Root of the War in Ukraine

For John, BLUF:  For President Putin the War in Ukraine is about religion.  [The theory discussed may be total rubbish, or even Russian disinformation, but it is a theory and something to examine.  The obvious answer is not always the correct answer.]  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Putin’s Attack on Ukraine Is a Religious War

Here is the sub-headline:

Russia’s aggression against its neighbor isn’t just power politics and geostrategy, it’s about core issues of faith and identity

From Top Secret Umbra, by Mr John Schindler♠, 24 February 2022.

Counterintelligencer, cat herder, KuKservative, mystery-hunter, author about town. No Such Agency and all that. Feb 24. Here is the lede plus four:

It’s finally happened. Early today, after weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on his neighbor and launched a major, multi-pronged invasion into Southern, Eastern, and Northern Ukraine. This is just the first military phase of many to come, only a small amount of the vast forces that Moscow has marshalled on Ukraine’s frontiers have entered action yet. Any judgements about the progress of the war would be premature (though this newsletter will be providing regular assessments on this conflict, Europe’s most important war since 1945).

What needs to be established is why Putin has done this. Unleashing full-scale war here represents an enormous political gamble – failure in Ukraine could unravel his two-decade rule over Russia – from a leader who’s generally been tactically adventurous yet strategically cautious. Most Western “experts” got this wrong and many seem stunned that the Kremlin has really started a major war. As Top Secret Umbra previously noted, this represents a collective failure of the Western elite, which so misread Putin, despite his being plain about his contempt for the United States and NATO for 15 years, as well as his dismissive attitude towards Ukraine as more a “region” than a bona fide country:

Putin waged a hot war of aggression against Ukraine in 2014-15, starting with Russia’s theft of Crimea by GRU’s Little Green Men, followed by the seizure of a good-sized chunk of Ukraine’s southeast by the Russian military. That conflict has ever entirely faded out, and Moscow’s de facto holding on to pieces of Ukraine means that country will never be allowed to enter NATO. Given the recent past, and the not-entirely-frozen conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, how on earth can anybody be surprised that Putin might attack Ukraine again?

Moscow told us, most of us just didn’t bother to listen. If Western elites listened at all, they dismissed Putin’s strange analysis as the ravings of a madman, or at least someone not operating in our Western unipolar reality. As this newsletter explained further:

To such elites, all of whom fall on the spectrum of Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic, WEIRD for short, Putin represents an atavism whose motivations they cannot understand. The Kremlin strongman adheres to a distinctly throwback view of international relations where the use of force is normal, and countries protect their national interests unapologetically, with all the instruments of national power. Putin’s wholehearted embrace of religiously-infused nationalism, which boasts a venerable history in Russia, leaves WEIRDs befuddled yet has real resonance among average Russians. Western doubts that the former KGB man has “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” miss the point, but then the West has never understood Russian Orthodoxy very well. No matter what Putin really believes, his public embrace of religiously-grounded national conservatism provides his regime with an ideological anchor, one which happens to view Ukraine’s subservience to Russia as a spiritual as well as geostrategic necessity.

I actually am attracted to the idea.  Not everyone in the world is a well educated agnostic progressive.  Some actually have strong religious views.  Further, a smaller faction actually believe that God has predicted an "End Times", which includes a global war, with Christians debating about what happens after and when Jesus will return for the faithful.♥

What are the implicatiohs of concluding that this is about religion?  One is that, for President Putin, the solution is Ukraine Orthodox followers acknowledging that they should not have a separate autocephalous church.  Ukraine rejecting membdership in NATO may be important, but would not be sufficient to molify President Putin.

The advantage of this view is that it is somewhaat selflimiting.  However, it isn't justification for President Putin's actions.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  The author was in the US Intelligence Community (IC), doing counter-intelligence.  He had time with the National Security Agency (aja Bi Such Agency).
♥  It was just over 50 years ago that the End Times book, The Late Great Planet Earth was a best seller in the United States.