy, with French assistance, throttled off Russian trade. Russia could have continued fighting in Crimea, but decided it was not worth the wider pain. This is something we are trying to replicate with sanctions rather than gunboats today, but the truth of the matter is that the world is a much more complex place and Russia more widely connected into the global economy. We can’t really expect to prevail the same way this time.
The Ukrainians have fought heroically, and continue to do so. Is there a conflict from the past that provides a template for them to follow, or do they need to?
Whether it’s one with which they would be comfortable, the obvious historical parallel is the 1939-40 Winter War. When Stalin invaded Finland, the defenders fought with bravery, imagination and determination, and for a while were able to counter the Soviet quantitative advantage. Over time, though, numbers won out. Eventually, the Finns were able, through their dogged resistance, to force Stalin to a compromise: they lost 9% of their territory (including the city of Viipuri) and 20% of their industrial capacity, but remained independent. (It was their decision to throw in their lot with Nazi Germany in the hope of reversing these terms that led to their losing another 10% of their territory and accepting so-called ‘Finlandisation,’ enforced neutrality. It’s not by any means the best precedent for the Ukrainians and is against international law and natural justice, but even some within Kyiv are beginning to toy with the parallel, especially as, after the first treaty, Finland was still free.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) kept us from nuclear Armageddon throughout the Cold War. Can the West rely on the strategy in the 21st century? Or to put it another way, is Russia a similar beast to the Soviet Union?
To a degree. The good news is that MAD still prevails: Putin is not some suicidal zealot willing to die just to ensure his enemies burn. The bad news, though, is that whereas the post-war USSR was an established great power, with a stake in the status quo, today’s Russia has been excluded and feels the existing world order is one created by the West, for the West’s interests. He is not going to risk thermonuclear Armageddon, but he certainly can see value to him and Russia in upsetting that order.
Mark Galeotti is political analyst and writer and the author of , published by Osprey.
