The original essay was written in March 2023, expanded in July and published as an article titled "Forestalling an existential threat" in the November/December 2023 issue of the New Zealand International Review 

The primary causes of the wars in Georgia and in Ukraine have been long-standing imperial ambitions of Russia being greedy for power and dominance, undermining the sovereignty and self-determination of smaller states, aiming to redraw national borders to control at least as much as it once did, heedless about lives and human rights; spreading disinformation. Architects and executives of the contemporary world order bear their share of responsibility for letting it all happen. In the end, the chain of wars, if triggered by these two, may result in the collapse of the existing world order.

Armed conflicts vary in scale and impact. Their causes range from trivial disputes to empire-building aspirations. The Kremlin, an official citadel of the Russian Federation supreme power in Moscow, presented its recent military aggressions against neighbours in the Black Sea region – Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine ongoing since 2014 – as necessitated acts of protection of Russian citizens in response to evolving threats. In truth, both wars – in Georgia and in Ukraine – were caused by Russia’s ever-present and unsuppressed imperial ambitions, appeased by liberal actors, and fuelled by realist statesmen of the world politics; and constitute a crucial problem for contemporary world affairs because of the spiralling intensity of the subversive effects they have had on the wellbeing of people globally and stability of the world order itself.

Lessons of History

Muscovy (Russia’s original state name) grew into an empire through aggressions, appropriation, deception, and assimilation.

Since it chipped away from the Golden Horde, a Mongol khanate, in the 15th century being as small as Taiwan, by 1895 it had grabbed and conquered lands nearly as huge and multi-national as the former Mongol Empire itself. In the 16th century, Moscow appropriated the name Rus’ belonging to the 9th-13th centuries’ Kyivan state and since then embarked on a mission to seize all the lands Kyiv ever governed. By that time most of Kyivan principalities between the Black and Baltic seas, its cultural and legal heritage, were absorbed by the European states of Lithuania and Poland, while the 11th-15th centuries’ Kingdom of Georgia at the South Caucasus disintegrated after the onslaught of Mongols, and then Ottomans and Persians.

First, Ukrainians in the 17th, and then Georgians in the 18th, at the most perilous moments of fighting for their respective freedoms and statehoods, were ill-omened to reach out to Muscovites (people of Muscovy) for military assistance, but both were deceived and annexed in the aftermath. Muscovy used Ukrainian warriors, renowned by the name ‘Cossacks’ across the whole of Europe, in wars of conquest against Sweden, Poland-Lithuania, Crimean Khanate, expeditions to the East, and later together with Georgians against the Turks. In the 19th century, many conquered peoples struggled under the rigid serfdom and Russification, combined with resettlements and mass deportations. The Caucasus was cleansed by the Russians of its Muslim population, among whom – Circassians and Abkhazians.  The south-eastern region of Ukraine, later known as Donbas, saw an influx of land-deprived Muscovites into towns which mushroomed during industrialisation, making the urban population there predominantly Russian-speaking in contrast to Ukrainian-speaking rural folk. After a short-lived independence fought back by Georgia and Ukraine in the aftermath (1918 – 1921) of the First World War, Muscovites conquered the states again into an empire renamed the Soviet Union.

Remarkably, Russian imperialism has never been punished and never repented.

Nowadays, some attempt to explain Moscow’s westward hostility by Napoleon’s and Hitler’s aggressions in the past. The fact that Muscovites were aggressors themselves just before those attacks is conveniently ignored in such arguments. Partitions of Poland and the seizure of Finland were the latest Russian territorial grabs before Napoleon attacked. In 1939 Moscow joined Hitler in tearing apart the whole of Eastern Europe between the Black Sea and the Barren Sea in the far north, but once being attacked itself – pleaded for and received enormous game-changing aid (facilitated, among others, by New Zealanders in the Arctic Convoys). Muscovy annexed directly or established a de-facto protectorate over more territories in Europe in the aftermath of both wars.

The Soviet regime murdered millions of its own citizens before, during, and after the Second World War. For instance, millions of Ukrainians were starved to death during a man-made famine in 1932-33 known as ‘Holodomor’, and millions more along with an entire population of Crimean Tatars (after the war) were deported to the East of the Empire, Abkhazians (from the republic of Georgia) were among the numerous victims of the 1936-38’ Great Purge.

Upon the Soviet Union's collapse, after a few years of debatable political strategy, the Kremlin returned on the path of rebuilding the empire of terror…

Hybrid Warfare and Strategic Culture “Z”

Invasions of Georgia in 2008 and the ongoing war against Ukraine were prepared and waged as a continuation of the Kremlin's political strategy of undermining the sovereignty of neighbouring states and denying their people a right of self-determination.

Meddling in neighbours’ internal affairs, pressure over their foreign vectors and political assassination attempts, undertaken by Moscow since the collapse of the Soviet Union, pushed first Tbilisi and then Kyiv to look westward for a countervail against Russia’s grip on their sovereignty. Manifestation of civic consciousness and will through the peaceful 2003’ Rose Revolution in Georgia and 2004’ Orange Revolution in Ukraine in response to rigged elections halted the Kremlin’s onset on its neighbours’ right of self-determination, but also kindled its rancour.

Since 1991 Moscow had nourished secessionist sentiments in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, autonomous regions of Georgia bordering Russia, with the facilitation of mercenaries’ inflow, supply of aid, weapons, and even aviation to keep Georgia fractured. In Ukraine, in contrast, there had been no separatist movements until the Kremlin sent its armed ‘little green men’ over the border first into Crimea and then into Ukraine’s south-eastern regions in 2014.

Firm control over sea-side Abkhazia and Crimean Peninsula was crucial for Russia as springboards for its future invasions of Georgia and Ukraine respectively – for attacks of the land troops and launches of sea-to-surface missiles carried by its naval fleet, potential sea-born landing parties, and general ports blockade. Donbas in eastern Ukraine was destabilised in the Ossetian fashion by sending in mercenaries, weapons, and disguised regular and special military forces, but at a larger scale, with prolonged artillery shelling of the border areas.

Moscow directly appointed Russian citizens into leading positions of secessionist administrations in Georgia since 2002 and, since 2014 – into sham republics in eastern Ukraine. Muscovites used the provisioning of Russian passports to later claim necessity of the military force usage to protect their own citizens, within the framework of humanitarian aid, and in accord with the Russian military doctrine of 1993.

The strategy of keeping low-intensity war ongoing for a prolonged time while preparing for a full-scale invasion – infrastructure upgrade, hybrid war, military build-up, and drills – was replicated: in 2004-2008 in Georgia and in 2014-2022 in Ukraine.

Mourning the collapse of the Soviet Union and praising Emperor Peter the First for his territorial grabs, President of the Russian Federation Putin1 clearly articulated his intentions to bring another historical glory for Muscovy by “reclaiming and strengthening” its territory. However, despite grotesque rewriting of history to disguise the onslaught as “reunification”, “Moscow leaders have always been clear” that for them such countries as Ukraine and Georgia are “nothing more than colonies”, as rightly observed by Yale’s historian Timothy Snyder.

Who is ruling in the Kremlin makes little difference for its imperialistic politics, as it is rooted deep in Russian culture.

Götz and Staun defined it as a ‘strategic culture’ - “a feeling of entitlement to great power status” and observed that not only Kremlin officials but also various public intellectuals, including prominent dissidents, hold chauvinistic views about peoples of smaller neighbouring like Ukrainians and Georgians.

Navalny, famously imprisoned Putin’s so-called ‘alter-ego’, recently praised for his struggle in the West, openly supported the invasion of Georgia in 2008, specifically calling for “more missile strikes” for “rodents”; in 2014 he did not oppose Crimea annexation and hinted that it won’t be returned. Popular among Russia’s patriots, fascist philosopher, professor at the Moscow State University in 2009-2014 and senior fellow at Fudan University of China, Alexander Dugin in July 2008, a month before the invasion, encouraged Russian youth to come and fight in Georgia, dreaming that "[Russian] troops will occupy the Georgian capital Tbilisi, the entire country, and perhaps even Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula".

The Russian mainstream media has been brainwashing the public for many years, but its genocidal narratives about Ukrainians and hatred towards the collective West have broken through every moral dam in 2022, evident from the everyday broadcasts (translated into English by Julia Davis). Common Russians have been vastly supportive or indifferent about their country’s violent campaigns in Georgia and Ukraine, definitely proud of its illegal land grabs, and trusted official narrative and propaganda, as demonstrated by regular sociological surveys by the ‘Levada-center’ within the Russian Federation, wide-spread popularity of “Z” symbol, associated with the invasion of Ukraine, among the Muscovites, mood at the Russian social media, and occasional rallies in support of Putin by Russian diaspora around the world. When a Russian in exile chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov said at the Public Forum of the 2023 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Summit in Vilnius that “there is no civil society in Russia today” and “every Russian, myself included, has a collective responsibility for the crimes committed in Ukraine”, overwhelming response across social and public media from both Putin’s followers and opponents was that “Kasparov is irrelevant in Russia”.

The problem and danger which Russia poses for the world are Russians who do not understand why their chauvinism is criminal and why are they too responsible for war crimes against Georgians, Ukrainians, and people of other sovereign and independent nations and even ethnicities inside the Russian Federation itself.

Political Missteps and Global Threat

The influence of realism in world politics did encourage the Kremlin’s ambitions.

Kissinger, the United States of America (USA) ex-Secretary of State, and Kennan, an American diplomat and expert on the Soviet Union, upon the end of the Cold War set a tone that Russia still has a right to spheres of influence in the world, and especially over adjacent countries. This led to common apologetic reasoning about Moscow’s security interests and shifting blame onto the Western bloc for pulling countries from imagined ‘Russia’s backyard into their own orbit. The main flaw of such speculations is realists’ neglect of the security interests of smaller countries, for which membership in NATO is a genuine security policy. Georgia and Ukraine, like the Baltic states before, and today Finland and Sweden – all were seeking protection against the real threat of Moscow attempting to ‘reclaim’ them back into the ‘Russian world’.

Using the framework of realists, Muscovites developed the academic basis for their ‘rightful’ dominance – ‘civilisational realism’, which is all about Russians’ historical exceptionalism and supremacy as a separate civilization. Realists reassured Russians in their belief that “might makes right” and that only powerful states are truly sovereign.

Those international actors, who embraced liberal world order in their relations with Russia, are at fault for prioritising profits over concerns about Kremlin’s increasing meddling in its ‘near abroad’.

When looking at Georgia and Ukraine in the 1990s, the first thing Europe cared for was gas and oil pipes coming in. The ‘change through trade’ policy adopted by Germany towards Moscow at the end of the Cold War, and Clinton’s, then-president of the USA, ‘Russia first’ policy – both brought the opposite of what meant to achieve. As a result of those courses, without any lasting liberal reforms in the Russian Federation, Europe had steadily grown dependent on energy resources supplied by the Muscovites; the Kremlin received the finances to increase its military power and, ultimately, to sustain a protracted war; all Soviet nuclear weapons became consolidated in Russia to the detriment of the security of other republics.

Similarly, the unconditional transfer of the right of veto from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation in the Security Council made the United Nations impotent to respond effectively to Moscow’s aggression, instead transforming it into a public platform for a campaign to shift the focus of the world away from actual aggression and crimes committed to pseudo-dialectical discussions. Liberals failed to pay enough attention to signs of returning animosity towards the West inside Russia, which flashed as early as in Yeltsin’s9 appeal to the Foreign Intelligence Service in 1994 that “forces abroad want to keep Russia in a state of controllable paralysis”.

Muscovy’s wars of aggression against Georgia and Ukraine affected many other sensitive topics of world affairs.

The methods of hybrid warfare multiplied and became more refined, topical among which became disinformation, a malady of contemporary world politics that undermines truth and manipulates people. Moscow’s success in effectively forcing Tbilisi back to its orbit after 2008 without any substantial pushback from the West instilled Kremlin’s confidence in its path to rebuilding the empire. However, the ‘blitzkrieg’ in Ukraine failed. The subsequent liberation of many temporarily occupied territories exposed the genocidal nature of Russia’s war against Ukrainians both in planning and in waging. The protracted, high-intensity conflict forced the Kremlin to step up measures to sustain the war, revealing the transformation of its nationalism into fascism.

The world realised that Ukraine’s ability to harvest and transport grain directly affects the problems of hunger and poverty around the world and drives up prices on many commodities.

Failing in Ukraine, in 2023 Moscow escalated its interventions in the internal affairs of Georgia and Moldova. Russian close military cooperation with Belarus, Iran, and North Korea, and their close political and economic links with China might indicate an emergence of a more radical anti-Western Axis. The first year of the war not only demonstrated unity among world democracies, but also revealed hesitance and granularity of the assistance, shallowness of European military stock, limits of sanctions efficacy, ‘fifth columns’ among the allies, and irreplaceable role of the USA. Another military conflict which requires Washington’s focus or internal political turmoil could stretch the West to its limits. Therefore, the importance of the Ukrainian victory as soon as possible is critical for global security.

The world today faces its grimmest chances to wake up to another world war not before too long unless Russia is defeated and punished.

The primary causes of the wars in Georgia and in Ukraine have been the long-standing imperial ambitions of Russia being greedy for power and dominance: undermining sovereignty and self-determination of smaller states; aiming to redraw national borders to control at least as much as it once did; heedless about lives and human rights; spreading disinformation. Architects and executives of the contemporary world order bear their share of responsibility for letting it all happen. In the end, the chain of wars, if triggered by these two, may result in the collapse of the existing world order.