Intent to Destroy by Eugene Finkel

Author:Eugene Finkel [Finkel, Eugene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2024-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

PHANTOM PAINS

New Year’s Eve is the most important holiday in Russia, and the evening gala broadcast on state TV is traditionally a joyful event, packed with celebrity appearances, jokes, songs, and lots of champagne. As 2013 became 2014, one of the two hosts of this televised celebration was a smiling, energetic comedian named Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky was born and grew up in Ukraine, but Vova, as he was referred to on the show, was a native Russian speaker and no stranger to Russian prime-time TV. Indeed, Zelensky had spent a large part of his career in Moscow. The tone was cheerful, but the jokes, unlike in previous years, centered on war: the “advance” of the New Year, fireworks as artillery support, “capturing” delicacies, negotiating with the enemy while drunk. Nobody knew it yet, but war between Russia and Zelensky’s native Ukraine was just around the corner. For over two decades, Russia and Ukraine had coexisted in relative peace, but tensions—present from the last days of the USSR—were building up, ready to erupt.1

After the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia and Ukraine became separate countries, but few Russians viewed Ukraine as a real state. Most parts of Ukraine, and above all Crimea, were perceived as indistinguishable from—indeed extensions of—Russia, separated from their true motherland only by a freak accident of history. For Moscow liberals, who governed Russia’s nascent democracy in the early 1990s, independent Ukraine was a curiosity that with time might come to its senses and rejoin democratic, prosperous Russia. The nationalist right and the Communists, on the other hand, wished to destroy Ukraine for ideological and identity reasons. Ukraine had to be incorporated into a reincarnation of the Russian Empire or the USSR. For Putin, who came to power in 2000 and soon turned Russia into a dictatorship, the intent was originally not to destroy but to control Ukraine, primarily to protect his autocratic rule. If Ukrainians could have meaningful elections and replace their leaders, the fear went, then the presumably fraternal Russians might as well. Therefore, to protect the Kremlin, Ukraine had to be dominated by Russia.

As time passed, however, Putin increasingly staked the legitimacy of his autocratic rule on nostalgia and confrontation with the West, and his policies converged with those of the nationalist right. January 1, 2014, was the last New Year’s celebration when Russians and Ukrainians would laugh together about military matters.

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