Our View: Spread of liberal democracy to Russia is what Putin is fighting against

While the fighting was raging in Ukraine, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov urged Ukrainians to get rid of their oppressive government. Russia had no plans to occupy Ukraine or attack the Ukrainian people as long as the army stopped fighting, he was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency. After all, the objective of the ‘special military operation,’ as stated by President Vladimir Putin in his declaration of war, was the ‘demilitarisation and denazification’ of Ukraine. On Friday he called in the Ukrainian army to revolt to free the country of “this gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis.”

Russia did not recognise the government in Ukraine as democratic, Lavrov said. “We do not want neo-Nazis to rule Ukraine,” he said. The arrogance of the Russian leadership is astounding. Putin and Lavrov run the most repressive undemocratic regime in Europe, but feel qualified to decide what constitutes a democratic government in Ukraine. They have labeled Ukraine’s government ‘neo-Nazi’, without any evidence to support this. In the 2019 elections in Ukraine, the far-right took two per cent of the vote, significantly less than those of Western European countries, many of which are funded by Putin, the leader of the global far right. Incidentally, the leader of the ‘neo-Nazi’ government, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is Jewish.

The ’demilitarisation and denazification’ of Ukraine, is code language for turning the country into a Soviet-era satellite state. Without a military, Russia will take care of Ukraine’s security and a puppet regime would be installed to run the country, according to Moscow’s diktats. Only then, presumably, would Moscow recognise the Ukraine government as democratic and there would be no need for occupation. Putin is not satisfied with having Ukraine under Russian influence, his puppet president having been overthrown by a public revolt in 2014, so he is now seeking complete control of the country through force of arms.

It is argued that the West made a big mistake in expanding its influence eastwards after the collapse of the Soviet Union as this ensured the long-term hostility of Russia. Romania, Poland and the Baltic states all joined Nato, upsetting the balance of power in eastern Europe and alienating Moscow, which saw the new security architecture of Europe as an existential threat. Ukraine joining Nato was a red line for Russia which it made very clear, from the start. Although, Moscow had no right dictating what alliances a sovereign state could enter, its demand could have been satisfied, gradually, through diplomacy. This, according to reports, was being discussed in the days before Russia’s invasion.

The reason Ukraine wanted to join Nato should not be ignored – it felt this was the only safeguard against Russian aggression, which was demonstrated by the annexation of Crimea and the military support of Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Fear of Russia was the reason the Baltic states and Poland joined Nato after the collapse of the Soviet Union, believing this was the only security guarantee they had. It is no coincidence that most countries of the Eastern Bloc joined Nato after the demise of the Soviet Union. They had chosen to be part of the alliance of the democratic West, for their protection, in case there was a resurgence of Russia as a world power seeking to expand its borders and reassert its old, suffocating domination over eastern Europe. Nato did not go seeking new members but accepted applications from newly-independent sovereign states seeking to safeguard their independence.

Russia might no longer be a communist state but it is a totalitarian regime, President Putin having absolute power, like the tsars of the 17th and 18^th centuries, with the might and resources to extend it beyond the national boundaries. His contempt for liberal democracy is no secret. His regime has murdered and imprisoned political opponents, shut down critical media, banned parties from standing in elections and used the justice system to close down companies and steal their assets. The main leader of the opposition was poisoned and ended up in prison because he survived.

“The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population,” Putin said in an interview with the Financial Times in 2019, attempting to give intellectual legitimacy to his totalitarian rule, which he now wants to extend to Ukraine by force of arms. Keeping Ukraine out of Nato is not his biggest concern. His biggest fear is the liberal democracy that has taken root in Ukraine where, despite the corruption and struggling economy, they still have free elections and public protests. This poses a threat to Putin’s totalitarian rule as ideas of freedom and democracy can spread across borders. The spread of liberal democracy in Russia is the existential threat to the Putin regime that has to be stopped and not Ukraine’s prospective membership of Nato.

And Putin seems determined to stop this, regardless of the cost in human lives, with his special military operation for the alleged denazification of Ukraine and the instalment of a puppet government that Lavrov will recognise as democratic.