From Atlantic Counsel UkraineAlert by Arman Mahmoudian: As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine entered its second year last month, Western leaders were keen to demonstrate their continued determination to prevent a Russian victory. At the same time, with no end in sight to what is already by far the largest European conflict since World War II, calls are mounting for a compromise that would end the fighting. Such proposals typically assume a land-for-peace formula that would see Ukraine surrendering part of its sovereign territory and millions of its citizens to permanent Russian occupation.
While the desire for peace is perfectly understandable, calls to appease Putin by handing him a partial victory in Ukraine ignore the lessons of history and would almost certainly lead to more war. If the experience of the 1930s taught the world anything, it is that appeasement merely encourages dictators to go further. Like Hitler before him, Putin will not stop until he is stopped.
Long before last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, observers were already noting the obvious parallels between Russia’s trajectory under Vladimir Putin and the rise of Nazi Germany. Both regimes were deeply revisionist, with Hitler’s quest to avenge German defeat in World War I mirrored by Putin’s bitter resentment over Russia’s perceived humiliation following the Soviet collapse.
In foreign policy, the similarities were even more striking. Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and 2014 occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula drew widespread comparisons with Hitler’s early foreign policy successes, such as the Anschluss with Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland. In an alarming echo of 1930s diplomacy, these early examples of Russian aggression met with a similarly underwhelming international response. Just as Hitler was encouraged by the appeasement policies of the West to swallow the rest of Czechoslovakia and invade Poland, the weak Western response to Russian aggression in Georgia and Ukraine set the stage for last year’s full-scale invasion.
Like Hitler before him, Putin has framed his attack on Ukraine as a campaign to defend ethnic compatriots who have found themselves beyond the borders of the motherland. Given the extent of the Russian diaspora throughout the former USSR and beyond, this creates considerable scope for further expansionist wars.
Putin’s self-assumed position as guardian of Russians abroad, along with the Kremlin’s conveniently flexible interpretation of who qualifies as “Russian,” potentially endangers a long list of countries with significant Russian minorities including Kazakhstan, Moldova, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia. All have prior experience of the Russian and Soviet empires; all remain vulnerable to Kremlin influence and potential military intervention.
Since the mid-2000s, Russia has been promoting its imperial agenda via the so-called “Russian World” ideology, which envisions Russia as the guardian of a unique civilization extending beyond the borders of today’s Russian Federation and united by the Russian language, Slavic ethnicity, and the Orthodox faith. In 2007, the Kremlin established the Russkiy Mir Foundation (RMF) to serve as a platform for Russia’s influence operations. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev referred to the RMF as the “key instrument of Russian soft power.”
Voice of Ukraine 