Since the Russian tanks entered Ukraine, we Europeans have been trying to convince ourselves that this is other people’s war and that Ukraine is a distant country. The crimes and human atrocities that our screens send back to us in real time would be reserved for a world apart, not even a member of the European Union or NATO, a sealed world confined to settling scores between old cousins of the former Soviet bloc, from which we would forever be spared.
It’s the contrary. What Vladimir Putin is targeting in Ukraine is us. The civilians he massacres, hunts and terrorizes have committed, in his eyes, the crime of wanting to join us and be like us. The country he is hounding is a westernized Ukraine that he thought he knew and that he has not seen change, the one that has chosen Europe rather than a Russia resulting from Sovietism and modeled on its model, the one that strives to move forward towards the establishment of liberal democracy as opposed to the dictatorship that it embodies. Behind the rhetoric of a NATO advance threatening Russia’s security, whose history shows that it is not based on any reality and that it is only a false pretext staged late in the day , Putin’s war has only one target: the values of Europe and the West that he detests – political plurality, freedom of the press, respect for minorities, human rights, sovereignty of States, the integrity of borders established by international treaties, which have been signed and validated by Russia itself.
Ukraine, which must be brought into line, vassalized or cut off again, depending on the extent of the Russian devastation on the ground and the negotiations that will ensue, is not an end in itself. It is a step in a war started twenty-two years ago by Vladimir Putin, who came to power thanks to his radical “settlement” of the Chechen war. The invasion of Ukraine was prepared by its conquest of a fifth of the territory of Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea and its informal support for the Donbass separatists in 2014.
We cannot continue to delude ourselves that the Russian president intends to stop there. Vladimir Putin, who is amused by Western naivety and his attachment to peace, has nevertheless set out his plan very clearly. In July 2021, he explained that Ukraine does not exist outside of Russia. In December, he wanted to impose two draft treaties providing for nothing less than a return to the pre-1997 situation – before the accession to the European Union and NATO of former Soviet bloc countries, such as Poland or the Baltic countries. No country to the north and east of Germany would have the right to choose the protection of the Atlantic Alliance. What Putin wants is to put Europe under his thumb.
Ukrainians are dying for us
Ukrainians are dying for us. For our principles and our values, for freedom and democracy, for the independence and sovereignty of States, for the right to peace. They are resisting with extraordinary courage and tenacity, with the military, humanitarian and intelligence support of NATO allies, the world’s second largest army which is pounding them with missiles and air raids. They ask us for a no-fly zone, categorically rejected by President Biden: send offensive equipment and planes against the Russian army, “understand this, make no mistake, whatever people say, that is called World War III. Europeans and Americans have shown impressive unity in delivering massive aid to Ukraine and imposing cripplingly violent sanctions on Russia.
But not fast enough. The Ukrainian cities are crumbling under the bombs and we, unable to deprive ourselves of the purchase of Russian gas, we remain the financiers of the war that we denounce. How to be at war without saying so and without being there? Without becoming the aggressor that would lead to a fatal escalation, we must be prepared not to concede anything to a determined dictator, he said, to “go all the way”.
kyiv has become the capital of Europe because what is at stake in kyiv is us. To continue not wanting to die for Ukraine, we will die. It is on our civilization that Vladimir Putin has declared war. If Ukraine falls, the European Union will be first on the front line.