‘Putin is terrified by Ukraine’s success because it chose democracy’

Paul Knott is a Hull-born former diplomat who served in Moscow during a 20-year career with the Foreign Office. He now writes about international politics with particular expertise on Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. In this exclusive article for The Hull Story, he explains what lies behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

The world awoke this morning to news of an evil unseen in Europe since the Nazi rampages that started World War II: the unprovoked military assault by a brutal dictatorship, Putin’s Russia, on a peaceful, democratic neighbour, Ukraine, that posed no aggressive threat to it.

Most international relations issues are complex. In some ways, this one is too. But Putin’s main reason – by a distance - for launching this invasion is essentially simple. He is terrified of Ukraine’s success.

For at least two decades now, with some ups, downs and imperfections, as is to be expected when making such a difficult transition, Ukraine has been striving to develop itself into a democratic, cleanly governed and prosperous state which provides fair opportunities for all its citizens.

On two previous occasions, in 2004 and 2014, the Ukrainian people showed immense bravery in rising-up to overcome (inevitably, Russian-directed) attempts to foist a horrifically corrupt ruler on them.

Since then, Ukraine’s democracy has been strengthened by several peaceful transfers of power following free and fair elections. Corruption is being tackled, the rule of law is being solidified and its economy is improving.

This progress all presents a massive self-inflicted problem for Putin. For many years he has peddled the arrogant fiction that the Ukrainian nation next door was somehow not real and its people had no right to choose their own destiny independently of Russia.

Steadily, Putin has realised that this line could backfire on him by prompting 146 million Russians to ask themselves, “if Ukrainians are actually the same people as us, than how come they can have freedom and democracy, whilst we are stuck with a crook who oppresses and steals millions from us?”

That prospect petrifies Putin. As someone who has allegedly committed the most serious crimes during his rise, he is, like most dictators, trapped in power.

He fears losing it because of the reckoning he would face if he did. As a result, Ukraine’s democratic success is something he believes he must destroy before the Russian people decide to follow their neighbours’ example.

All the other reasons advanced by Russia for its unprovoked invasion are, frankly, nonsense and intended to create a smokescreen to confuse people elsewhere. Ukraine did not and has never posed a military threat to Russia. Russia stationed hundreds of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s border, not the reverse.

Russia had previously invaded and has for several years occupied internationally recognised Ukrainian territory in Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

I know these regions from when I lived and worked in Ukraine and Russia. There was no previous “separatist” movement in Eastern Ukraine or even any significant popular sentiment seeking integration with Russia.

The so-called “Russian-backed separatists” are simply Russian invaders who have paid and co-opted a few local gangsters to assist them.

Language does not equate to nationality. Speaking Russian, as some Ukrainians do, does not make them “Russian” any more than speaking English makes Irish, Indian or American people “English”.

Nor do these Ukrainian citizens, who are about 30 per cent of the population, need any “protection” from the mafia regime in the Kremlin.

They face no persecution and have equal rights in Ukraine, a free country that is at ease with its bilingual status. As the dark Ukrainian joke has it, one Russian-speaking Ukrainian asks another why he has suddenly started speaking Ukrainian. “Because I don’t want Putin to come and ‘protect’ me” comes the reply.

Contrary to Moscow’s bogus claims, the nationalist far-right is not in government in Kyiv and receives a lower share of the vote in Ukraine than in most European countries.

These points are perhaps best symbolised by the fact the elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Russian-speaker and of Jewish background. Fascism is a cap that far better fits Putin and his cronies.

Finally, as anyone who pays passing attention to the region, not least the Russians, knows, Ukraine was not going to join NATO at any point in the foreseeable future and NATO does not have forces based there.

The only agreement about Ukraine’s security status that has ever been made and now broken is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. In this agreement, Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s independence, borders and sovereignty in return for the nuclear weapons Kyiv had inherited on its territory from the Soviet Union being sent to Russia (which they promptly were, many years ago).

It would, I suppose, be easy for some in the UK and Europe to fall back on the old line that Ukraine “is a faraway country of which we know little”. But we all know how well that worked out when Prime Minister Chamberlain applied it to Hitler’s attack on Czechoslovakia back in pre-World War II history.

The problem with that approach is that Putin is a dedicated follower of Stalin’s old maxim “press with bayonets. If you feel mush, keep pushing. If you feel steel, stop”.

Left unchecked, he will keep pushing against all of us who enjoy living in freedom. Which means this fight, like it or not, is our fight too.

Fortunately, we in the West have many tools at our disposal short of actual participation in the horrific war Russia has inflicted on Ukraine. And using every one of them to full effect is essential if we want to keep it that way.

The most obvious is, of course, to give Ukraine and its people all of the arms supplies, financial and humanitarian support they need.

Economically, we must now make Russia the pariah state Putin has turned it into anyway. For far too long, the UK and others have been far too indulgent in allowing corrupt Russians to stash their stolen loot here.

Now is the time to freeze all their assets and stop them travelling. More widely, we should paralyse Russia’s international trade by suspending it from the SWIFT bank transfer system. And all sales of the high-tech and other goods Russia needs for its economy to function should cease immediately.

Whilst such measures should primarily target the Russian elite close to Putin, I would not be too squeamish about some of the pressure falling on the Russian people too.

Ordinary Ukrainians just like ourselves are, through no fault of their own, being forced by Russia to step up and resist Putin’s criminal regime. Russians should be prompted to feel the need to do that too. Not least because being overthrown by them is what Putin fears the most.

And that is the reason why he launched this deranged and evil attack on innocent Ukrainians in the first place.

• Paul Knott’s first book, The Accidental Diplomat, is available from usual outlets, or directly from the publisher here.