On Feb. 24, Russia President Vladamir Putin addressed his nation, declaring the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine. By the time the rest of the world heard of this news, the largest mobilization of troops in Europe since 1945 was underway, with the rest of the world’s top leaders scrambling to find ways to cease the violence.
The Russian forces, however, have been met with strong opposition on various fronts, from Ukrainian soldiers and from a strong civilian resistance. Though the Russian forces have captured Kherson, the second most populated city in Ukraine, Kyiv, the capital, has held strong against Putin and his army.
To discuss this conflict, the Talon’s Mason Herrera spoke to Tallahassee Community College Associate Professor of Political Science Dr. Edward Duggan, who has a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Oregon with a focus on International Relations.
Why don’t you give a brief overview of what is currently happening in Ukraine?
I would say that Vladamir Putin said he wanted to protect a Russian Minority in a region called the Donbas Region. There is a Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine, of course Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union and The Russian Empire until 1991 when it broke away to become its own country.
The majority of people spoke Russian in the Soviet empire but slowly over time nationalism took root in Ukraine, among the majority of the people. There is, however, still a significant Russian minority, about one-third of the country speaks Russian, about 20 percent want to break away from Ukraine and join the new Russian empire.
And so, of course, Vladimir is an old Soviet-minded person, being a member of the KGB in the 1980s, and refers to the fall of the Soviet Union as “the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.” What you have to understand about Russia in the 20th century is that they lost 20-30 million people in World War II and Stalin also killed 20-40 million of his own people. So to call the fall of the Soviet Union the greatest tragedy just shows the amount of weight that Putin puts into recreating the empire of the soviet union and the most important breakaway country is Ukraine…
Putin has never forgiven Ukrainians for that great Injustice and to add insult to injury for Putin, Ukraine wants to join the European Union, which means they would be a strong trading partner with the 27 partners of the European Union…
Most political scientists, most scholars, believe that Putin was going to do what he did in Crimea in 2014 and just simply take that region, the whole enchilada, right, and so he was going to invade the country with a sort of lightning force and the plan was to basically take out the government in Kyiv.
It was supposed to actually be quite easy to do, Kyiv being relatively close to the border of Belarus, which is essentially a Russian-friendly country that allows Russian troops into their country and they could use the high ground to go in and decapitate the government there and then declare that there would be a new president who would be a puppet president.
But it didn’t work. Turns out that Ukrainian nationalism over the last 30 years has taken root. Most people speak Ukrainian. Most people view Ukraine as a separate state. And so there’s been a significant opposition to the invasion of Ukraine. And there’s been a lot of dead Russians and a lot of convoys have been destroyed.
How would you say, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, how would you describe the relationship between Ukraine and Russia over these last 25-30 years?
It’s sort of somewhat like a child that wants to break away from his parents. And the parent is basically saying, look at all I’ve done for you, and, and, you know, we’re part of the same family, you know, we obviously share a lot of history together.
And so Russia does not want to give up Ukraine and sees it as being a part of Russia. And of course, the Ukrainians want their independence. What’s interesting is that a lot of this has its roots in history, because Stalin when the Bolsheviks took over Moscow, and Russia, they wanted to impose communism on the Ukrainians, and the Ukrainians had a long history of farming. And so, of course, Stalin wanted to collectivize the farming. And so he went to the landowners and said, you know, give us your farms for the greater glory of communism. And Ukrainians rebelled. And so Stalin sent troops and and just killed thousands and thousands of Ukrainians.
So you would say that this beef that they have with each other goes further back than the dissolution of the Soviet Union, that it actually goes all the way back to Stalin and his regime?
That’s correct. And, of course, whenever you’re talking about a beef between two players both play their role. So after Stalin kills a lot of the Ukrainians, he puts new people in charge of the farm, you’re going to all farm together.
Well, of course, this is the stupidest idea on the planet, because the institutional knowledge, which is necessary in order to farm, was lost when you kill the farmers. Normal people don’t know how to farm. And so, the estimates are that 3 to 4 million people starve to death. And so the Ukrainians, you know, for the most part, really hated Stalin and they hated communism. So when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, there were a lot of Ukrainians that joined the Nazis.
Of course, they committed atrocities against the Russian people and against some of the Ukrainian people. So, of course, Stalin retook Ukraine. And even before he retook Ukraine, he wanted to establish more control over Ukraine. And so he brought in Russians, from other territories to be in Ukraine. That’s what you do when you colonize a people as you bring in your own outsiders.
How do you see this war playing out? Should the United States send troops to Ukraine?
We can’t send troops to Ukraine, because Ukraine is not a NATO ally. You can’t buy an insurance policy after your house has burned down, if that makes any sense. The other thing is, we can’t have a shooting war between Russia and the United States because we can’t stop the escalation.
And ultimately, escalation could mean nuclear war. It’s interesting. My wife was like, “We’ve got to stop this.” Because it is a massacre that’s taking place. They’re essentially taking all sorts of terrible bombs, thermobaric bombs that suck the oxygen out of the air and killing major sort of civilians.
They have this thing called the father of all bombs, which is basically the closest thing to nuclear weapons, and it creates a huge mushroom cloud. I mean this is awful stuff. You know, it’s very difficult to watch this…
This is a war crime taking place in real-time. And so, your inclination is, do whatever you can to stop it, because there are thousands of people that are dying. But if we declare a no-fly zone, that means that American pilots are going to be confronting Russian pilots and probably shooting them down, which means that there’s no way that you could stop the escalation at that point.
They take down one of ours, we got to take down one of theirs. You got a bomb and drop it on the troops in Poland, then once the troops are bombed in Poland, and we move into Ukraine, and it becomes a whole domino effect. Should we engage, it would quickly become engagement on all fronts, and engagement on all fronts means that we’re going to have to fight throughout…
We’re basically opening up Pandora’s box and we won’t be able to put it all back together again, when Humpty Dumpty falls off the wall.
On the other side of things, there are people that are saying, “We don’t need to send anybody over there.” What do you think about these types of comments?
I would say those people don’t understand International Relations, because it’s extremely important. Because it’s a bigger game that’s being played. Who’s watching Ukraine to see if you can invade countries? China. China’s sitting back and they’re saying like, “Can we do this now? Can you get away with basically invading a country,” because Taiwan is supposed to be a part of China. According to Zhi Jing Ping, they don’t view it as a separate country.
It’s very similar, not in terms of logistics, or geography or the history necessarily, but it’s very similar in terms of the overall principle, to Ukraine. And so, the United States better protect Ukraine, because it doesn’t stop there. One of the things that we learned in World War II is that you never appease aggression. If somebody is aggressive, you have to balance against them. You have to be strong. If you sign a peace agreement, and you give them a little piece of land, and you say, “Well, you take this piece of land. And now that’ll be good enough for you.” Well, aggressors, don’t think that they don’t think that way. They think, “Oh, they gave me this. They gave me this much. So I’m just gonna take the rest of it now that they aren’t looking.”
Because to a bully, a weakness is provocative. They see weakness as being an opportunity to assert themselves. Right? So you don’t, you don’t bargain or negotiate with a bully. You got to, I hate to say this, but you gotta punch him in the nose.
I mean, of course, one of the things that China wanted was they wanted a successful Winter Olympics. And so there’s discussion today in the newspaper that China asked Russia to put off the invasion till the end until the end of Winter Olympics. And that, that doesn’t necessarily mean that China is going to be a good ally with Russia. It just means that they’re both looking out for their own interest.
Do you think that Russia and Ukraine will be able to sit down and make peace with each other? If so, When? Do you think this crisis will escalate or deescalate in the coming weeks?
No, not until [Russia] have completely expended all of their strategic advantage.
