Russian invasion of Ukraine underscores Putin’s long-held goals

\

Mar 6, 2022 
By — PBS NewsHour Weekend

President Vladimir Putin has long believed that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was a mistake and that Ukraine is not a ‘legitimate country’. Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss what the invasion reveals about Putin’s goals in the region, autocratic attitudes and the world order.

Read the Full Transcript


Hari Sreenivasan:

Well, there's a lot of speculation on what causes Putin to do one thing or another. What can we know about the state of the world and the balance of power from what has already happened, that's not speculative?


Anne Applebaum:

Actually, we know a lot about Putin. We know a lot about how he thinks and we know what his goals are because he's told us and he's told us over and over again over many years. He has told us that he believes the destruction of the Soviet Union was a terrible mistake and a disaster. He's told us that he thinks democracy activism and democracy movements of the kind we've seen in Russia and Ukraine and elsewhere around the world are fake. He thinks they're an element of a tool of Western foreign policy. They're not authentic. And we know that he thinks Ukraine is not a real country, that it's a fake state that needs to be dismantled and it should be part of Russia. And all of those things together should help us understand both what he's doing right now and also what his goals are. His goal is the elimination of the Ukrainian state. His goal is to push back and if he can, to dismantle democracy and democratic activism in his immediate area and then if he can, elsewhere as well. We know that he wants NATO broken up. He wants the European Union broken up. And he wants to retake the territories that Russia, as he sees it, as Russia lost in the early 1990s. So I don't think his goals are that mysterious at all.


Hari Sreenivasan:

But what do you think a level of success would be for Putin or has this already been a success?


Anne Applebaum:

Putin has already said that success for him is the occupation of Ukraine, which in fact means the death of many millions of people because the occupation of Ukraine will require the slaughter of many Ukrainians.


Hari Sreenivasan:

Does he stop at Ukraine?


Anne Applebaum:

I doubt very much that Putin will stop at Ukraine if he manages to conquer Ukraine, which is, of course, not a not a foregone conclusion. In his view, he will continue to see provocations to his occupation from the countries around Ukraine, from Poland, from Romania, from the Baltic states. And he will continue to perceive Western support for Ukraine, you know, in Germany, in France, in Britain and the United States as an ongoing threat to him personally and to his power. So no, I don't think he stops in Ukraine.


Hari Sreenivasan:

Does this empower other, well, dictators or authoritarians?


Anne Applebaum:

Other authoritarians are watching Putin very closely right now. They're watching his reaction to sanctions. They're watching his reaction to NATO, NATO assistance or NATO country rather, assistance to Ukraine. And they're going to watch very carefully how the West deals with this because they're going to take that as a as a sign for how the West would deal with similar assaults and similar attempts to change borders or to occupied territories in the future. So I do think one of the reasons why the Biden administration has been as forthright as it has been about this, about the Russian invasion is that it knows this is an example. It knows that autocracies now work together. They watch one another, they copy one another. And what happens here will will have ramifications all over the world.


Hari Sreenivasan:

Do you see kind of a realignment of global power?


Anne Applebaum:

I don't think what we're seeing right now is so much a realignment of global power as rather a realization that autocracy the autocracies because they often work together are genuinely dangerous to democratic states. So it's, you know, the corruption and kleptocracy in Russia, in China are just confined to Russia and China. They can also infect our societies. They can undermine our political systems and the violence that's encouraged by by a Putin or by a XI and the violence that they use against their own people won't necessarily stay contained inside those countries that eventually it can be turned outwards towards others and maybe even eventually towards the United States or towards our other allies in the world.


Hari Sreenivasan:

The economic sanctions, the raft of different measures in so many countries have been taking and the pressure that's been applied to Russia militarily, there is the opposition inside Ukraine. But we don't have the entire world sending troops on the ground to try to battle in these cities street by street.


Anne Applebaum:

The rationale behind the economic sanctions is that they should force the Russian leadership to change course, that they will be harsh enough this time and they are very harsh this time. They will be harsh enough to make them think twice and withdraw their troops. Whether that will happen and how that will happen, nobody can really say right now. Putin continues to repeat that his goal is to conquer Ukraine. In other words, it's not just about a little bit of territory, it's about changing the regime in Kyiv. He keeps repeating that if he sticks to that as his goal, then it will be very hard for even economic sanctions to make him change. Much depends on what people around him say. Much depends on what conclusions he can draw from the events of the next days and weeks as the Russian economy begins to contract and his businesses leave the country. The hope is that this will help him change his mind. But of course, we can't guarantee that people.


Hari Sreenivasan:

People are watching this war unfold in real time on social media in a way that we haven't experienced before. And I wonder what that does to our perceptions of international institutions like NATO or like a United Nations, because most people watching this just want the killing to stop. And they wonder, Well, why aren't these international organizations able to exert some sort of power?


Anne Applebaum:

In fact, there was a kind of dress rehearsal for this war in Syria. The Syrian war was also possible to follow on social media. People were also tweeting from inside the rubble of buildings and and when they were under attack, there were enormous number of video that was sent out from Syria. Most of it had relatively little impact. It didn't cause international organizations to galvanize. It didn't create any alliances. And I think actually the Russians learned from that or thought they'd learn from it that there would be no Western response this time, either. A lot of things are different this time. The lines for many people are clearer. The story it makes more sense and the way in which the Ukrainians have learned to use social media, I think has galvanized people more than in the past. But yes, I am one of the things that I hope that the social media presence of the Ukrainians will do is remind people of the realities. You know, look, we live in a world in which brutal, vicious countries are seeking to conquer innocent neighbors. And it will make people wonder, So why can't international organizations do something? Maybe there's something wrong with them. Of course, there is something wrong with them, and it's time that we face up to that.


Hari Sreenivasan:

In a recent column, you said that our assumptions about the world were unsustainable. What did you mean by that?


Anne Applebaum:

For 70 years, more than 70 years, we have assumed that it is impossible for a European country to change its borders by force, to invade a neighbor, you know, for a large country to gobble up a small country that that just couldn't happen anymore, that we disinvested that kind of conflict. We haven't disinvented it. You know, actually, Russia has made clear for some years that it believes that kind of conflict is possible. I do hope that this moment causes us to reflect, to rethink our international institutions and to rethink our military arrangements so that we can be prepared for this new world.


Hari Sreenivasan:

Anne Applebaum, thanks so much for joining us.


Anne Applebaum:

Thanks so much.