David Patrikarakos is a Contributing Editor at UnHerd. His latest book is War in 140 characters: how social media is reshaping conflict in the 21st century. (Hachette)
This weekend, 150 days will have passed since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine and started an all-out war that his flunkies assured him would last no more than three days. News from the ground is mixed. On the one hand, Russia now has a land bridge all the way from its own border to Crimea, controls the entire Luhansk region, and is rolling out the Donbas playbook in Mariupol and Kherson.
Local quislings have been installed, roubles flow in to replace Ukrainian Hryvnias, and locals are pressured into applying for Russian passports. Russia soon plans to hold sham referendums in which the region’s cities will “decide” whether to join the Russian Federation. What emerges, Moscow hopes, is a Vichy-on-Sea along Ukraine’s south coast.
On the other hand, Putin’s original plan was to march to Kyiv and capture the whole of Ukraine. This has emphatically not happened. The Ukrainians never stopped fighting. In occupied cities such as Kherson, resistance movements are springing up. Now, helped as ever by Western weapons, the Ukrainian army is hitting the invading Russians hard in the East. Last week, it blew up a Russian arms depot in the city of Nova Kakhovka, in the occupied Kherson Oblast.
What made the strike particularly important was the role of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). 150 days in, HIMARS — US-manufactured medium-range rocket systems that launch multiple precision-guided rockets — are the latest illuminating development in the Russia-Ukraine war. They are similar to Soviet rocket systems, which means the Ukrainians can get to grips with them easily, but they’re far more accurate. A small crew can operate them and load the missiles in minutes. What is really a game changer, though, is their range. The Ukrainians can fire the HIMARS from 80km away, safe from Russian reprisals.
From this distance, the Ukrainians are not firing at Russian troops or artillery or armour, but at supply lines — in particular warehouses containing ammunition and stores. Ukraine has reportedly blown up 12 Russian arms depots since the end of June. And this is important because it speaks to how the war has evolved.
The war began with tanks rolling towards Kyiv. Installing a puppet regime in the capital was Moscow’s goal. The weapon of choice for Ukrainians was the US anti-tank Javelin missile system; as the number of Russian tanks swelled, the UK’s much cheaper and easier-to-use NLAW anti-tank missiles came into their own. Then, when the Russians were beaten back from central Ukraine to the Donbas and parts of the south, it became a battle of artillery. The two sides shelled each other relentlessly, exhausting stocks of ammunition at rates not seen in Europe for almost a century.
From Kyiv to Odesa to the Donbas. From Javelins to NLAWS to HIMARS. This, after 150 days, is one story of the war in Ukraine — and it’s a visceral one. Over April and May, I travelled to all three frontlines for UnHerd, from Mykolaiv and the villages beyond in the south to the Donbas in the east and to Kharkiv in the northeast. Landscapes of burned-out vehicles, tank husks and endless shattered buildings spoke to the strength and scale of the weaponry strafing Ukraine. This is what we might usefully call the physical battle.
But there is another element, too — the metaphysical battle. When you strip away the endless analysis and social media cacophony, this is the story of a people defending their home against the return of fascism to Europe almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War. Above all, it is this that we must internalise if we are to most effectively help the Ukrainians win.
Like all fascistic ideologies, Putinism is based upon a historical lie. And like all fascist leaders, Vladimir Putin has elevated that lie to a fetish. “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, published on the Kremlin’s website a year ago this week, is a long, historically illiterate and obdurately tedious piece of writing, but it is instructive in its mendacity. In it, Putin spells out his unshakable belief that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole”.
Seen like this, Putin’s deranged televised Security Council meeting back in February — in which he made the public case for war to his startled sycophants — was entirely predictable. We should have understood Putin’s essay for what it was: a political manifesto. Then we might have been more prepared for what was coming.
The battle for Ukraine is about geopolitics, resources, and so on, but it is also about something more profound that obsesses all fascists: identity, particularly one that they feel has trampled upon, disrespected, or otherwise besmirched by the modern world.
When I read Putin, I am reminded of Spain’s General Franco, another “strongman” obsessed with a mythical past of his own making, and a “pristine” national identity that he sought to recreate through violence. Franco was obsessed with a unified Spain of ancient origin — his motto, remember, was Una, Grande y Libre. Standing in his way were not Ukrainians but Basques and Catalans, the latter of whom, like Ukrainians, inhabited resource-rich and industrial lands he needed for his imperial vision.
Franco revered Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic monarchs who united Castile and Aragon and took Granada from the Moors in 1492. But he felt a particular affinity with those who had become semi-mythical — most of all El Cid, the Castilian knight who captured Valencia from the Moors, and Fernán González of Castile, the man from whom he traced the emergence of Spain. For Putin it is, among others, St. Vladimir, who was both Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kiev, and whose “spiritual choice” still “largely determines our [Russia and Ukraine’s] affinity today”.
When Putin looks at Crimea and cities such as Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Odesa, he doesn’t see the Black Sea littoral of southern Ukraine but something else entirely. “In the second half of the 18th century,” he wrote, “following the wars with the Ottoman Empire, Russia incorporated Crimea and the lands of the Black Sea region, which became known as Novorossiya.”
When I travelled throughout the occupied East back in 2014, the pro-Kremlin separatists I met were adamant that I refer to the area as Novorossiya. If it wasn’t the Soviet era they were determined to drag their fiefdom back to, it was imperial Russia. Nostalgia-tinged violence in the service of denying Ukrainian sovereignty was the goal.
Like Franco, Putin warps tradition and perverts history. He is determined to burrow backwards into the future. When When I was on the Eastern Front in April, I drove to a Ukrainian army base with Dima, a drone operator. “Have you ever read Umberto Eco’s 14 General Properties of Fascism? He asked me. “All 14 of them are present in modern Russia.” Reading them now, it’s hard not to agree. “The cult of tradition.” Tick. “Disagreement is treason.” Tick. “Contempt for the weak.” Double Tick. “Fear of difference”, “appeal to social frustration” and the “obsession with a plot”. Tick, tick, tick.
“The way Russia is using the Second World War to militarise society is disgusting,” Dima told me as we roared through the Donbas. “Who the fuck dresses up an 11-year-old kid in a military uniform? It’s pure fascism.”
This much is as clear as the atrocities Russians soldiers commit every day in Ukraine. So why the general reluctance to talk about fascism? Admittedly, many do use the term, including high-profile figures such as the Russian dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky. But across the major publications in the West, the label remains conspicuous by its absence.
One issue, I suspect, is a problem of definition. In his 1944 essay What is Fascism?, George Orwell wrote: “In internal politics… this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. If you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people… which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years.” Quoting Orwell on fascism might be cliched, but nobody wrote about it better; he could be talking about 2022. Today, the term “fascist”, like the word “disinformation”, has been emptied of all meaning, employed merely to mean someone or something we don’t like. It has been degraded, as Orwell wrote, to “the level of a swearword”. And when everything and everyone is fascist then nothing and nobody is.
The problem is muddied by the Russians themselves. Imagine the world of moral disorder you must need to inhabit to describe the military campaign to overthrow Ukraine’s Jewish President as “Denazification”. Yet there is a wider point here, too. The West, as Tom Holland has observed, is a largely post-Christian world, in which the founding morality tale of our societies is no longer the Bible but the Second World War, which is also the last time both the West and Russia enjoyed a decisive and clear moral victory. The enemies then were fascists, and their image squats as a perennial bogeyman in our collective consciousness. But to effectively battle something you must correctly label it; little is possible without semantic clarity from first principles.
Whenever I walk through central Kyiv, I inevitably pass one of the many statues of the poet Taras Shevchenko. Ukrainians revere him as the father of their modern literature. Throughout the 19th century, the Russians persecuted and imprisoned him for promoting Ukrainian independence, writing poems in Ukrainian, and mocking members of the Russian Imperial House.
Once more, Ukrainians are suffering for the colonialist delusions of a dictatorial Russian despot. Putin’s bombs and rockets rain down across the country. There is nothing like an air raid siren to transport you back in time — I’d only ever previously heard them in Second World War films. Everything about this war is atavistic.
It’s also eye-opening. It was in Ukraine that I began to understand 21st century conflict, and why this war was so different to those I had experienced before in places like the Congo. It was when I began to write regular dispatches and became, properly, a foreign correspondent. And it was when I began to understand something else, too: if I wasn’t exactly sure of everything I was for, I now knew exactly, in the pit of my stomach, what it was I was against: gratuitous violence, industrial lying and eye-watering corruption, all in the service of a fascist state. Perhaps most of all it is here that I understood that strong men are rarely strong. Putin has never fought in a war or even, to the best of my knowledge, been to a frontline during a time of danger. He is too scared to sit close to someone at a table, let alone visit the battlefields he created in Ukraine.
When I visit cities and towns and villages across Ukraine and speak to those who have been to the front and those who have lost people, I am reminded not just of the horror of violence but its tawdriness and total futility. So many young lives filled with so much potential snuffed out for no good reason. So many survivors shattered by torture. In early May, in a pub just by the Golden Gate in the city centre, I watch a presenter on RT not so much lie about the war as reinvent it. Moscow twists not just language but reality.
Ukraine is a place where the uncomfortable truths of our age are manifest. What I have seen emerge here — hybrid warfare, the weaponisation of information, oligarchic politics, and the catastrophic effects of kleptocracy, to name just a few — is the dark underbelly of the 21st century. And against that, there can be no retreat.
My thoughts return once more to Franco. Even though Ukrainians are defending their land from a foreign invader, this conflict is still the Spanish Civil War of our time. It certainly is for me personally (for what little that is worth). Putin is Franco Mark II, several times as powerful and many times as bloodthirsty. Opposing him though are not Communists, but ordinary Ukrainians fighting for the right to live in a free state.
Semantics matter. Words matter. Understand that this is fascism and it becomes harder for the West to stop helping Ukraine. And believe me, there are many in Europe who are growing tired, which is just what Moscow is banking on. Western fatigue means the flow of aid and political support will end. It means no more HIMARS.
So name this war for what it is: a struggle against fascism. For once, let the call to collective memory and to history be in the service of something good, not just for Ukrainians who are fighting for their lives, but for all who care about common decency.
Franco wasn’t a fascist. He was a nationalist arch-conservative who used the Spanish proto-fascist movement (the Falange) to achieve his own aims of a united, traditionalist Spain that did not tolerate communism, progressivism or ‘cultural socialism’. A ruthless dictator? By all means. But not a fascist. Putin isn’t a fascist – he’s a bully, a gangster etc, etc – feel free to pick a pejorative. But he’s not a fascist. This is an absurd accusation given the fact there are literally groups of Ukrainian soldiers waving flags with swastikas on them and wearing uniforms with the Sonnenrad embroidered on them. I’m not saying “Ukraine is a neo-Nazi country”. And I’m absolutely not saying “Russia is in the right” – Russia is completely in the wrong in waging an utterly unjust war. But you won’t find a single invading Russian soldier with a fascist symbol on his uniform. Murderers? Brutes? Gangsters? Barbarians? By all means. But they’re not actually fascists. Frankly, to anyone who has even briefly looked at a history book, Eco’s list of the general features of fascism is so vague it’s useless. Its just a list of things Eco doesn’t like and wishes to impugn.
Fascism didn’t come from the right wing, even though it is generally referred to as the ‘far right’: it is the direct, b*****d-child progeny of socialism. Look at its history: in its earliest days it openly considered itself to be a form of socialism (Mussolini considered himself to be a good socialist to the end). It sprang from a form of revolutionary socialist trade unionism (“syndicalism”) that in the wake of the start of WWI became nationalist rather than internationalist: Mussolini’s original political movement, which ultimately evolved into the National Fascist Party in 1921, started in 1914 as ‘The Fasces (‘League’) of Revolutionary Action’. And I need not remind anyone that the Nazi ideology is “National Socialism”. Neither of these movements was conservative. Neither was traditionalist. They are the radical, authoritarian, ideological fruit of hard Left political philosophy united to populist nationalism. And as with all revolutionary movements that have their source ultimately in ‘The Enlightenment’ and the French Revolution, they tended strongly towards atheism and a rejection of Christianity and the Church.
The notion that Putin is a fascist because he is authoritarian, purports to dislike LGBTQ and claims to like Orthodox Christianity, is just silly.
All those “Zs” look pretty fascistic to me. As do the rallies, and the repression of anyone who protests. And the media environment is precisely what we expect in any such state. But given the supposed “enlightened” nature of past Fascisms, might we modify your definition, and say Putin is an “Unenlightened Fascist?”
Yet the left still gets away with it
Literally. To say ‘I am a member of the Communist Party’ gets almost no reaction; IMHO it should get the same as if you said you are a member of the Nazi Party.
excellent comment. The Left continue to call Fascism ‘Far right’ but it is simply to try to taint the real Right. In reality Stalin used Far Right as an insult to Hitler, knowing full well the national Socialists were just another ‘branch’ of the same rotten tree.
Umberto Eco’s rules of fascism are so loose and vague that you could twist them to describe most political movements you don’t like. They are regularly wheeled out online for democratically elected leaders such as Trump or Boris. Or indeed anyone who presents even a modicum of resistance to the left and the neoliberal globalists.
I also thought that they were very vague. He says that “it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it”, but if you take just one of his factors Appeal to social frustration: this could lead to many political positions including communism. All too often people just use Fascism as a general catch-all insult or to raise fear; it was a political system which encompassed ideas such as militarism, nationalism, and state control over many aspects of the economy to ensure it was working towards the desired ends. These ideas do not spring from just appealing to social frustration, there needs to be already some aim in place.
“Militarism” — May Day parades in Red Square, and the production of dozens of movies glorifying WW2 each year? “Nationalism” — All “Russians” must be returned to Russia, whether they wish to or not? “State Control” — All major businesses in the hands of oligarchs, who are directly controlled by Putin?
People who take their historical views from writers of fiction like Orwell and Eco probably shouldn’t be purporting to write serious geopolitical analysis.
Both, and in particular Orwell, wrote non-fiction as well as fiction. Orwell’s essays are well written, well argued and often punchy and humerous; he, like Eco, also wrote from first-hand experience.
There are many excellent writers around who can write in an honest, pragmatic and truthful way, and yet Unherd are going with this, which to anyone even remotely knowledgeable about this topic, is none of those three. It is nothing but opinionated propaganda.
After 150 days is it not time that we cut back on the “Slava Ukraini'” rally cries, focused on what is really happening, and sought to find a diplomatic solution to this terrible conflict.
After all, this is not Call of Duty. It is real war and real people are getting killed.
So what do you disagree with? Do you not think Putins actions can be described as f*scism? Looking at the dictionary definition I’d argue the writer is correct, there’s little between the likes of Franco, Mussolini and Putin
More likely it’s time to support a major push by the Ukrainian army, to take back as much territory as possible from an aggressor who launched an unprovoked attack. Or should we have made peace with Hitler in 1942? More people died afterward than before. A negotiated peace would have saved them all.
By assuming it was unprovoked we are making the most basic mistake of diplomacy and one of the key tenets of nonviolent communication. Research studies show that this escalates violence and war.
We are not assuming anything. We have seen what has happened.
Sadly, “nonviolent communication” has never ended a war. Diplomacy only deals with facts on the ground. And right now, neither side is ready for negotiation. The war will only end when one side or the other gains a decisive advantage–on the battlefield.
“which is also the last time both the West and Russia enjoyed a decisive and clear moral victory” Given the tone of the article, it’s odd, is it not, that the ‘myth’ of Russia, the Soviet Union, having a ‘clear moral victory’ in WW II, is perpetuated ? It has been suggested, whether at the time, or afterwards, that the ‘start’ of the Second World War was less Hitlers invasion of Poland but instead, the signing of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact, dividing ‘spheres’ of influence, in Eastern Europe, between them. That Putin seeks to perpetuate, at least the Soviet side of the agreement, should, perhaps, not come as a real surprise. Mindful, of George Orwell’s words, ‘If everyone is a fascist, then no one is’, can there be any doubt that Stalins Russia was any less ‘fascist’ than Franco’s Spain, or even maybe Hitler’s Germany ? Is Putin’s Russia, and it’s invasion of Ukraine, not just the Soviet Empire writ large ?
Simply substitute the word “totalitarian.”
This is just rambling, ahistorical drivel. That the author peddles imaginative nonsense by writers of fiction like George Orwell and Umberto Eco ought to be a clue. In truth, fascism was an Italian phenomenon that combined Italian nationalism, corporatist syndicalism and Hegelian historical determinism. Franco on the other hand was not a fascist. He was a Spanish authoritarian conservative. And Putin almost certainly isn’t a fascist either. Russian “nationalism” (if it’s even a thing at all) has hardly anything in common with the Italian nationalism of Garibaldi and Mazzini. The simple reality is that Russia needs the Black Sea, and with the elections of buffoons like Biden and Zelensky (coming hard on the heels of other buffoons like Boris and The Donald) Putin saw an opportunity (or thought he did) and took it. Putin’s version of history is orthodoxly (ahem!) Soviet. For him Russia and the Ukraine are one single Slavic nation. His views have nothing to do with fascism.
Yeah, it’s not like Orwell fought against fascists in Spain and then became disillusioned with both sides, or anything… What would he know? Best to stick with your view.
Then by that definition, Hitler wasn’t a fascist either. He was also a “nationalist.” Your point, however, does hold water in the sense that Russian leaders simply don’t possess the intellectual rigour to come up with a genuine ideology.
“Franco on the other hand was not a fascist. He was a Spanish authoritarian conservative.” Aha, someone else who has read Roger Eatwell’s book.
You seem angry? Why? To continue the debate in a less ad hominem fashion, and for those of us who do not know as much about the subject as you may do, could you please define “fascism” – thank you.
You are proving the writer’s description of this as a war with lies and propaganda. Okay, let’s skip all the BS and just call Putin an invader and murderer; and a fearful person who has never seen a war upfront but hides in his bunker in the Urals. But no, you call all the people (politicians) who fight the Putin war machine buffoons while you worship your murdering Putin.
Russia is on a march to its own oblivion. China will then bite off large chunks of its corpse.
The BEST case scenario for Russia is as a dependent client state for China. The worst is as you describe.
Exactly. The big risk to Russia is not the West / NATO of Putain’s fevered imaginings, but China to its South. Russia is vulnerable there, and they’re too dumb to have copped it yet.
Shouldn’t an essay concerning fascism, Ukraine and Russian contain at least a mention of The Azov Battalion and the Svoboda Party ? These are politically relevant facts (the Sich Battalion, S14 and the Kraken Battalion are also players albeit minor ones). All of this is certainly more relevant than Generalissimo Franco, who died in a totally different country more than two generations ago. Aris Roussinos certainly though they were worth mentioning in this very magazine less than two months ago. https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-truth-about-ukraines-nazi-militias/ Why is it that the Azov battalion is no longer worth mentioning in a discussion of fascism in the Ukraine-Russia war ? Is it because that after their last stand at the Azov steel works they’re off the board and so their signal is no longer worth boosting ? Or is it more of the case that after pledging to de-nazify Ukraine that knocking out a neo-nazi battalion looks like a clear win for Putin ?
Not much of a “win” if you obliterate a city of 400,000.
It’s already being rebuilt.
It’ll be the Grozny of the Black Sea soon enough.
Not with a collapsing Russian economy. Putin won’t s[end a kopeck on Donbas if his Russians are in poverty. Mariupol will join the ranks of all the failed projects at the end of the Soviet period.
Here is the list of Eco’s 14 General Features of Fascism for those who do not wish to register for the NY Review of Books. https://www.openculture.com/2016/11/umberto-eco-makes-a-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html
Thanks for the list.As long as ‘Fascist’ Dictators avoid getting into foreign wars they can be extremely popular.No question that Franco and Pinochet had a sizable popular base whilst Musolini poll ratings were very high prior to the 2nd world war. British politics are now so useless one wonders if a credible authoritian figure emerged who people believed could ‘get things done’ they would have a good chance of winning an election
Excellent article. Thank you. I was surprised by the number of negative views about this article and a pro Russian feeling that pervades. I wonder just how many of these people have visited the frontlines associated with this conflict. Perhaps they may then have different views. It is good to have an account from someone who has.
It’s amazing the entire Russian Federation didn’t disintegrate following the collapse of the Soviet state.
Probably even more amazing than Franco holding Spain together as a single nation, and it continuing to be just that decades after the Generalissimo’s death.
Excellent article. Calling the Putin regime out for what it is. This regime must not succeed in devouring Ukraine. This is not a controversial opinion being expressed: just a clear-sighted view of the regime’s reasoning and aims.
And if you’re willing to risk your children and grandchildren being enlisted it is a great strategy. How passionate will you feel about Ukraine when it is you and your kids being blown up? Easy to support fighting to the last Ukrainian when you have no skin in the game. Personally, I wouldn’t want my kids to go to war until every possible diplomatic solution had been ruled out.
Why risk fighting when you can surrender peacefully?
So the government installed by the CIA wasn’t a puppet?
Nonsense. In what way, exactly, was it “installed”? Enlighten us.
Was the current govt of Ukraine, elected with the largest majorities in Russophone south and east Ukraine, a puppet or a popular govt? It now seems to have overwhelming support in this war. EVERY nation in history has had interruptions in normal governance. Which by your logic also makes every nation in the UN illegitimate.
‘“Have you ever read Umberto Eco’s 14 General Properties of Fascism? He asked me. “All 14 of them are present in modern Russia.” Reading them now, it’s hard not to agree. “The cult of tradition.” Tick. “Disagreement is treason.” Tick. “Contempt for the weak.” Double Tick. “Fear of difference”, “appeal to social frustration” and the “obsession with a plot”. Tick, tick, tick.’ The excerpt above might indicate features of fascism, however, even if this is the case it does not mean that a state or regime containing them is a fascist one. How Putin or his regime is ‘fascist’ is not argued in the article, no evidence is used to support the point whatsoever. If anything, the handling of fascism in the article is another example of the frivolous treatment the ideology receives today. I’ve read better from this author and I must say I commend the bravery of any war-correspondent. The Heritage Site | Adam McDermont | Substack
Whether Putin is a fascist or not strikes me as comparable with debates about how may angels dance on the head of a pin. The fact is he is an evil dictator who by his own account is trying to resurrect Imperialist Czarist Russia,
Great essay! It’s worse, however. At least the Soviets had a recognizable, coherent ideology, albeit totally unsuited to the real world. Even Putin’s hybrid war in Donbas was anchored in some aspects of the real world. But the people around Putin, if not Putin himself, are certifiable psychotics, living in a fantasy “Russian World.” Patrushev certainly fits this pattern. –When you believe that actively making people poorer for 8 straight years will somehow make them love you, and welcome you with open arms… –When you think bombing people in eastern Ukraine will make them get in touch with their “Inner Russian”… –When you think that hastily trained conscripts and thuggish mercenaries can replace the Russian Army destroyed outside of Kyiv… You are well past delusional. Russia is now as much a danger to herself as she is to everyone else.
“startled sycophants” indeed – well-written article; thanks. Françoise Thom is good about dealing with Russians: https://en.desk-russie.eu/2021/12/30/what-does-the-russian-ultimatum.html
Honestly if we weren’t scared of the words and ideas we would correctly label Ukraine as the Nationalist state in this conflict, fighting against the Fascistic multiculturalism of Eurasianism.
Putin is not a Russian nationalist in that he thinks ethnic Russians should be in a “pure” ethnically Russian state— On the invasion he literally said “I believe in Passionarity”! And since has said that “I am Russian, Lak, Chechen, Kazak…” and on and on. Passionarity is a metaphysical belief that mixing of groups will create new power via the mixing of genes…a hyped up version of “Diversity is Strength!” And it is only by binding these groups together under the Eurasianist cause that Russia, what Mackinder called the “Heartland,” can stand up to those who seek to impose foreign ideologies on their space to weaken and divide it. Whether ethnic nationalism or market liberalism, these are ideologies supported by Eurasias enemies to destroy it, and in many Russians view nearly did.
This is what some Russians refer to as the “True Fascism” that is represented by Putin but also ironically takes its inspiration directly from Josef Stalin: The Great Eurasian (and Georgian) who was able to draw the lines as he saw fit. Although Putin hasn’t directly compared himself to Stalin (be a bit like an American calling themself Lincoln), it’s obvious he wishes to follow in his footsteps while he absolutely despises Vladimir Lenin, Kruschev, and Gorbachev.
Much of the opposition to Putin, such as from Navalny for example, was based around “we don’t want more Muslims in Moscow!”
A rejection of Eurasianism the Ukrainians are happy to embrace!
“On the other hand, Putin’s original plan was to march to Kyiv and capture the whole of Ukraine.” No it wasn’t.
A bit inaccurate, yes. He was probably planning to install a puppet government and control Ukraine that way.
A puppet govt in Kyiv would have been just a fig leaf. It could never control any part of the country without Russia’s army–which is why they attacked on so many axes.
Seeing as there was a large column of tanks and artillery on the outskirts of Kyiv, I think we can safely say that capturing the capital was one of the first major objectives of the invasion
Can’t go along with this. Is the Spanish civil war the only one where the losers won the propaganda war? Franco may be unpalatable but communism was the alternative. BTW I unreservedly support Ukraine’s fight for freedom.
War correspondents and exposure to death and horror of the kind Mr. Patrikarakos has endured may not have been on the Unherd to do list seven months back. His reports and coverage have been heroic and informative. Thank you. Indications that Unherd must continue this coverage, not found elsewhere, is particularly concerning. Putin people invading other sovereign Nations cannot be tolerated by any who value freedoms. Pathways to their autocratic leadership via Dockland murder and thuggery, Blackshirts or Prayer Mats doesn‘t seem to matter much once they find their satisfactions and power in the “killing fields” upon other’s land. Defeating these satisfactions is what once defined Western Democracies. Unherd of? Hope not.
In a world/US where “fascist” replaced “someone who disagrees with me,” this screed shines as drivel.
I would prefer Putin and Franco to idiots like Biden, Johnson, Trudeau … fascist or not. This article first appeared in the Guardian and even those lefties readers considered it a load of pompous piffle.
Yes, a strong leader, just what we need; let’s not be too concerned about their ideologies, just so long as they’re strong, that way they can remove from us any need to think for ourselves. It also allows us to do away with all those tedious elections, not to mention election broadcastes – happy days!
That’s a weird proposition – search The Guardian website for the author and there is nothing since 2018, 4 years ago. Do you have a link or is that made up?
The second to last paragraph gave the game away….. Propagandistic bilge written for soft-brained ignoramuses in order to keep the weapons flowing. Even the NED and Victoria Nuland would have been embarrassed to have published this dreck.
Yup – stop supporting Ukraine and let Russia take over, because that has worked so well for the people in the country’s East. I believe that life in Chechnya is a ball, just as an example of how life in Russified Ukraine would be.
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