The evil empire that never collapsed

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

I am writing this in February 2024, a dark time for Ukraine and for Europe.

Two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the European public is bored with the war.

Lack of international support means Ukraine is struggling on the battlefield.

Efforts to make Russia a pariah and hurt it through economic sanctions have failed. Russian elites see inclusion on sanctions lists as a badge of honour.

The disgraceful Trump is leading polls ahead of the US Presidential Election, despite Biden’s economic successes.

Western European leadership still refuses to listen to its Eastern European partners on how to adjust policies effectively against the aggressor. 

However, we will win this war precisely because of how we choose to respond to post-World War Europe’s darkest hour.

We will win because that’s what Europeans do when they come together against a common enemy.

Putin’s state is not Russia, it is the Soviet Union 2.0.

We must stop thinking about the aggressor as a European nation gone rogue. The aggressor is a mafia state with a delusional grandeur of its global importance. It is underpinned by relics of Soviet grandeur that have survived and thrived over the past  three decades.

The ‘great motherland myth’, the perceived superiority of ‘their way of life’ and ‘the great struggle of people’  to achieve ultimate victory over ‘other world views’ – these myths and this mentality are largely unchanged since Soviet times.

In the early 1990s, there was a glimmer of hope that the empire would transform into a modern superpower. Unfortunately, this hope was snuffed out among the failings of  ‘perestroika’ and the chaos and corruption of the Yeltsin years. Out of nowhere stepped an old-school KGB operative whose job in the 1980s was to finance global instability and save the Berlin Wall from collapse.

Vladimir Putin systematically reasserted the ideas of Soviet times. He called the USSR’s (partial) collapse ‘a genuine tragedy’ and ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century’. Revanchist anger was, at first, compartmentalised, but allowed to grow unchecked in the shadows. We are witnessing the horrific consequences. 

With hindsight, we can see that this was the Kremlin’s plan all along. The war was conceived, planned and constructed for years before the 2014 annexation of Crimea and attack on Ukraine’s eastern regions.

In the eight years following that initial invasion, Putin consolidated a ‘fortress Russia’ strategy by decreasing the balance of assets held abroad and growing his internal stash. This was accompanied by significant long-term investment in the military-industrial complex. All this was in preparation for the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The KGB man’s regime of authoritarian power gives him the luxury of long-term subversion and he played the game well.

But there’s hope

In 2024, Poland is an economic powerhouse. The Baltics are hubs of tech innovation leading the way in an unprecedented period of economic growth. Other parts of Eastern Europe are united and strong.

It is true we have the Hungarian leadership as an insult to European unity, but statistically there is always one black sheep in any family.  Despite Brexit and the rise of the extreme right, Europe is still one of the most powerful and united regions in the world, capable of charting its future independently.

However, we need our Western European friends to listen, change their stance and recognise the nature of our common foe.

There’s an old Soviet joke – which roughly goes: “In the Soviet Union, we create a very big impression. Unfortunately, we don’t create anything else.”  

Over two years of heroic resistance, the Ukrainians have revealed the weakness of the Kremlin bully, but they desperately need us to step up so they can finish the job. Their proud and unbroken spirit should be an example for us all. It shows how strong Europe could be with the right changes in strategy.

The European/Ukrainian win will likely take time. The enemy has vast resources and scant regard for human suffering.  The European democracies must defeat autocracy at its own game. Let’s not beat around the bush: we must win and we need action now, before it’s too late.

They are fighting so that Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Germans, French, British and other Europeans won’t have to.

Eastern European leaders, especially former Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, have waned of the dangers of the Soviet Union 2.0 for decades. They were mostly ignored by our friends in the West.

The illegal invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, triggered little beyond rhetoric and strongly-worded protests. Protests can’t win wars. Two years after the full-scale invasion the time for talk has run out.

We can’t afford to ignore this reality any further. The Soviet Union 2.0 cannot be defeated in Europe with the policies applied so far.

I speak today standing on the shoulders of giants. I was born in 1988 and I am part of the first generation of free Lithuanians. This historical privilege was bestowed on us by Vytautas Landsergis and the Lithuania Independence movement which sparked the (partial) collapse of the Soviet Union back in the early 1990s.

Prof. Landsbergis had the Herculean courage to stand in front of the parliament of the USSR and state that the empire was a sham that oppressed millions in proud, but subjugated nations. One man with a small group of followers in a nation of 3 million helped spark the collapse of that evil empire.

Now we have to finish the job.

Providing robust support for Ukraine, will pave the way for lasting stability in a new Europe. We Europeans have the sacred duty to stand behind the Ukrainian heroes and the European values they represent.

Unity secured the most peaceful period in European history.  In this dark hour, we must double down in our resolve. We must understand the enemy for what it truly is.

We are strong enough to win, if we drop our illusions about what we are up against.

I am hopeful Europe, in the great Churchillian tradition, will take the brave steps we need in this moment of uncertainty. If we do, Ukraine will win and Europe will emerge stronger, more united and more secure.

Slava Ukraini. Prosperity to united Europe.

This article is part of Friends of Europe’s Ukraine Initiative series, find out more here. The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.