VLADIMIR POUTINE. If he launched the assault on Ukraine, Thursday, February 24, Vladimir Putin denies having declared war on his neighbor and claims on the contrary to want to “liberate” the Ukrainian people. Could the reconquest of Ukraine be his real ambition?
His ambition was barely concealed with Russian army troops stationed all along the Ukrainian border, but it wasn’t until Thursday February 24, 2022 that Vladimir Putin came clean. ‘a special military operation,’ he announced in a televised address lasting almost an hour. The master of the Kremlin ordered his soldiers to enter Ukrainian territory to “protect the victims of genocide by Kiev” and “to achieve a denazification of Ukraine”. On the second day of the Russian offensive, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, maintains that the operation aims to “liberate” the Ukrainians from “oppression” and allow them to “freely choose their future”. Yet Russia takes on the role of invader rather than saviour.
This Friday, February 25, the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and three days after the recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk – regions of Ukraine in the hands of pro-Russian separatists – by Russia, the door -spokesman of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov indicates that “Vladimir Putin is ready to send a Russian delegation to Minsk at the level of the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs and the Presidential Administration for negotiations with a Ukrainian delegation “. A step favorable to the talks but which must take place in the Belarusian capital, or on the ground of the Russian head of state. As usual, Vladimir Putin lays down his conditions and specifies that Ukraine must “lay down its arms” if it wants to start negotiations. The day before, Dmitry Peskov indicated that against the withdrawal of Russian troops, the Kremlin demands the guarantee of a “neutral status” of Ukraine with NATO and “a refusal to deploy weapons” on its territory. Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, assures that he tried several times to contact the Kremlin before the invasion of Ukraine, but that his requests to meet with his Russian counterpart were systematically refused.
The recognition of the independence of the separatist Ukrainian territories and the march of the Russian army in Ukraine and on Kiev seem to reflect Vladimir Putin’s desire to keep the country under his thumb. Because, at the origin of the conflict is Ukraine’s request to join NATO and the absence of a firm response from the international organization, historical adversary of the former Soviet Union. The Kremlin sees the rapprochement between the Kiev government and NATO as a threat to Russian power and, in response, repositions its pawns on the ground. He refuses to speak of “war” preferring the term “military operation” to describe his action in Ukraine and assures that his goal is to “maintain peace” on the territory.
Putin rewrites Ukrainian history
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country, it is an integral part of our culture and the history of our country”, declared Vladimir Putin in his speech of February 21, 2022. This vision of “the unity” between Russia and Ukraine, often mentioned by the Head of State, justifies the military intervention of the Kremlin in the border country. Moscow does not hesitate to rewrite the history of the Soviet Union and of Ukraine created “from scratch by Russia, more precisely by communist, Bolshevik Russia”. History textbooks, however, describe a creation of Ukraine in 1910 by the USSR, when the empire wanted to organize the territories it controlled militarily, as reminded by the professor of geopolitics at the Sorbonne, Gérard-François Dumont , at West France.
Since the breakup of the USSR, sovereign Ukraine has moved away from Russia and instead moved closer to the West, much to Vladimir Putin’s chagrin. By seeking to justify the entry of the Russian army into Ukraine, the one nicknamed “the Russian bear” explains that he wants to “protect” the Ukrainian people from the “Nazis” in power. The reference refers to the stealth association between Ukraine and Nazi Germany during World War II after the German promise to help Ukrainians leave the USSR. Today the neo-Nazi parties still exist but are ultra-minority and absent from the government. According to Juliette Cadiot, director of studies at the EHESS interviewed by French Culture, the use of the term “Nazi” by Vladimir Putin serves to qualify all the nationalist policies that he tries to pass off as “a small, often corrupt neo-Nazi elite” to place himself as the savior of the Ukrainian people. Vladimir Putin’s river speech therefore describes a reality very different from that on the ground.
Short biography of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and a central figure in the executive since 1999. Re-elected President of the Russian Federation for the fourth time in 2018, he has held the position since 2000 with a short hiatus between 2008 and 2012 during which he was president of the government, the equivalent of the Prime Minister.
Vladimir Poutine was born in 1952 in Leningrad (currently Saint-Petersburg), in a modest family of workers. He studied law at the University of Leningrad and graduated in 1975. He then joined the KGB (the intelligence services, which he left in 1991) and became an officer. He was then sent to the GDR in 1985, where he worked undercover. After the reunification of Germany, Putin returned to Leningrad in 1990. When his former law professor, Anatoly Sobchak, was elected mayor of the city in 1991, he offered him to join the team as an adviser. Vladimir Putin became an influential member of the town hall and was appointed first deputy mayor in 1994, before resigning in 1996. Then began a rapid rise: he entered the presidential administration in 1997, was appointed Prime Minister by Boris Yeltsin in 1999, then became acting president after the latter’s resignation that same year.
He was elected President of the Russian Federation in 2000, then re-elected in 2004. He gave more power to the security services while regaining control over the governors in the various regions. It enjoys fairly strong popularity, even if civil society (media, opponents) is increasingly controlled by the state. In 2008, he cannot stand for a third consecutive term. He then chose Dmitri Medvedev to occupy the post of president and was elected prime minister. In March 2012, despite many protesting voices, he was re-elected for a six-year term while Medvedev held the post of Prime Minister.