Putin’s Legacy

It remains to be seen what will become of Vladimir Putin. That Russia has lost Ukraine forever as a result of his crimes against its people and laying waste to its cities is manifest to any objective observer. Less apparent may be the lasting legacy Putin will have achieved beginning well before the onslaught that began on February 24, 2022. In disparaging the idea of a Ukrainian identity in his manifesto of July 12, 2021, he attacked Ukraine’s storied history. The message of his personal Mein Kampf inspired within Ukraine a national indignation that when coupled with Russia’s invasion seven months later has served to galvanize national unity.

This would not be the first time a Russian despot unwittingly gave Ukraine a gift. Most recently Khrushchev returned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. The reasons for Crimea’s return are multi-faceted, but it is clear that it was not done for Ukraine’s benefit. It added nearly a million ethnic Russians to Ukraine’s population and added clout to Khrushchev’s political aspirations. However, by the time of the dissolution of the USSR, Crimea as part of Ukraine became a fixture in the minds of two generations of Ukrainians. With an isthmus connecting Crimea to Ukraine, and because Moscow never controlled Crimea until the 1780s and has no other historical claim to it, Kyiv has even more right to Crimea than Russia has.

Khrushchev’s monstrous predecessor also gifted Ukraine. At the outset of WWII as Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler, their armies split Poland apart, and Germany and the USSR absorbed this territory. Centuries earlier, the territory had been governed by Poland in its grand heyday of empire, but the land in question was ethnically Ukrainian. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Ukraine truly became whole as the nationalistic western section was joined with the heavily Russified and ethnically cleansed eastern portion. Stalin had no idea of the impact this would have on the nation-building already underway in the nascent state of the Ukrainian SSR.

The pieces of Putin’s future epic failure in Ukraine were falling into place.

Stop to consider the effect on a nationality when whole sections of the country are culturally apart from other sections. When the languages spoken in each region are unconnected. When the education system teaches that you are a Pole or you are a Russian, yet you return daily from school or work and speak Ukrainian in your home and neighborhood. Being united in one political space even a puppet regime like the Ukrainian SSR – helped solidify the concept of Ukrainian identity. So much so that in 1991, Ukraine embarked on the difficult path of independence and began consolidating the multifaceted matrix that was Ukraine. Add to the mix the 17% of ethnic Russians, concentrated in the east, who were part of the ethnic cleansing that Moscow imposed for centuries. Kyiv had a difficult task ahead in trying to stabilize and consolidate the cultural and political reality that was Ukraine. The task was made more difficult with countless spies, apolitical oligarchs, and fifth columnists sabotaging the government and military. The assassination of politicians and key individuals sparked terror into the hearts of many and stilted what should have been the ordinary development of this young nation. Still Ukraine prevailed, continued its march toward liberal democracy, and its status in the world slowly grew.

Enter Vladimir Putin. That the West misjudged his motives is no surprise. He didn’t want to revive the Soviet Union; he wanted to revive Tsarist Russia. While his concept of Rusky Mir literally means Russian Peace, ask the residents of Grozhny or Mariupol abut what Russian peace really involves. Western academics, media experts, and politicians alike all believed to one extent or another the propaganda Moscow spewed about Ukrainians, that they’re all rabid anti semites, or that the Ukrainian language is only a peculiar dialect. Seemingly, any Ukrainian who aspired to live in a country free of any Russian ukase was simply a NAZI. In Putin’s mind, any Ukrainian who thought himself not ethnically Russian was deluded and a NAZI. That someone was deluded is now obvious to all. Hint: his initials are V.P.

The present is uncertain in Ukraine, and the death and misery all too real; yet, through this crucible of violence and horror, a bright future awaits a Ukraine that emerges successfully from the carnage. It is obvious that no outsider has the right to dictate to another country the essence of who they are. Putin’s manifesto and his murderous terror against Ukraine have exposed Ukraine’s soul. Those who live in Ukraine, whatever their ethnicity, are Ukrainians. Perhaps future historians will note that like his predecessors in the Politburo who deluded themselves that their Ukrainian Problem was solved, Putin unwittingly galvanized the spirit of Ukraine to arise and inject all its citizens with the fortitude and wits to defy the Russian military and say with one voice: We know who we are and we will decide our own future.

We are Ukrainians