Andrew Korybko

The latest stage of the conflict in Ukraine began on February 24, following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to commence a special military operation in the neighbouring country. His stated goals were several: forcefully remove the Ukrainian armed forces from the newly-recognised Donbass republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, also known as Lugansk; demilitarise and de-Nazify the former Soviet republic; and ensure its constitutional neutrality. Before the start of the operation, the Russian public had got an inkling that something major was about to unfold following Moscow’s recognition of the self-proclaimed states a few days earlier, but nobody expected the scale of the special military operation.

The immediate reaction from the society was one of shock as most Russians consider Ukrainians to be fraternal people with many families having relatives in the neighbouring country. Moreover, many Russians also have Ukrainian roots, whether in whole or in part. But that said, the public paid attention to President Putin’s stated aims for commencing the special operation, particularly his claim that the US was using Ukraine as a springboard to threaten Russia through conventional and unconventional means. By conventional method he meant the clandestine military infrastructure that Putin said NATO had established in Ukraine. The unconventional means, according to him was the project to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russia state.

Fascist Ideology

Putin’s claims of Ukraine turning anti-Russia deserves some elaboration as it was not very clear at the start of the current conflict. Even before the start of the special military operation, most Russians regarded Ukraine to have been in a state of civil war since early 2014 following the US-backed Colour Revolution coup, popularly referred to as the Euromaidan against the internationally-recognised then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. This prompted an uprising among some of the indigenous Russian people in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea and Donbass, as well as those Ukrainians who speak the Russian language. They feared that the ultra-nationalists who had sei