An often-overlooked fact about the current conflict in Ukraine is that, over the centuries, Russia has waged several wars to try to conquer Crimea and the Donbas area. Bearing this in mind, it is necessary to put the conflict in context and explore the roots of Russia’s strategic behaviour and its consequences for Russia and its neighbours.

In the 1890s, the then head of the Imperial General Staff Academy, Nikolai Sukhotin (1847-1918), conducted a study of Russia’s wars since 1700. Crimea had finally been incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1783. It had taken Russia, according to Sukhotin, eight wars and 37 years to take the peninsula from the Ottomans.

In 1731, Voltaire, in his History of Charles XII, had already summed up the Ukrainian dilemma: ‘Ukraine has always aspired to be free: but being surrounded by Moscovia, the Ottoman Empire and Poland, has had to look for a protector and master of either of these three.’

In addition, it is worth remembering the writings of Herman Gummerus (1877-1948), head of the Finnish Legation in Kyiv, between 1918 and 1919. He wrote about when Bolshevik fighters, including regular Russian armed forces, made incursions in the Kharkiv area of north-east Ukraine. On 9 January 1919, the Ukrainian government sent a note to Moscow, asking for the war operations to be halted and the Russian troops withdrawn immediately. Moscow replied: ‘No Russian troops are located in Ukraine. The Russian government has no responsibility whatsoever if irregular formations have crossed.’

The Ukrainian efforts to gain independence then failed, but Gummerus was explicit: ‘The world can no longer doubt the existence of a Ukrainian nation. The Ukrainian leaders are adamant: their goal is a complete divorce from Russia.’ The decision to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was evidently taken within a small circle by President Vladimir Putin and the security services. The General Staff, and thus the Russian armed forces, agreed to support the plan. There are parallels to draw from the experience of the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan in 1979. The decision was primarily taken by three people: Yuri Andropov (1914-84), KGB director; Andrei Gromyko (1909-89), foreign minister; and Dmitrii Ustinov (1908-84), defence minister. The other members of the Politburo, including Nikolai Ogarkov (1917-94), the then Chief of the General Staff, just had to go along with it. Ogarkov objected to the invasion in strong words, but had no choice but to comply. This is not to exonerate Valerii Gerasimov, defence minister Sergei Shoigu or the Russian armed forces, but merely to point to the fact that the decision to go to war was taken in a small circle on both occasions, and that the security service had an influential role in taking it. Furthermore, it indicates that the Soviet decision-making process in 1979 was flawed. This remains the case in Russia today.

The blitzkrieg plan, aiming at taking Kyiv in a couple of weeks, toppling the Ukrainian leadership and eliminating Ukraine’s independence, failed completely. The notion of blitzkrieg in Russian military thought has been discussed for years. This debate is particularly tied to the studies of the 2003 Iraq War. Both that conflict and the example of Kosovo have had a profound impact.

The Chief of the General Staff, Valerii Gerasimov, had been contemplating blitzkrieg for years. In a 2016 article on lessons from the Syrian operation, he used the term ‘21st-century blitzkrieg’. His version of the new blitzkrieg focused on the combination of ‘Colour Revolutions’ and a concept titled ‘Prompt Global Strike’. He wrote:

As you know, the United States has already developed and implemented the concept of Prompt Global Strike. The US military is calculated to achieve the ability to, in a few hours, deploy troops and defeat enemy targets at any point of the globe. It envisages the introduction of a promising form of warfare – of global integrated operations. It proposes the establishment as soon as possible, in any region, of mixed groups of forces capable of joint action to defeat the enemy in a variety of operating environments. According to the developers, this should be a kind of blitzkrieg of the 21st century.

He added ‘in the era of globalisation, the weakening of state borders and development of means of communication are the most important factors changing the form of the resolution of interstate conflicts. In today’s conflicts, the focus of the methods used in combat is shifting towards the integrated application of political, economic, informational, and other non-military measures, implemented with the support of the military force [emphasis added].’

In 2021, through the combination of several factors – Putin publishing an essay arguing that Ukraine has no right to exist; a revised National Security Strategy claiming that ‘the importance of military force to achieve geopolitical aims is increasing’; and a military force assembling around Ukraine – the scene was set for an offensive military attack. Yet many European leaders seemed surprised when the full-scale invasion became a reality.

In a speech in Valdai, in 2022, Putin made clear that he saw the Chechen wars of the 1990s as the model to follow. The lessons learned by the Russian political and military leadership from that conflict, as well as events in Kosovo in 1999, were summarised at the time by the Russian academic Aleksei Arbatov:

The main lesson learned [in Russia] is that the goal justifies the means. The use of force is the most efficient problem solver, if applied decisively and massively. Negotiations are of dubious value and are to be used as a cover for military action. Legality of state actions, observation of laws and legal procedures, and humanitarian suffering are of secondary significance relative to achieving the goal. Limiting one’s own troop casualties is worth imposing massive devastation and collateral fatalities on civilian populations. Foreign public opinion and the position of Western governments are to be discounted if Russian interests are at stake. A concentrated and controlled mass media campaign is the key to success.

In view of the current war in Ukraine, this article, written in 2000, seems uncannily prescient. Throughout the large-scale war, the slogan from the Great Patriotic War (1941-5) has been echoed by the Russian leader and all the state media: ‘All for the front, all for victory!’ By doing so, the intention is to awaken Russians’ collective memory of the Second World War, and appeal to people’s willingness to sacrifice for the motherland. War and conflict are seen in Russia as strategy at the highest level. They are politics by other means. Both the military and political leadership hold to Clausewitz, and the strategic political goals remain intact, regardless of the temporary setbacks on the battlefield. As for the goals, they have been articulated by the Russian leaders for more than 15 years: a new world order should be created; Russia has the right to dominate its neighbourhood; the authoritarian political system is right for Russia.

Consequently, Russia is on a strategic offensive. Ultimately, this is about restoring the Russian Empire in some form or other. All security policy begins at home and this is true of Russia. The drivers of the war against Ukraine emanate from within. Over the past ten years Russia’s security policy has been determined by the dynamic between inner repression and outer aggression. After the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, the intolerance of any kind of dissent started to make itself visible. Former Russian prime minister Boris Nemtsov, who had reacted strongly against the incorporation of Crimea and the military operations in Donbas, was gunned down in 2015, just a couple of hundred metres from the Kremlin walls.

In fact, in the 1990s, a more assertive Russian foreign policy was already beginning to take shape. ‘Making Russia a great power again’ was the theme of Yeltsin’s presidential campaign in 1996. In addition, during Putin’s long tenure, his foreign policy, including the illegal annexation of Crimea, has for many years scored the highest approval ratings.

Another factor may have influenced the decision. The military aggressions in Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015 could be interpreted as great successes. In that sense, the political and military leadership were perhaps ‘dizzy with success’, to use Stalin’s phrase from a speech in 1930, and published in Pravda, in which he criticised overzealous officials in the collectivisation process. During the eight years after 2014, Russia prepared for further aggression against Ukraine and against the West: financially, by building an alternative to SWIFT; in the information sphere, by meddling in Western elections; and by increasing propaganda at home. There were many signs that Russia had turned away from the West, and that the political and military leadership were preparing to move against Ukraine.

Currently, after well over a year and a half of fighting, the war has become intrinsic to the political system within Russia. Several draconian laws have been introduced to eradicate any form of dissent and opposition. People who have protested against the war have been sentenced to 25 years in prison. Such long sentences have not been seen since Stalinist times. Every opposition media outlet has been forced either to leave the country or to close. Russia is on a neo-Stalinist trajectory: censorship prevails, the denunciations are back and there is zero tolerance of any kind of opposition. The propaganda machine in state media is massive; it should not be underestimated. In the most recent illegally annexed areas in Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia – deportations are back, and a state of war has been declared.

Furthermore, there is an ideological aspect to take into account, due to its long-term implications. In November 2022, the Russian president signed a decree listing ‘traditional Russian spiritual and moral values’. The most important of these traditional values, according to the decree, are life, dignity, to serve the fatherland and take responsibility for its destiny, prioritise the spiritual before material matters, collectivism, the historical memory, and the unity of the peoples of Russia.

At the same time, the so-called destructive ideology – that is, the West’s – is defined. It is said to promote violence, egotism, permissiveness, immorality and non-patriotism; it therefore constitutes ‘an objective threat to Russia’s national interests’. It is described as ‘alien to the Russian people’.

In schools, military training has become obligatory, just as it was in the Soviet Union. New history textbooks introduced for the start of school on 1 September 2023 describe the West in general and the US in particular as hostile and a threat to Russia. The withdrawal of Western companies, following the large-scale invasion, is framed in the following way: ‘Many markets are open before you all. That means you have fantastic opportunities for careers in business and for your own start-ups. Don’t miss this chance. Today’s Russia truly is a land of opportunities.’ In addition, a weekly ideological topic, ‘Conversations about what matters’, has already been introduced in schools.

Most recently, a mandatory university course, ‘Fundamentals of Russian Statehood’, for all first-year students, has been created for the academic year starting in the autumn of 2023. The explicit purpose is to make ‘the young understand ideology’.

Consequently, in the absence of Marxism-Leninism, the efforts to create an ideology are ongoing. This directly contradicts the Constitution, which stipulates that ‘No ideology shall be proclaimed as State ideology or as obligatory’ (Article 13.2).

In addition, the current war is a result of the prevailing Russian political leadership’s view of the meaning of ‘sovereignty’. According to this view, only a great power can be truly sovereign – others cannot. The world order should be built on several poles: Russia, China, US, Brazil, India. According to the Russian president, the Vienna Congress 1815 and Yalta 1945 are good examples to follow.

The essence of the efforts to create a Russian imperial ideology consists of three main building blocks: a strong centralised authority, mighty armed forces and a powerful Russian Orthodox Church. Led by Patriarch Kirill, the Church has become a vital ideological instrument of the regime. Russia is described by the Russian leadership as a ‘civilisation’, with a historic mission to fulfil as a great power, underlining its ‘traditional moral and spiritual values’. The West is seen as an enemy. All of this echoes the thinking of the Slavophiles of the 19th century. In 2022 Putin cited one of their proponents, the philosopher Nikolai Danilevskii (1822-85), who in 1869, in explaining why the West was a threat, argued that Russia and the Slavic countries belonged to a special civilisation.

At the moment, this school of thought, which emphasises the imperial legacy, the need for buffer zones and the Eurasian character of Russia, dominates. But Russian history also holds another school of thought, one that advocates respect for human life, negotiations rather than bomb-dropping, respect for international agreements, and the view that Russia is a European state.

By taking a longer-term perspective on Russia’s strategic behaviour and its role as a geopolitical actor, a few observations can be made. Four variables, four structural conditions, stand out as influencing Russian strategy over time, with severe consequences for Russia’s neighbours and the world. The four variables comprise:

1) The army’s position as a founding – integrated – part of Russia as a state, the link between the military and the survivability of the ruler or regime. An unusually large part of the state’s resources is allocated to the military and the defence of the country.

2) Territorial expansion driven, in part, by economic reasons, and to ‘protect’ the heartland, and preferably to wage wars away from the heartland. During a period of over 400 years, between 1500 and 1917, Russia expanded by 130 square kilometres per day. The Soviet Union built up a whole chain of buffer states, through annexation and coercion. The uncertainty of the borders have played a critical role in the history of Russia, today especially so. From the Russian military’s perspective, territories are crucial to the survival of Russia.

3) The demand for prestige and international great power status on the one hand, and an explicit feeling of insecurity on the other. In 1917, according to the American scholar William Fuller, this resulted in ‘an avoidable overextension’.

4) The nationality question. Russia is not and never has been a nation-state. Today, there are over 90 ethnic minorities in Russia. Deploring the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Yakovlev, ‘the father of perestroika’, noted that he and the Soviet leadership under Gorbachev had ignored the nationalities.

For the future, these four variables are going to be handled, and balanced, by Russia’s leaders, regardless of who is in power in the Kremlin. All of this touches on the question of Russian identity, once described by Putin as ‘national sport’. Who are we? What kind of state will Russia be in the future and what kind of relationships should it have with Europe and the West? In turn, the West needs to relate to the four variables and consider its long-term relations with a future Russia.

To sum up, the consequences of the ongoing war are far-reaching and entail rapid changes in Europe, Ukraine and Russia. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not for the first time in European history, poses pressing questions about the consequences of war. We are just at the beginning of trying to grasp the depth of what this means. The fate of Ukraine is dependent on what kind of future and security order there will be. This begs the question of when wars start, rather than the one more commonly asked these days: when does the war end?

It is clear that Russia’s strategic, political goals remain intact, regardless of the different phases on the battlefield. President Putin has expressed several times that Russia has both time and history on its side.

Having said this, there is no need to become defeatist. The current Russo-Ukrainian war, and the severed relations with the West, are the result of political choices made by the Russian leadership. The increased repression in Russia has been going on for many years. There are plenty of instances over the years when Russian leaders could have made other choices but chose not to do so. It is important to keep this in mind for the future, regardless of who is in power in the Kremlin. How will it all end? I do not know. I will just conclude with a quote from the Russian philosopher and writer Vasilii Rozanov (1856-1919), as a reminder that change, when it comes, can be sudden and is always unpredictable.

This is his from very short drama, La Divina Commedia, published in 1918:

With a bang, a creak, and a squeal, an iron curtain descended over Russian history.

The performance was over. The audience stood up. It was time to put on the fur coats and go home. We turned around. But there were no fur coats nor any homes.