#Yalta views

[postcard-from-the-past]

View of Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine

Russian vintage postcard

[thisprettyukrainianletter]

From the boulevard Yalta, the Crimea , Ukraine

2. The gulf, Yalta, the Crimea, Ukraine

3. Gurzuf from the Yalta Road, the Crimea, Ukraine

4. Gurzuf, the Crimea, Ukraine

5. The Crimea, Alupka. The Imperial palace, Ukraine

6. The church, Baidar, the Crimea, Ukraine

7. Gurzuf, from the Park, the Crimea, Ukraine

8. The gulf, Sebastopol, Ukraine

9. The Khan's palace, Bakhchysaraĭ, Ukraine

10. The harem, Bakhchysaraĭ, Ukraine

Photos were published between 1890 and 1900 and are part of The Photochrom Print Collection, which has almost 6,000 views of Europe and the Middle East and 500 views of North America. Published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, these prints were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the Detroit Publishing Company in Michigan. The richly colored images look like photographs but are actually ink-based photolithographs, usually 6.5 x 9 inches.

Source https://www.loc.gov

[ivan-aivazovsky-paintings]

-View of Yalta-

[the-last-tsar]

"The Livadia Palace was two-storeyed and Italian Renaissance in style, with large windows that let in the light, and faced in local white Inkerman limestone — prompting its popular name as the 'White Palace'. It had been completed inside sixteen months, including a second house for the imperial entourage, and had all the modern conveniences of central heating, lifts and telephones. Having taken possession on 20 September Nicholas wrote to his mother: 'We cannot find the words to express our joy and the pleasure of having such a house, built exactly as we wished … The views in all directions are so beautiful, especially of Yalta and the sea. There is so much light in the rooms and you remember how dark it was in the old house.' Inside all was simplicity, much in the style moderne that Alexandra favoured. The private apartments on the second floor had the preferred white furniture and chintz fabrics, and as usual there were flowers everywhere. The windows and balconies at the back of the palace gave out over the sea: Olga and Tatiana delighted in taking their morning French lessons with Pierre Gilliard out on the balcony. On the northern side of the palace facing inland, the palace looked out onto the rugged Crimean mountains in the distance. A cool and shady inner courtyard featured Italianate marble colonnades and a fountain surrounded by a pretty knot garden. It was a favourite place for the entourage to escape the heat of the day and sit and chat after luncheon."

Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses | Helen Rappaport

[mariacallous]

As Russia’s war against Ukraine approaches its third winter, there is still no end in sight. The drip feed of Western military aid is enough for Ukraine to keep fighting but insufficient to liberate all its territory. At the same time, despite continued popular support for Kyiv’s cause in Western countries, there is plenty of talk about Western war fatigue, with increasing behind-the-scenes debate about a possible compromise to end or freeze the war.

A compromise would be premature for a number of familiar reasons. First, neither side is ready for serious negotiations. Regaining control over Ukraine may not be existential for Russia’s survival, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed, but it could very well become a matter of life and death for Putin himself. For Ukraine, the fight is existential, and Western leaders have said again and again that it is for Ukraine to decide when to negotiate and on what conditions. That mantra is flawed, however, since we already know that Ukraine wants to keep fighting. By holding back on crucial weapons deliveries, Western countries are partly responsible for Ukraine not advancing as fast as it and its supporters would wish.

Second, violence in Russian-occupied territories will not stop as long as these territories remain under Moscow’s control. Freezing the conflict is therefore a non-starter for the Ukrainians who have seen the horrors perpetrated by Russians in Bucha, Irpin, and countless other towns and villages. This is well understood by Ukraine’s neighbors, which have their own experience of Russian and Soviet occupation. It means living under fear, unfreedom, and the constant threat of violence.

These arguments against seeking a settlement any time soon will be familiar to readers following the war. Less discussed—but much more fundamental for all of Europe—is what a settlement would mean for the future European security order. If the war were frozen, not only would Russia be rewarded for its attack. It would also hold on to its goal of fundamentally revising the European security order and reestablishing its sphere of influence.

It should be very clear that Moscow’s understanding of the principles and norms of European security is incompatible with Western views. As we can see in Ukraine, the Kremlin equates security with control, which has deep roots in Russian history and foreign policy. This is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

The tradition of Russia as a land-hungry empire goes back in a straight line to medieval Muscovy, which transformed into an expansionist state under the rule of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Ivan, also known for his cruelty in torturing and massacring his own people, has been rehabilitated and celebrated under Putin’s rule, while Putin himself has adopted another torture-loving Russian empire builder, Peter the Great, as his role model.

Another key Russian foreign-policy tradition is the idea that the European security order should be based on agreements among the major powers over the heads of smaller ones. Since 2014, the Kremlin has repeatedly made references to the Congress of Vienna, which redrew the map of Europe in the early 1800s, and the Yalta Conference, the British-Soviet-U.S. meeting in February 1945 that divided Europe into two spheres of influence. From the Russian perspective, both agreements laid the foundation for decades-long stability. The price of that stability, however, is painfully known to the countries affected by Russian domination. The Vienna agreement wiped Poland off the map as a sovereign state for a century, and Yalta doomed half of Europe to more than 40 years of Soviet occupation and totalitarian rule.

Europe’s post-Cold War order has brought unprecedented levels of freedom, sovereignty, and prosperity to Russia’s western neighbors. Most of the former Eastern Bloc countries used their sovereignty to make a decisive turn to the West. Among the former Soviet republics, the Baltic states’ Western turn was fast and determined; Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova tried to follow later and are still struggling for the right to choose their future place in Europe, including membership in the European Union. The EU’s decision-making structures underpin a fundamentally different order compared with being part of a Russian-controlled zone: The bloc gives substantial power to smaller states, even as members delegate some aspects of sovereignty to supranational institutions. Staying in the gray zone between Russia and the EU, as Ukraine has done, proved to be the least stable option.

Russia never felt comfortable with post-Cold War developments in European security. It frequently complained about not being treated as an equal by the West—yet Russia’s and Europe’s definitions of equality are very different. For Russia, it means being on par with other great powers, notably the United States, and not with its sovereign neighbors, whose agency it has consistently denied. Because it does not see them as equals, Moscow also has little interest in what Berlin or Paris has to say, let alone Brussels. That clouds every aspect of how Russia views its neighbors. When hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets during the 2004 Orange Revolution to protest against their corrupt and dishonest government—and again during the Maidan Revolution in late 2013 and early 2014—all Moscow could see was a supposed U.S. plot to weaken Russia.

In 2009, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev proposed a new European security treaty in an attempt to defend what Russia considered its legitimate security interests, now allegedly being trod on by the West. Using code language such as “indivisibility of security,” what Moscow really seemed to seek was to confine NATO to the Cold War-era West and gain veto right over the alliance’s decisions if Russia considered them contrary to its very different definition of security.

In December 2021, as Russian forces were massing to invade Ukraine, the Kremlin made a renewed attempt to promote its vision of a European security order in two documents addressed to NATO and the United States. This time the ambiguity was gone and the revisionist aims clear: a full restoration of Moscow’s Cold War-era sphere of influence and the pushback of NATO’s presence in Europe to the line before its eastward expansion in the 1990s. These aims remain unchanged and reflect Russia’s long-term strategic thinking. Western efforts since the Cold War to build a common European order with Russia have clearly failed.

If Russia achieves its strategic goal of reestablishing control over Ukraine, even in part, it will ratify Russia’s efforts to impose its vision of order on its European neighbors. But even if Russia is defeated and has to leave all occupied territories in Ukraine, it will not easily give up its centuries-old understanding of itself as an empire and major power entitled to privileged rights in its sphere of influence. Unlike some empires that were wound down in the past—such as Nazi Germany and imperial Japan—Russia will not be totally defeated. It will not be occupied by foreign powers or be forced to go through a profound system change. Russia’s imminent transformation to a status quo power that accepts its post-Cold War place in Europe, let alone further enlargement of the EU and NATO, is therefore unlikely.

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously argued in the 1990s that Russia cannot be an empire without Ukraine. Russian propagandists claim that Russia can only exist as an empire or not exist at all. Rejecting this claim will be an essential precondition for a post-imperial Russia to emerge.

Another precondition will be for Russia to acknowledge its neighbors as sovereign states and not mere puppets doing Washington’s bidding. Where the Kremlin—echoed by so-called realists in the West—is profoundly wrong with regard to its Ukraine war is the idea that world history is written by the major powers. If that were true, the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and Ukraine would have no reason to exist today as sovereign states. One of the big unintended consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is that it has demonstrated and strengthened the agency of Russia’s neighbors. A new power bloc in NATO now stretches from Scandinavia to the Black Sea. Poland and Ukraine are becoming leading military powers in Europe. Their contribution to European defense will be much needed in coming years and decades.

We should not expect a common understanding between the West and Russia on European security to emerge anytime soon—and certainly not as part of a negotiated agreement that would at least partially reward Russia for its dismemberment of Ukraine. It is therefore necessary to envisage a future European security order not with Russia but against it, aimed at deterring further Russian threats and defending European democracies against the Kremlin’s authoritarian, revisionist, and imperialist ambitions.

This would be a dual order similar in some ways to the Cold War era. Then, Western democracies created their own liberal rules-based structures, notably NATO and the EU, while pursuing a containment policy against the Soviet Union and engaging in ideological, economic, military, and technological competition with the Eastern Bloc. Such a new European order would, however, be inherently unstable, not least because the global context has profoundly changed since the Cold War. The United States’ commitment to European security is undermined by both domestic political turbulence and a geostrategic environment where the main U.S. competitor is now China, not Russia. At the same time, the world is no longer bipolar but has multiple competing and interconnected centers of power.

In spite of these changes, the future European order will most likely be characterized by a long-term Russian threat and an antagonistic relationship with Moscow, much as during the Cold War. Russia will continue to reject a new balance of power that shrinks its former Soviet and tsarist sphere of influence, while the West will continue to reject the very principle of spheres of influence. Russia would seek to revise the balance of power as soon as it rebuilds its military capability. In order to make the new order in Europe more sustainable, the West will need to pursue a proactive containment policy, including credible deterrence and defense, full integration of Ukraine and other countries in NATO and the EU, and restrictions on Russia’s ability to restore its military strength.

No matter where one stands on negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, the fundamental question of Europe’s future security order cannot be ignored.

[summeroffice]

Interview with "И грянул Грэм" where you can phone in and ask questions, or ask them through Telegram.

22:53 You once in August in an interview voiced that it would be nice and it would be worth creating a database of translations of the most common statements of Russian politicians and officials so that people around the world understood what they are saying in fact, they are a softened form of translation and at the Centre of Translation at the University of Vienna we want to create just such a project because we consider it to be a new type of translation. Is it still relevant for the Office of the President and how can you be contacted if this is interesting? Thank you.

Hello, Ksenia. Of course you can contact my assistant Максим [they're speaking in Russian] through "И грянул Грэм" and accordingly, the topic is very relevant. Translations are undoubtedly important, namely identical or authentic words that are spoken by certain representatives of official representatives of the Russian authorities are certainly important because they are blasphemous, they are absolutely obscurantist and they are absolutely aimed at the public opinion of other countries and that public opinion in European countries, first of all, be understood.

26:37 Mykhailo promised to give an interview from Crimea at the end of the 2023. It was like on the stream of Yulia Latynina. Will Mykhailo succeed?

Look, definitely. I will definitely in any case do a stream or an interview from Crimea undoubtedly because Crimea will be de-occupied. I really like it of course when you said that you will definitely be there on June 23, for example, or on July 23. Look, it seems to me that with the intellect of people who say this like this, there are a little problems. This is a war. War does not have… It is not a film that you go see in a cinemat at 16.00. Question, will it be on June 23 or July 23 or August 23 or at the end of the year. This is a war. But the fact that we will be in any case on the Yalta embankment - undoubtedly.

45:19 Marat asks: how does Mykhailo feel about Bulgakov, Pushkin, Vysotsky and the demoliton of their monuments in Ukraine.

The question absolutely sounds wrong. Please understand, it immediately asks, will the monuments be demolished. But what is a monument for a writer or a composer and so on? It's ridiculous. In fact you individually determine whether you need it from the point of view of your inner needs, do you need "The Master and Margarita" [a novel by Bulgakov], do you need "Theatrical Novel" [by Bulgakov], do you need "Flight" [a play by Bulgakov], "The Day of the Turbins" [a play by Bulgakov] or something like that or not. It's an individual need.

Of course, monuments are in fact the ideological influence of a particular country. Through the monuments of Pushkin, for example, Russia says, look, there is great Russian culture, and you are nobody, you're provincials, you're insignificant, that is, the monument solves another problem, not your individual consumption of a cultural product. I emphasise again, in this you're free, you can consume Pushkin, it doesn't matter. But a monument is the ideological influence of the country of origin of this or that cultural product, so learn to tell this apart.

But this will definitely not affect your choice of this or that literary object for reading. This is an obvious thing, right? If you want to listen to Tchaikovsky, you will listen, if you want to listen to Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, you will listen, Rimsky-Korsakov, please. But in parallel, you'll listen to Vivaldi, right? You will make your own choice and not the imposed ideological product. It is very important to learn to tell this apart because when someone comes, look, you have demolished a monument to Pushkin, probably we can come to you to cut your children. Do you understand the absurdity of posing the question?

49:27 I generally evaluate people not according to their passport but by their individual actions. And I think this is right, ethnicity does not matter at all in whether you're a person or a non-human, this is an obvious thing.

52:18 References the film "Stalingrad" (2013) by Fedor Bondarchuk, and "Burnt by the Sun" (1994) by Nikita Mikhalkov.

52:41 Why Mykhailo doesn't go to the TV station «Дождь»?

Look, I want values not to be a word. If you adhere to some values, you must understand them. You can't take an ambivalent position on the war. You can't say that our [Russian army] boys are dying and after that throw a tantrum when this mistake is pointed out and instead of apologising continue to play this game that not everything is so simple. It doesn't work like that. That is, either there are values and then we are not hypocritical or values are a way of commercialisation. For me the first is acceptable, the second is not.

53:27 Our viewer writes that Oleksiy Arestovych actually performs the same job as an adviser to the Office of the President but without official status. Is that so?

Oleksiy Mykolaiovych today is a blogger, he comments on the war, he does it professionally and effectively and accordingly, he really works in the paradigm of the state information policy and so on, he is no longer an employee of the Office of the President, no doubt, but since he is an intellectual smart person and understands exactly the value of the word, then he certainly works in the paradigm of the state and state interests.

54:08 At the very end, probably a little personal question from the viewer, he said that in one of the interviews he heard that at the end of the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy wanted to go to the sea and drink beer with his friends. What would Mykhailo want?

I just want an end to the war with minimal losses. That is, if we can minimise losses as much as possible. And the next it will be a large amount of work to punish the war criminals of the Russian Federation on one hand, this is after the war, and on the other hand, I think that there will be a lot of hard work to perpetuate the memory of people who gave their lives for their country. That is, not to erect monuments, that is to go to the family and pay tribute.

[a-tale-never-told]

Now that he’s not a raging sociopath that it’s illogical to have hobbies for, yes.

Well, like I said he has a pet bear he found in the woods. He calls him Vasily, and that bear would be like a bodyguard to him, pretty much being an attack bear if possible.

He likes to work out, so you will often see him in training facilities or in the woods doing pushups and physical exercise. Another common fact is that he likes to fish, as he would be seen fishing on the River Volga for a good fish or two to cook at his dacha.

Speaking of his dacha, it functions like no Dacha beforehand. It's pretty much a mansion located in the mountains above Yalta, serving as his personal residence and meeting place for the seven. Inside are paintings that depict the history of the Soviet Union, as well as paintings of famous Soviet figures.

As well as things like a bedroom, swimming pool, weapons room, dining room, and others. It also has a backyard in which they can view the Yalta beaches from here.

Another thing is that in the front is a huge statue of Lenin standing there. plus a fountain that is sprouting water from the Lenin heads. and also an airstrip for planes and helicopters to land on the balcony..

[magauda]

Il "Memoriale di Yalta" non fu un tema di ampio dibattito nel mondo intellettuale statunitense

L’opera in due volumi curata da Griffith e pubblicata nel 1964 intitolata “Communism in Europe. Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute” faceva parte di una collana intitolata “Studies in International Communism”, pubblicata dalla casa editrice del MIT, e legata al lavoro del Center for International Studies attivo al suo interno. Nel momento in cui vennero pubblicati, la situazione del…

[condamina]

Il "Memoriale di Yalta" non fu un tema di ampio dibattito nel mondo intellettuale statunitense

L’opera in due volumi curata da Griffith e pubblicata nel 1964 intitolata “Communism in Europe. Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute” faceva parte di una collana intitolata “Studies in International Communism”, pubblicata dalla casa editrice del MIT, e legata al lavoro del Center for International Studies attivo al suo interno. Nel momento in cui vennero pubblicati, la situazione del…

[collasgarba]

Il "Memoriale di Yalta" non fu un tema di ampio dibattito nel mondo intellettuale statunitense

L’opera in due volumi curata da Griffith e pubblicata nel 1964 intitolata “Communism in Europe. Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute” faceva parte di una collana intitolata “Studies in International Communism”, pubblicata dalla casa editrice del MIT, e legata al lavoro del Center for International Studies attivo al suo interno. Nel momento in cui vennero pubblicati, la situazione del…

[adrianomaini]

Il "Memoriale di Yalta" non fu un tema di ampio dibattito nel mondo intellettuale statunitense

L’opera in due volumi curata da Griffith e pubblicata nel 1964 intitolata “Communism in Europe. Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute” faceva parte di una collana intitolata “Studies in International Communism”, pubblicata dalla casa editrice del MIT, e legata al lavoro del Center for International Studies attivo al suo interno. Nel momento in cui vennero pubblicati, la situazione del…

[bagnabraghe]

Il "Memoriale di Yalta" non fu un tema di ampio dibattito nel mondo intellettuale statunitense

L’opera in due volumi curata da Griffith e pubblicata nel 1964 intitolata “Communism in Europe. Continuity, Change, and the Sino-Soviet Dispute” faceva parte di una collana intitolata “Studies in International Communism”, pubblicata dalla casa editrice del MIT, e legata al lavoro del Center for International Studies attivo al suo interno. Nel momento in cui vennero pubblicati, la situazione del…

[bigarella]

La morte di Togliatti

Il 21 agosto 1964 Palmiro Togliatti morì a Yalta, in Unione Sovietica. ‘[…] con la sua morte si chiuse un’epoca, come avvertirono gli stessi comunisti, che parteciparono in massa ai suoi funerali, trasformandoli in una delle più grandi manifestazioni politiche che ci siano mai state in Italia’ <14. Il 26 agosto 1964 “l’Unità” titola in prima pagina ‘Eravamo un milione a dargli l’estremo addio’ e…

[ivan-aivazovsky-paintings]

-View of Yalta-

[petsincollections]

W. Averell Harriman With Nikita Khrushchev During 1959 Trip to the Soviet Union

Exterior view believed to have been taken in the gardens of the government's guest dacha Ogarevo located west of Moscow, Russia. Nikita Khrushchev is on the left holding a hedgehog found along the path. W. Averell Harriman is on the right and Frol Kozlov and Yuri Zhukov are in the center looking at the hedgehog. Photograph appeared with Harriman article published in Life Magazine, July 13, 1959. Charles W. Thayer accompanied Harriman as a guide and confidant on the trip which took place May 12 - June 26, 1959. Harriman went as a special foreign correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). Trip visits included Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Yalta, etc., as well as areas in Siberia and the Urals, and ended with a meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. There is a 2x2 original negative. Credit: Photographer: Charles W. Thayer

This item was produced or created on June 23, 1959.

The creator compiled or maintained the parent series, Photographs Relating to the Administration, Family, and Personal Life of Harry S. Truman, between 1957–2023.

National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Harry S. Truman Library. (4/1/1985 - 7/31/2011)

[mariacallous]

Despite a series of blunders, miscalculations, and battlefield reversals that would have surely seen him thrown out of office in most normal countries, President Vladimir Putin is still at the pinnacle of power in Russia. He continues to define the contours of his country’s war against Ukraine. He is micromanaging the invasion even as generals beneath him appear to be in charge of the battlefield. (This deputizing is done to protect him from blowback if something goes badly wrong in the war.) Putin and those immediately around him directly work to mobilize Russians on the home front and manipulate public views of the invasion abroad. He has in some ways succeeded in this information warfare.

The war has revealed the full extent of Putin’s personalized political system. After what is now 23 years at the helm of the Russian state, there are no obvious checks on his power. Institutions beyond the Kremlin count for little. “I would never have imagined that I would miss the Politburo,” said Rene Nyberg, the former Finnish ambassador to Moscow. “There is no political organization in Russia that has the power to hold the president and commander in chief accountable.” Diplomats, policymakers, and analysts are stuck in a doom loop—an endless back-and-forth argument among themselves—to figure out what Putin wants and how the West can shape his behavior.

Determining Putin’s actual objectives can be difficult; as an anti-Western autocrat, he has little to gain by publicly disclosing his intentions. But the last year has made some answers clear enough. Since February 2022, the world has learned that Putin wants to create a new version of the Russian empire based on his Soviet-era preoccupations and his interpretations of history. The launching of the invasion itself has shown that his views of past events can provoke him to cause massive human suffering. It has become clear that there is little other states and actors can do to deter Putin from prosecuting a war if he is determined to do so and that the Russian president will adapt old narratives as well as adopt new ones to suit his purposes.

But the events of 2022 and early 2023 have demonstrated that there are ways to constrain Putin, especially if a broad enough coalition of states gets involved. They have also underscored that the West will need to redouble its efforts at strengthening such a diplomatic and military coalition. Because even now, after a year of carnage, Putin is still convinced he can prevail.

BACK IN THE USSR

One year in, the war in Ukraine has shown that Putin and his cohort’s beliefs are still rooted in Soviet frames and narratives, overlaid with a thick glaze of Russian imperialism. Soviet-era concepts of geopolitics, spheres of influence, East versus West, and us versus them shape the Kremlin’s mindset. To Putin, this war is in effect a struggle with Washington akin to the Korean War and other Cold War–era conflicts. The United States remains Russia’s principal opponent, not Ukraine. Putin wants to negotiate directly with Washington to “deliver” Ukraine, with the end goal of getting the U.S. president to sign away the future of the country. He has no desire to meet directly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. His goal remains the kind of settlement achieved in 1945 at Yalta, when U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat across the table from the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and accepted Moscow’s post–World War II dominance of Eastern Europe without consulting the countries affected by these decisions.

For Russia, World War II—the Great Fatherland War, as Russians call it—is the touchstone and central theme of the conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s emphasis a year ago on ridding Ukraine of Nazis has faded somewhat into the background. This year, the victorious outcome in 1945 is his primary focus. Putin’s message to Ukrainians, Russians, and the world is that victory will be Russia’s and that Moscow always wins, no matter how high the costs. Indeed, beginning with comments ahead of his 2023 New Year’s speech, Putin has cast off the depiction of the war in Ukraine as just a special military operation. According to him, Russia is locked in an existential battle for its survival against the West. He is once more digging deep into old Soviet tactics and practices from the 1940s to rally the Russian economy, political class, and society in support of the invasion.

Putin is capable of learning from setbacks and adapting his tactics in ways that are also reminiscent of Stalin’s approach in World War II, when the Soviet Union pushed back Nazi Germany in the epochal battle of Stalingrad. In September 2022, as Russia was clearly losing on the battlefield, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 extra troops. He then declared that Russia had annexed four of Ukraine’s most fiercely fought-over territories: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia, transforming the military and political picture on the ground and creating an artificial redline. Putin has repeatedly made changes in Russia’s military leadership at critical junctures, and he has worked fiercely to ensure his country has enough weapons for the war effort. When Russian forces began to run out of armaments, Putin purchased drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea.

Putin has also shifted his narrative about the war several times to keep his opponents guessing about how far he might still go. He and other Russian officials, including his spokesman and foreign minister, have openly stated that the invasion of Ukraine is an imperial war and that Russia’s borders are expanding again. They have asserted that the four annexed Ukrainian territories are Russia’s “forever” but then suggested that some borders may still be negotiated with Ukraine. According to newspaper reports, they have pushed for the full conquest of Donetsk and Luhansk by March but also indicated that another assault on Kyiv could be in the offing. At this stage of the conflict, Russia’s actual war goals remain unclear.

What is clear is this: after more than two decades in power, Putin is practiced at playing people, groups, and countries against one another and using their weaknesses to his advantage. He understands the weak points of European and international institutions as well as the vulnerabilities of individual leaders. He knows how to exploit NATO’s debates and splits over military spending and procurement. He has taken advantage of European and American partisan divides (including the fact that only one third of Republicans think the United States should support Ukraine) to spread disinformation and manipulate public opinion.

At home in Russia, Putin has proved willing to allow some hawkish dissent and debate about the war, including the grumbling of pro-war commentators and bloggers who used to serve in the military. He seeks to use these debates to mobilize support for his policies. But although Putin is adept at managing quarrels, he cannot always control the content and tone of these disputes, just as he cannot control the battlefield. Some of the domestic commentary on the war has become shrill and even threatening to Putin’s position. There is speculation that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, whose forces have been doing some of the war’s bloodiest fighting, could even seize power at some point in the future. Russia’s wartime casualties appear to be approaching 200,000. As many as one million people are estimated to have left Russia in the past year in response to the war, either because they oppose the invasion or simply to avoid being drafted. In this regard, the world has learned that there are some limits to Putin’s coercive capabilities, even if this mass exodus of dissenters seems to leave behind a more quiescent majority.

DISSUADABLE, NOT DETERRABLE

Russian opponents of the war may have had no chance of stopping Putin from invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022. And none of the United States and Europe’s mechanisms and practices for keeping the peace after World War II and the Cold War had much, if any, effect on his decision-making. The West clearly failed to stop Putin from contemplating or starting the invasion. Nevertheless, the United States’ release of declassified intelligence before February 24 clarified Russian aims and mobilization and helped the pro-Ukraine Western coalition quickly come together once the war started. Furthermore, this past year has shown that even if he cannot be deterred, Putin can be dissuaded from taking certain actions in specific contexts.

Strategic partners of Russia, such as China and India, have criticized Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield. He allowed grain shipments from Ukraine through the Black Sea after complaints from the United Nations, Turkey, and African countries. Putin and the Kremlin remain committed to maintaining partner countries’ support, as was demonstrated during the G-20 meeting in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia. Russia still seems not to want a full-on fight with NATO. It has avoided expanding its military action outside Ukraine (at least so far), including by not shelling military supply convoys entering the country from Poland or Romania. But Moscow’s aggressive rhetoric has risen and ebbed throughout the war. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, once known as a moderate leader willing to engage with the West, now plays the role of Putin’s attack dog, periodically threatening a nuclear Armageddon.

The Kremlin is shameless in its rhetoric, and no one in Putin’s circle cares about narrative coherence. This brazenness is matched by domestic ruthlessness. Putin and his colleagues are willing to sacrifice Russian lives, not just Ukrainians’. They have no qualms about the methods Russia uses to enforce participation in the war, from murdering deserters with sledgehammers (and then releasing video footage of the killings) to assassinating recalcitrant businessmen who do not support the invasion. Putin is perfectly fine with imprisoning opposition figures while sweeping through prisons and the most impoverished Russian regions to collect people to use as cannon fodder on the frontlines.

The domestic ruthlessness is in turn exceeded by the brutality against Ukraine. Russia has declared total war on the country and its citizens, young and old. For a year, it has deliberately shelled Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and killed people in their kitchens, bedrooms, hospitals, schools, and shops. Russian forces have tortured, raped, and pillaged in the Ukrainian regions under their control.Putin and the Kremlin still believe they can pummel the country into submission while they wait out the United States and Europe.

The Kremlin is convinced that the West will eventually grow tired of supporting Ukraine. Putin believes, for example, that there will be political changes in the West that could be advantageous for Moscow. He hopes for the return of populists to power in these states who will back away from their countries’ support for Ukraine. Putin also remains confident that he can eventually restore Russia’s prewar relationship with Europe and that Russia can and will be part of Europe’s economic, energy, political, and security structures again if he holds out long enough (as Bashar al-Assad has in the Middle East by staying in power in Syria). This is why Russia is seemingly restrained in some policy arenas. For instance, it has vested interests in working with Norway and other Arctic countries in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Barents Sea, where Moscow has been careful to comply with international agreements and bilateral treaties. Russia does not want its misadventure in Ukraine to embroil and spoil its entire foreign policy.

Putin is convinced that he can compartmentalize Moscow’s interests because Russia is not isolated internationally, despite the West’s best efforts. Only 34 countries have imposed sanctions on Russia since the war started. Russia still has leverage in its immediate neighborhood with many of the states that were once part of the Soviet Union, even though these countries want to keep their distance from Moscow and the war. Russia continues to build ties in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. China, along with India and other key states in the global South, have abstained on votes in favor of Ukraine at the United Nations even as their leaders have expressed occasional consternation and displeasure with Moscow’s behavior. Trade between Russia and these countries has increased—in some cases quite dramatically—since the beginning of the conflict. Similarly, 87 countries still offer Russian citizens visa-free entry, including Argentina, Egypt, Israel, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. Russian narratives about the war have gained traction in the global South, where Putin often seems to have more influence than the West has—and certainly more than Ukraine has.

BLURRING THE LINES

One reason the West has had limited success in countering Russia’s messaging and influence operations outside Europe is that it has yet to formulate its own coherent narrative about the war—and about why the West is supporting Kyiv. American and European policymakers talk frequently of the risks of stepping over Russia’s redlines and provoking Putin, but Russia itself not only overturned the post–Cold War settlement in Europe but also stepped over the world’s post-1945 redlines when it invaded Ukraine and annexed territory, attempting to forcibly change global borders. The West failed to state this clearly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The tepid political response and the limited application of sanctions after that first Russian invasion convinced Moscow that its actions were not, in fact, a serious breach of post–World War II international norms. It made the Kremlin believe it could likely go further in taking Ukrainian territory. Western debates about the need to weaken Russia, the importance of overthrowing Putin to achieve peace, whether democracies should line up against autocracies, and whether other countries must choose sides have muddied what should be a clear message: Russia has violated the territorial integrity of an independent state that has been recognized by the entire international community, including Moscow, for more than 30 years. Russia has also violated the UN Charter and fundamental principles of international law. If it were to succeed in this invasion, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other states, be they in the West or the global South, will be imperiled.

Yet the Western debate about the war has shifted little in a year. U.S. and European views still tend to be defined by how individual commentators see the United States and its global role rather than by Russian actions. Antiwar perspectives often reflect cynicism about the United States’ motivation and deep skepticism about Ukraine’s sovereign rights rather than a clear understanding or objective assessment of Russian actions toward Ukraine and what Putin wants in the neighboring region. When Russia was recognized as the only successor state to the Soviet Union after 1991, other former Soviet republics such as Belarus and Ukraine were left in a gray zone.

Some analysts posit that Russia’s security interests trump everyone else’s because of its size and historical status. They have argued that Moscow has a right to a recognized sphere of influence, just as the Soviet Union did after 1945. Using this framing, some commentators have suggested that NATO’s post–Cold War expansion and Ukraine’s reluctance to implement the Minsk agreements—accords brokered with Moscow after it annexed Crimea in 2014 that would have limited Ukraine’s sovereignty—are the war’s casus belli. They think that Ukraine is ultimately a former Russian region that should be forced to accept the loss of its territory.

In fact, the preoccupation of Russian leaders with bringing Ukraine back into the fold dates to the beginning of the 1990s, when Ukraine started to pull away from the Moscow-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (a loose regional institution that had succeeded the Soviet Union). At that juncture, NATO’s enlargement was not even on the table for eastern Europe, and Ukraine’s affiliation with the European Union was an even more remote prospect. Since then, Europe has moved beyond the post-1945 concept of spheres of influence for East and West. Indeed, for most Europeans, Ukraine is clearly an independent state, one that is fighting a war for its survival after an unprovoked attack on its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The war is about more than Ukraine. Kyiv is also fighting to protect other countries. Indeed, for states such as Finland, which was attacked by the Soviet Union in 1939 after securing its independence from the Russian empire 20 years earlier, this invasion seems like a rerun of history. (In the so-called Winter War of 1939–40, Finland fought the Soviets without external support and lost nine percent of its territory.) The Ukrainians and countries supporting them understand that if Russia were to prevail in this bloody conflict, Putin’s appetite for expansion would not stop at the Ukrainian border. The Baltic states, Finland, Poland, and many other countries that were once part of Russia’s empire could be at risk of attack or subversion. Others could see challenges to their sovereignty in the future.

Western governments need to hone this narrative to counter the Kremlin’s. They must focus on bolstering Europe’s and NATO’s resilience alongside Ukraine’s to limit Putin’s coercive power. They must step up the West’s international diplomatic efforts, including at the UN, to dissuade Putin from taking specific actions such as the use of nuclear weapons, attacks on convoys to Ukraine, continued escalation on the battlefield to seize more territory, or a renewed assault on Kyiv. The West needs to make clear that Russia’s relations with Europe will soon be irreparable. There will be no return to prior relations if Putin presses ahead. The world cannot always contain Putin, but clear communications and stronger diplomatic measures may help push him to curtail some of his aggression and eventually agree to negotiations.

The events of the last year should also steer everyone away from making big predictions. Few people outside Ukraine, for example, expected the war or believed that Russia would perform so poorly in its invasion. No one knows exactly what 2023 has in store.

That includes Putin. He appears to be in control for now, but the Kremlin could be in for a surprise. Events often unfold in a dramatic fashion. As the war in Ukraine has shown, many things don’t go according to plan.