CRISIS DEBRIEF SPECIAL ISSUE Strategic aims of Russia in Ukraine: One year after

Behind the denazification and demilitarisation of Ukraine, the grander strategic goals of the Russian Federation have been revealed. Russia has become an openly revisionist actor that aims to promote a multipolar order in which Russia's great power status and seat amongst the most powerful are taken for granted. Here are four observations about the Russian strategy after one year of the conflict.

1.       Inclusion of Ukraine into the Russian World. Failed political integration under the Eurasian Union led the Kremlin to rethink its strategy. More specifically, turning the regions of Ukraine inhabited by ethnic Russians into part of Russia.

·       While Belarus is forcingly becoming a union state with Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan defied the Belarussian fate. The idea behind the Russian World is to unify all Russian speakers left outside modern-day Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed.

o    In 1991, there were between 11 and 12 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine, including approximately 1.5 million who lived in the Crimean peninsula—as for Belarus, 6,672,964 and Kazakhstan, 3,793,800, making it roughly 20 million Russian speakers outside of Russia.

o    Cases of alleged violent assimilation of Ukrainian refugees into Russian society likely confirm this assessment. The UNHCR claims that 2,8 million Ukrainians fled or have been taken to Russia.

·       In the case of Ukraine, these efforts utterly failed. Ukrainians refused to prioritise the Eurasian Union over the association treaties with the EU in 2014. Subsequent military actions in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea not only paved the way for NATO to train Ukraine's forces, but Russia has alienated the local population.

o   The 2022 invasion has alienated most Ukrainians regardless of their mother tongue, as the polls favouring the country's accession to NATO confirmed the trend in which local nationalism always trumps foreign ideology.

2.       Efforts to stop the Euro-Atlantic expansion via military force

·       Indeed, the war in Ukraine is about the NATO-Russia dispute. But what it shows about the nature of international affairs is that the more one escalates the situation, the more likely the other side will double down in mirroring reactions.

·       Even though the NATO applications of Finland and Sweden are still awaiting ratification in Hungary and Turkey, Ukraine has become a de-facto NATO member with heavy Western weapons on its soil.

·       Therefore instead of blitzkrieg and installation of the puppet government in Kyiv, Russia is now facing NATO with revived raison d'etre, mounting military expenses and arms purchases in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia containment as the unanimously adopted common policy.

3.       Revision of international order

·       There are two important dynamics to stress out. First are the natural structural changes that are perpetual as the power of individual actors continuously evolves and impact the balance of power- redistribution of power. Second, more relevant to Russia's behaviour is the revisionism of dissatisfied actors trying to stimulate international changes (or exploit ongoing ones) in their favour.

·       Russia has become a revisionist actor openly. Russian dissatisfaction with the US-led Liberal order has been manifested on many occasions since 2007's President Putin's Speech at the MSC.

o   However, Russia did not have allies or resources to revise the system into what Kremlin sees as fairer- a multipolar system in which Russia would enjoy an equal seat amongst the most powerful.

·       Multipolarity is a system in which the power hierarchy becomes flat, and the power does not have to be distributed equally (for instance 19th-century Concert of Powers in which Austro-Hungary and Prussia were considered as relevant forces by Great Britain and Russia).

o   Therefore, Russia sees such a configuration as fair as its interests and great power status would be widely acknowledged.

·       Russia is gathering a coalition of revisionists (Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and after a long wavering China, too) in order to magnify the ongoing redistribution of power.

o   Recent MFA Sergei Lavrov's Africa tour shows that Russia and China are trying to persuade the Global South countries about the advantages of the international system revision- stressing more equality, respect for sovereignty and fairness in contrast to the Liberal Order.

·       There are four equally important pitfalls of the Russian strategy

1.       Multipolarity isn't only about exploiting the power asymmetries but also about skilful balancing. A great deal of balancing is underscored by the material power and effectiveness of one's policies. While Russia owns significant resources, the countries of the global south are resource rich too. And Russia suffers from the low efficiency of its international strategy, such as the invasion of Ukraine, the failure of the Eurasian Union etc.

2.       Absence of alternative to the Liberal Order. An alternative to the existing order is needed if one engages in revisionism.

·       The failures of Russia to attract other Eurasian nations stem from the lack of a functioning political and economic system. In other words, Russia does not offer any alternative to the Liberal Order, and the resulting chaos of the disruptive strategy can eventually backfire.

3.       With a drastic downfall in the Russian technological sector due to the collapse of dual-use imports from the West, Russia is not becoming more equal to the West but is likely to create dangerous dependencies on China.

·       Therefore a hypothesis about being equal to the most powerful is highly likely false as China will consider Russia as a useful tool to revise the system in which China will assume the top position with Russia as a junior partner.

·       Great power status is underscored by material power that Russia lacks, and the war in Ukraine enhanced the Russian incapability to solve its vital interests with resolve.

4.       As the Ukraine and Belarussian cases show, the multipolar system is about equality and respect for sovereignty amongst the most powerful, not all actors in the system.

·       As a result, Russia might face backlash as its rhetoric does not fit its actions.

4. Divide the West

·       Russia has been betting on the rifts within the EU and NATO when it comes to the response to its invasion of Ukraine. The amount of Western economic and military help to Ukraine has evidently surprised the Kremlin as well as the scope of unprecedented sanctions.

·       Despite the initial unity, there is still a risk of a divide amongst the West. With the ongoing costs of living crisis, political instability risks will increase in the poorer EU countries such as Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia etc.

o   External actors can use these instabilities to promote their own agenda, such as halting help to Ukraine.