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| Anatol Țăranu | |
It is well known Vladimir Putin’s famous assessment of the breakup of the Soviet Union that he described as “one of the greatest geopolitical disasters” of the 20th century. As famous is another characteristic given by the Russian leader to the Soviet Union, which he called “historical Russia”. It’s true that Putin, in a more distant past, also spoke about the temptation to restore the Soviet Union as about a project of people without brains. However, by all probabilities, the phantom imperial pains of the current holders of the Kremlin residence visa are so strong that they irremediably affected the political reason of these, turning them into hostage of xenophobe and, in parts, paranoiac ideological constructs. But such manifestations are not unique in history. It is enough to remember, for example, the German Nazi and the huge sacrifice of humanity for counteracting this demeaning phenomenon in the history of civilization. The case of the current residents of the Kremlin is even more anguishing as the imperial paranoia seriously contaminated the Russian leaders who own the second, by size, military nuclear potential in the world that, against the military failure in Ukraine, exhibits delinquent nerves to employ threats with the use of nuclear weapons as an argument in interstate relations.
Revanchist plan reduced to bizarre forms
The war in Ukraine is regarded by many politicians and also by ordinary citizens as an attempt by Putin to rebuild the USSR. But this revanchist plan met with the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians, who, in the best case for Putin, reduce the new empire to the bizarre form of being restored from remains, such as the separatist regions of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova and also Belarus, which already agreed to create a “union” with Russia. In his May 9 speech in the Red Square of Moscow, Putin resorted to a desperate procedure to “exploit” the memory of the Soviet soldiers who died in the fight against Nazis, among them being millions of ethnic Ukrainians, against the Russian troops that invaded Ukraine today. In several hours of Putin’s speech, a British high-ranking defense official, with the UK being an ally of the Soviet Army in the war against Hitler’s Germany, accused this of “mirroring” Adolf Hitler’s policies in the war against Ukraine, repeating the “errors of the totalitarian regimes of the last century” and risking having the same fate as the Nazi senior command.
Putin so far didn’t manage to achieve any of the major objectives of the war in Ukraine. After he initially believed that his forces can conquer Kyiv and can demolish the government of President Vladimir Zelensky during several days, he was forced to recalculate everything and to concentrate on eastern Ukraine. But this also turned out to be a tiring struggle without a clear victory perspective for the Russian army, which, by its failures, thwarted their supreme commander’s plans ahead of the May 9 holiday. The Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier used this anniversary to project the moral superiority of Moscow onto the Nazism and onto all those whom he chooses to demagogically label “Nazis”. But this year the Russian militarism parade didn’t impress many. A lot of people remained surprised by the pathetic image of the Russian leader at the parade, who left the impression of a tired person lying curled up under a blanket, with the face expression of an incurably ill person. In fact, this desolate image of the Russian leader at this year’s May 9 parade perfectly matches the image of Russia in general – the state and society degraded up to the shameful state to accept and support a brotherly war against the closest comrades in arms in the fight against Nazism in World War II.
Merciless waste of human lives
When Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the Kremlin said the goal of the “special military operation” was to “denazify” and “demilitarize” its neighboring country. It was presumed that Ukraine will yield up swiftly and this will become the start and catalyst of the rebuilding of the USSR in the formula of the current Putin’s Russia. But the Russian army during almost three months of war suffered a series of failures on the battlefield and had to withdraw its forces from a number of fronts. As the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimated, about 25,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the period and this shows that the Russian military strategies got stuck in the period of the last world war when the victory of the Soviet army was bought by mercilessly wasting the lives of own soldiers and officers. Furthermore, the punitive sanctions imposed on the Russia state and officials and on important sectors of the Russian economy left Putin expansively isolated on the world arena and seriously affected the Russian economy, with even more serious consequences for the future.
Putin argued the military invasion of Ukraine was aimed at keeping NATO far from Russia’s borders, at demilitarizing and degasifying Ukrainian society. These are euphemistic arguments that actually camouflage Moscow’s imperialist plans to turn Ukraine into an inseparable part of the Russian world. In reality, Putin obtained the opposite of his plans. NATO, in response to the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, massively focuses on its eastern borders with Russia in a move to increase its defense efficiency in case the Russian military danger grows. In such neighboring states as Sweden and Finland, which are famous on the international arena for their established political-military neutrality status, before the military danger posed by Russia feel the need to renounce the neutrality status and to join NATO. From now on, owing to its aggression against Ukraine, Russia will have borders with NATO along thousands of kilometers of its Scandinavian frontier.
As regards Ukraine, Russia lost this country and its people for decades if not for centuries ahead as an ally and loyal partner on the international arena. Alongside Ukraine, other states of the post-Soviet space also swiftly get rid of the latest illusions about the grabbing appetites of Russian imperialism. Not at all accidentally, most of the former Soviet republics gave up the tradition of celebrating May 9 that was imposed by Moscow and also the support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In such conditions, Putin’s plans to rebuild the USSR in the formula of historical Russia become categorically unrealistic. The military failure in Ukraine can rather provoke centrifugal processes inside Russia even if these tendencies can be offset in time.
War accelerated process in Moldova
The Russian invasion of the neighboring Ukraine accelerated considerably the process of separation of the Republic of Moldova from the Russian world. Given the prudent and non-provocative policy pursued by the pro-European government of Moldova with regard to Moscow, it was hard to imagine that the bicolor robin of St. George – a major symbol of the Russian ideology for celebrating the May 9 Victory – would be banned by law if the Russian aggression against Ukraine hadn’t existed. But the war in Ukraine radically changed the terms of the political equation in Chisinau. Even if the pro-European government ostentatiously reiterates officially its attachment to the neutrality status of the Republic of Moldova, everyone perfectly realizes that this status has no practical value before the Russian aggression.
Being a vulnerable state with an important segment of the national territory occupied by a separatist regime that is militarily, politically and economically supported by Moscow, with a large fifth column that is influenced from inside, the security of the Republic of Moldova today decisively depends on the heroism of the Ukrainian army in the fight against the Russian aggressor. At the same time, the guaranteeing of the republic’s security by implementing the Romanian national reintegration project started to be broader discussed in Moldovan society. Among the latest manifestations of the kind is the call made by 85 former MPs who adopted the Declaration of Independence and other famous personalities of Moldovan civil society who asked for an extraordinary peaceful formula for the reunification of the two Romanian states from the banks of the Prut as a security and civilizational orientation solution of the Moldovan state. The last sociological surveys show a constant rise in the number of Moldovan citizens who support the union with Romania as a radical solution to the big risks and challenges to which the Republic of Moldova is exposed at the moment. The Russian military aggression against Ukraine has amplified the unionist current in Moldovan society, with the union with Romanian being considered the best solution against the war and the horrors of the Russian occupation.
Example worth being followed?
No matter how paradoxical it may seem, the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, which was thought up and planned by strategists form the Kremlin for rebuilding historical Russia, in the case of the Republic of Moldova objectively resuscitates among the majority ethnic group the feeling of affiliation to the Romanian nation and of national reunification as rescue solution before the danger of the disaster of the war. In our national history, such a phenomenon manifested itself evidently in 1918, when the anarchical hordes consisting of Russian soldiers who escaped from the front of World War I devastated Bessarabia, while the union with Romania saved the Bessarabians from the horrors of the civil war in Russia, from the rerun episodes of the Soviet famine, from the pre-war Stalinist terrors, from deportations, etc. Then, the political class in Chisinau, grouped inside the People’s Council, was able to respond to the challenges of time and that answer was in accordance with the fundamental national interest. This is an example that is worth being followed by the political class in Chisinau in historical conditions comparable by complexity with those of 1918.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.