Ukraine Invasion Shows Putin isn’t as Competent as Most Assumed, Sergey Medvedev Says
Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 28 – Even those who disagree with all of Vladimir Putin’s policies have long assumed that the Kremlin leader is extremely competent in his pursuit of his strategic goals, Sergey Medvedev of the Free University says; but his moves in Ukraine show how wrong they were to do so.
Including themselves in that number, Medvedev says he based his judgment that Putin would not be so foolish as to invade Ukraine because that would compromise his ability to achieve “his main goal, the preservation of this semi-colonial, corrupt regime based on resource rent achieved by inclusion in the world economy” (region.expert/akela/).
But with Putin’s invasion, “all this rational scheme collapsed like a house of cards,” the result of the Kremlin leader’s “blind, irrational and pathological hatred to Ukraine, its history, statehood, identity, language, and to the very fact of its existence,” the scholar continues. Tragically, there are many in Russia who share this irrational vision.
“Behind this hatred are hidden images about the world … about imaginary ‘Banderovtsy,’ baseless fears about the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO and about the supposed weakness [of Ukraine’s government] which supposedly would collapse with the first shelling and lead to a situation in which [the Ukrainians] would welcome Russian soldiers with flowers.”
As a result of this irrationality, Putin has made “the greatest strategic mistake of his entire presidency.” His “blitzkrieg has failed and the number of victims among Russian soldiers is growing.” Ukrainians are resisting, and the world is uniting against Putin. Now, “every day and every hour of the war is working against him.”
Putin’s blind hatred of Ukraine has led him to “a suicidal mistake” which is undermining the foundations of his regime – “the flows of rent, the consensus of the elites, the conformism of the population, and the reluctant agreement of the West which had been forced to cooperate with authoritarian Russia.”
His “regime is not going to collapse instantly; but instead of keeping things as they were, Putin has radically accelerated history” and put himself and much else into “a terminal phase,” hardly the actions of a brilliant strategic planner.
Kirill’s Description of Ukraine and Belarus as ‘Russian Land’ Certain to Further Weaken ROC MP in Ukraine and Elsewhere
Paul Goble
Staunton, Feb. 28 – Patriarch Kirill’s declaration yesterday that Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are one single “Russian land” (interfax-religion.ru/?act=dujour&div=370) may be consistent with Vladimir Putin’s thinking and even please the Kremlin leader, but its consequences for the Orthodox church across the former Soviet space almost certainly will not.
A the very least, Father Andrey Kurayev says, Kirill’s words will cost the Russian Orthodox Church members and priests in Ukraine where neither will want to identify with a country that is invading their own. That in itself may lead to massive losses for the Russian church there (rosbalt.ru/russia/2022/02/27/1946225.html).
Indeed, the Orthodox in Ukraine who have remained loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate may exit the Moscow church that Russian influence in Ukraine will plummet still further, the Russian Orthodox priest who has often criticized the Patriarchate in the past says. And that may lead to the collapse of the Russian church there.
All this may come to a head in May when the Moscow patriarch has scheduled a church council to which 100 Ukrainian churchmen still loyal to his structure have been invited. Whether they even show up is very much in question, but if they do, they are almost certain to make demands Kirill won’t like.
And beyond that, Father Andrey says, Kirill’s doubling down on the Russian identity of the Russian Orthodox Church will lead to the loss of its membership and authority elsewhere across the former Soviet space, quite possibly sparking new demands for autocephaly in countries where that possibility has not yet gained much support.
So by playing to an audience of one in the Kremlin, Patriarch Kirill has not only failed in his responsibility to oppose violence on religious grounds but has quite possibly lost ground for his church across the former Soviet space which he claims is the core of what he refers to as its “canonical territory.”
Andrey is blunt: “Already in 2014,” he says, he “remarked that the very first Russian soldier who crosses the border of Ukraine will be the gravedigger of the Russian Orthodox Church with that country.” Now that such soldiers have arrived in massive numbers and Kirill has made his remark, that outcome is even more inevitable.
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