The West Could Never Understand How Important Ukraine Was in Russian Public Opinion

In February of 2008, as Western leaders were considering whether to offer NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia, William Burns – then US Ambassador to Russia – sent a lengthy cable from Moscow back to Washington warning of the serious dangers involved in such a policy. The title he gave the now-famous cable was ‚Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines‘. In it, Burns outlined in some detail the results of discussions he’d had on the issue with a wide range of Russian officials and foreign policy experts – including academics and NGO leaders that were clearly pro-Western. All of them, without exception, warned that the NATO membership of either country – but especially of Ukraine – would be widely viewed as a serious military threat to Russia and a dangerous provocation, resulting in all sorts of problems for the region as well as for US-Russia relations. In a particularly prescient passage, Burns recalls experts warning him that, given the strong divisions within Ukraine itself over NATO membership, ‚Russia is particularly worried‘ that the issue ‚could lead to a major split‘ in Ukraine and ‚at worst, civil war.‘ In this case, ‚Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.‘ It is clear that Ambassador Burns understood the gravity of these warnings, and was able to explain why they should be taken seriously.

Since the beginning of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, the prevailing response from Western leaders has been to dismiss Russian claims that Ukraine’s potential NATO membership represented a serious threat to Russia and its core interests, or to regional stability. After all, they argue, NATO is purely a defensive alliance with no plans whatsoever to attack Russia. Rather, the threat of Ukraine’s NATO membership was used merely as a pretext to justify Russia’s military aggression, which it undertook for very different and darker reasons. It seems clear enough that this Western view is deeply at odds with what the US Ambassador to Moscow wrote in 2008, and with what Russian leaders and experts have been saying consistently ever since. In light of all this, and in order to get a better perspective on just how this whole episode was perceived within Russia itself – by leaders, experts, and ordinary Russians – I decided to get in touch with one of those Russian experts and to hear directly what he had to say about it.

Fyodor Lukyanov is regarded today as one of Russia’s top international relations experts. He describes himself as a product of the ‚huge changes‘ that took place in Russian society over the course of his lifetime. Not least of these was the arrival of Gorbachev and Perestroika in the 1980s, and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union when he was 24 years old – both of which had a profound impact on his thinking and led him into a career of scholarly journalism. In 2002 – and inspired, he says, by the American journal Foreign Affairs – he was invited by foreign policy expert Sergei Karaganov to help launch what has become one of the country’s most influential foreign policy journals, Russia in Global Affairs, where he still serves as Editor-in-Chief. He is also Research Director of the Valdai Discussion Club – a group of scholars from around the world that meets every year in Russia to discuss global issues – and teaches a course on International Relations at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.

Many people in the West, and many I know personally, don’t believe that Ukraine’s potential NATO membership ever really presented a threat to Russia, or that this was the real reason for Russia’s invasion. Rather they think Russian leaders simply used this issue as a pretext. Yet William Burns‘ famous 2008 cable seems to show that US leaders knew very well that the Russians viewed Ukrainian membership as a serious threat. As Burns put it, the issue ‚touched a raw nerve‘ in Russia. You have been deeply involved in geopolitical discussions with top experts throughout this whole period. What can you tell us about how this issue is viewed inside of Russia?

The first thing to be said is that this war is a catastrophic tragedy for both nations, for both peoples. It has elements of a civil war, elements of a confrontation between two nation states, and a huge part of this is the international context and Western influence. At the end of the day, we have an absolutely disastrous outcome with two very close nations killing each other, and for reasons which – one beautiful day in the future – are not likely to be seen as sufficient.

As for NATO expansion being just a pretext for Russia’s invasion – it would be great if it were just a pretext, because then we would have a much easier way to settle this. But unfortunately that’s not the case. Because Russian dissatisfaction – to put it mildly – with the security arrangement in Europe that emerged after the Cold War, was there from the very beginning. First the Soviet Union in Gorbachev’s time, and then Russia in the 1990s, disagreed with this idea that Euro-Atlantic institutions are equal to European security. And that idea was actually the main outcome of the Cold War. To put it very simply, the idea behind the European security arrangements after 1990 was: The more NATO, the more security. And Russia has always been unhappy with this, even though for quite a long while it didn’t actively resist. Very clear statements were made from the start – by Yeltsin and all his foreign ministers, including even Andrei Kozyrev, who is now a major US proponent.

By the way, there was a cable declassified recently, the transcript of a conversation between Yeltsin and somebody from the American leadership, I think [Strobe] Talbott, where Yeltsin said back in the mid-1990s that actually, we are very much against the enlargement – but we need cooperation with the United States. We need cooperation with Europe. So, we don’t agree, but we have to accept it. And now we have a lot of documents that have been made public on the American side, showing that the Americans were well aware of how opposed the Russian establishment was toward NATO enlargement from the beginning. And of course, there is that famous 2008 cable that you mentioned from William Burns, the US Ambassador, which lays it all out very clearly.

How did Western leaders respond when Russia protested against this kind of NATO expansion?

In the 1990s, when the NATO enlargement process was just beginning and before any final decisions were made, the Americans and Europeans promoting this idea told the Russians: You should not be against it, because NATO enlargement will work in your interest as well, because it will be about strengthening peace and security in Europe, and so on. And the Russians answered: Okay, fine – but we know that if you start with Poland, Czech Republic and other former communist states in Eastern Europe, then at the end of the day Ukraine will also be on the agenda. And their Western counterparts – and I can confirm this by my own experience – their Western counterparts told us: Are you crazy? Which Ukraine? That’s absolutely out of question! How could you even imagine this? And so on. But later on, American documents were made public from 1992, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which show that they had begun to float the idea of Ukrainian membership even back then. So there were no red lines when it came to Russia. And I say all this for one reason, because Western leaders and many commentators said publically in the 1990s and 2000s: Look, the Russians are paranoid. Whenever we discuss peace and security in Europe, they say immediately that Ukraine will be brought into NATO – what bullshit! But in fact, that was the idea from the beginning. Which from the Western point of view – if we disregard Russian objections – was perfectly logical. Why stop? If the West won the Cold War, why not keep going and push it as far as possible? One beautiful day in the future, when this situation is over and we can address these issues calmly and without emotion, this will be an extremely important study – how we spent this period of enormous opportunity in Europe and in the world, and how we derailed everything.

So let’s jump ahead now to 2008, when NATO for the first time officially declared that both Ukraine and Georgia will eventually be brought into NATO. This of course was done at the insistence of the Bush administration over the objections of European countries like France and Germany. And we know from Burns‘ cable, and many other sources, that the Russians were especially worried about this. What can you tell us about how this decision was viewed within Russia?

The decision at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest was actually a compromise between the Americans and the Europeans, where they agreed not to give those two nations a membership action plan immediately, but instead to put into the final declaration of the summit that at some future time, Georgia and Ukraine will be members of NATO, full stop. And of course from the Russian point of view this was just another confirmation that the West, and the Americans in particular, would not take anything into account but what they want. This was, of course, the last straw for Russia. In fact, it’s not a coincidence that a military conflict erupted soon afterward in Georgia – which, by the way, was seen as a more promising NATO candidate with Saakashvili in charge. And in this regard 2008 was important. But paradoxically, although Russia used force to stop this enlargement, it didn’t help. Even the use of force didn’t help. The Western approach, that the NATO-led security system should expand, was absolutely untouched. And I think this was a very important lesson that the Russian leadership learned – Medvedev was the president at the time, but Putin was de facto, of course, very much in charge. And this was a warning that was not taken seriously – a warning from the Russian side that from that moment, although we could accept the absorption of Eastern Europe into NATO, we would not accept the absorption of the territories of the former Soviet Union. And the warning was pretty clear – the massive use of force, even though it was short.

Just on a side note, what about the Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania? Those were former Soviet territories that had already joined NATO in 2004, but it seems Russia didn’t perceive their membership as such a serious threat – nothing like the potential membership of Georgia or Ukraine.

The Baltic States were regarded as something not exactly organic inside the Soviet Union – they were seen more like the former communist states of Eastern Europe. The most important thing that I personally tried to convey to my counterparts and friends in Europe and the United States at that time, was that former Soviet Republics, in particular Ukraine, were profoundly different from the Russian point of view than any Eastern European state, or even the Baltic States. Because as long as NATO expansion concerned only those states – although it wasn’t good, because Russia accumulated resentment and disappointment – still, it was more or less acceptable. But Ukraine and Georgia, especially Ukraine, were completely different. People in the West could never clearly understand how important the Ukrainian issue was for the Russian consciousness – not just political, or military-political, but in terms of public opinion. So I think the West was very much pacified – and not only the West but we here in Russia as well – by the relatively easy way in which the Soviet Union collapsed, given all the very serious underlying issues that were bound to arise. An example of this is the very fact that Boris Yeltsin did not raise the Crimean issue in December 1991, when they decided, together with Ukrainian President Kravchuk and Belarusian President Shushkevich, to dissolve the Soviet Union. From Kravchuk’s memoir, we know that he was very much afraid that Yeltsin would raise the Crimean issue, the belonging of Crimea to Ukraine. Because they knew in Ukraine that this issue was ambivalent – to put it mildly. But Yeltsin didn’t raise the issue, because he believed at the time that the removal of Gorbachev, the removal of the Soviet Union as an institution, as a state, was more important than such details. And so that created a feeling among many people here, and many people in the West, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was actually very easy, and didn’t bring with it bigger problems.

But there were already some problems, weren’t there? Armenia and Azerbaijan, and so forth?

Yes, something in Armenia and Azerbaijan, something in Georgia, something later in Central Asia, and Moldova. But in general it was nothing big, nothing existential. And that was a mistake for all of us, because we here also believed that the whole thing was actually finished, it was over. And we underestimated the level of public resentment here in Russian society about loss of territories that were considered absolutely, naturally Russian – like Crimea, like Eastern Ukraine, like some others. And furthermore, there was this feeling that the post-Soviet borders could not be changed anymore. That was a deep conviction in the West, and that was more or less public wisdom here. And that would probably have lasted, if it weren’t for the very active and aggressive policy of the West towards former Soviet territories like Ukraine.

I think a lot of people here in the West won’t understand this feeling you’re talking about – why Ukraine is so important for Russians. I have friends that say to me: Look, Ukraine just wanted to become more Western, and that was their choice – they wanted to move in that direction for good reasons, and Russia just couldn’t tolerate it. They portray Russia as an evil power that simply would not let this poor country escape into a better life. So could you maybe explain why it is that Ukraine – particularly eastern Ukraine – generates such strong feelings among the Russian population? Why is it so important to them that Ukraine stay close to Russia?

Well, first, I’m not a big fan of policies based on historical events, but it would be senseless to deny certain historical roots. Russian statehood was born in Kiev. Russia as a nation was baptized in Kiev. Ukraine has always been seen as part of the Russian space. Yes, there was quite a long period in the Middle Ages when Kiev was not significant, because the centre of Russian activity moved to the north – to Moscow, Novgorod and so on. But after that, the territory of present-day Ukraine turned into a place of very intense competition between the Russian state and the Western world – in particular Poland. Also Sweden at that time. Not just in military terms, but in spiritual terms also. So a lot of things were done in this place which shaped Russian identity. Second, and probably most importantly, the line between Russians and Ukrainians has always been extremely vague – you could not draw a line where Russians end and Ukrainians begin. I dare to disagree with President Putin when he says that Russians and Ukrainians are one nation, one people. I believe this is not entirely correct – there is a different nation called Ukrainians. But we have to make distinctions.

As for the rest of Ukraine – of course, there are different opinions. The western part has always been different, no doubt about that. But what about the central part? In any case, the solution adopted at the breakup of the Soviet Union left the Ukrainian state with borders that did not correspond to the understanding of the people living there, or to the real distribution of Russian and non-Russian populations. This happens historically, of course, not just here but in many places. But here, at the time, it actually made some sense. As long as people believed that the border was only fictional, that it was not a real border, it was fine. But the more the two states developed in different directions, the more difficulties there were.

Weren’t there large parts of the population in Ukraine that very much wanted the country to develop in a direction that moved away from Russia?

To some extent, yes – and that’s another phenomenon which is very important for understanding why it went so badly. When you have two countries, two nations, so close to each other that at the beginning it’s hard to distinguish between them, then – when the smaller nation wants to separate from the bigger one – they need to do everything to demonstrate how different they are, to emphasise what distinguishes them. This is the only way to create an identity, a nation, a national identity. Otherwise, the question would arise one day: Why do we need these two states? Why not merge them? And that was the case with Ukraine. Their whole education, the whole national philosophy, the identity building from the beginning, from 1992, was about why we are different from Russians. And unfortunately, when this naturally causes problems, as always happens in such situations – and then, when you cross the line from how different we are to how opposite we are – then we move to a different level of relationship. And in this particular case, what aggravated the situation was that this feeling was very actively supported – first by NGOs from the West and some diplomats, and then by the whole political machinery of the West. And so from the need to resolve differences we moved to the need to become anti-Russian, which is what happened after 2014.

William Burns‘ cable makes some of these same points, but he also talks about some very practical reasons why the Russians opposed it – how it would impact workers and families living along the border, the issue of Russian defence contracts given to Ukrainian companies, and so on. Was there public discussion about these sorts of issues as well?

Yes, there were serious practical issues – and probably the most important was the military one. Ask any military strategist, be it Russian or Ukrainian or American, they will say the same. If Ukraine was going to become an anti-Russian military stronghold – NATO member, non-NATO member, it doesn’t matter – the challenges to Russian security were sure to increase enormously. This is obvious just from the point of view of military-minded geopolitics. If you have this territory against you, as a bulwark for the enemy, then Russia needs to pay incomparably more attention to its security. And of course there are other practical reasons, and we can name many of them. Practical issues can be resolved, but when they are based on a very deep historical intertwined relationship, with no easy way to find a line of separation, then you face a real problem. And so, if we take all these things together – history, humanitarian issues, strategic and practical issues – then we begin to understand the absolutely unique relationship between these two countries and how difficult it is to separate them.

So let’s move ahead now to 2014 and the Maidan Revolution, which of course started as a peaceful protest, and ended with the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych and his replacement in Kiev with a pro-Western government. How were these events seen within Russia at the time?

I would say we have some exaggerations here. Of course, the almost-official position is that Maidan was simply a CIA plot – which I don’t believe was the case. Because of course, the situation in Ukraine was extremely complicated, and there were some objective preconditions for that. But no doubt it was used by the West. And there was massive support – moral, political, financial support – given to those who wanted to turn Ukraine away from Russia. That was simply a fact of life. No one denies it anymore – I think it’s absolutely common wisdom in the West as well. The West is proud of this. And that’s why the perception of Maidan is that it was a kind of milestone in the creation of a different Ukraine. This creation started much earlier, of course. It actually started immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union – the first steps toward the transformation of Ukraine into very much an anti-Russian entity. But it didn’t go well. It became difficult, because it was not easy to turn the Ukrainian population towards this. But step by step it happened, and 2014 was the final turning point. And by 2022, unfortunately, we had all the premises and conditions in place for a big war. And again – nowadays Americans, British and Europeans all proudly say that between 2014 and 2022 they were preparing Ukraine for its big war with Russia. They proudly say it.

Of course, Russia made a lot of terrible mistakes. And I think the beginning of this campaign was a disaster, because of a total misreading of the enemy, of the opponent.

I’d like to ask you about Crimea, and the Russian decision to annex it in March 2014. It seems that whenever Crimean people have been asked what they prefer, whether by referendum or poll – even a poll organised by the West – the answer is always the same, they want to be part of Russia. On the other side, the West and Ukraine have always viewed this annexation as a serious violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and the sanctity of its borders. And it has certainly created a lot of resentment, especially among Ukrainian nationalists. How was this whole issue seen within Russia at the time? How did you and your colleagues see it?

Of course it was seen in a very positive light. I remember that this move was highly popular – people very much welcomed it. As for the expert community, or strategic community, I think most people basically endorsed it, because it was seen as a reaction to the pretty brutal regime change that had just happened in Kiev. And from the beginning, that regime change was positioned as very much anti-Russian – anti-Russian in terms of the Russian state, but also in terms of the Russian community living in parts of Ukraine. That’s why many people in Eastern Ukraine didn’t accept this, and they started trying to do something to stop it, or reverse it. For professionals, I think another very important reason, or justification, was the Sevastopol naval base and the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which represents Russia’s only access to the Mediterranean. There was absolutely no doubt that if Crimea were to remain part of Ukraine, the Ukrainian leadership would very soon request that the Russian fleet withdraw from Crimea. Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president until he was overthrown in the February coup a month earlier, had signed an extension allowing the Russian fleet to remain until 2042. But the new rule in Kiev was clearly to denounce this agreement. And the old agreement for the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea was due to expire in 2017. And so, to everyone in Moscow it was absolutely obvious that the Ukrainians would not extend this lease. And for Russia to lose the Black Sea Naval Base would be a very, very big setback in strategic terms. And in fact, very soon after this, what happened in Syria – the Russian involvement in an operation by Syria’s request, which required Russian access to the Mediterranean – confirmed that the Russian naval presence in the Black Sea was extremely important.

And so Crimea was seen as a big success. In particular because there was no bloodshed, no military standoff. It was just a very elegant military operation. It was seen as a legitimate action to protect Russian strategic interests and the Russian people in that area. My guess is that those who planned the special military operation in 2022 wanted to repeat something like this with the whole of Ukraine, but unfortunately it failed.

I’m sure you’re well aware of how this whole Crimean episode was seen in the West. None of the things you’ve described are ever mentioned. It’s been portrayed as purely an aggressive move by Russia to grab territory from Ukraine. How do Russians react when they see this kind of Western narrative?

You know, today, in September of 2024, it’s almost senseless to discuss how that episode was perceived in the West or in Russia, because what we have now is much worse – such a deep, full-scale polarization of views. Our views are completely incompatible. But even back then – I remember talking with my European colleagues and friends sometime after 2014, long before the current military conflict, and they said to us: You live in a propaganda-led society, and you are fooled by military propaganda about Ukraine. And I tried to explain to them that things are much more complicated than propaganda. I explained that for absolutely objective reasons, not because of propaganda, we simply cannot see and feel Ukraine in the same way. Russians and Western Europeans – say Dutch or Portuguese – simply have a completely different set of associations and feelings vis-à-vis Ukraine. Because of our different histories, because we perceive different kinds of interconnections, and so on. So that’s normal. But please don’t say that we are wrong and you are right, because the truth is that we simply see it from completely different angles. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict as seen from Spain, and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as seen from Moscow, are different conflicts – for perfectly objective historical and cultural reasons. But I was unsuccessful in convincing them – because they, of course, frame the conflict in what is for them quite a normal scheme: An old empire is trying to regain a former part of it. And it’s true that this scheme can be applied to some aspect of the conflict. But it’s just one element of this very complicated picture, and by far not the most important one.

Wasn’t the simple fact that Russia took the Crimean territory from a neighbouring country – even though it was without bloodshed and the local population wanted it – wasn’t that enough to ensure that Western countries would never accept it?

Yes, and that’s probably another important element of this. The European historical experience – especially the experience of the 20th century – taught Europeans a very important lesson. If you start to talk about borders, to touch borders, it leads to disasters, to world wars and so on. And that’s understandable. That’s exactly what happened in Europe several times. And the whole political settlement, the geopolitical settlement of the second half of the 20th century after the Second World War, was based on this idea: Let’s fix the borders, and don’t touch them. Which is reasonable. And this idea was functioning and working efficiently in the situation we had during the Cold War, when we had a more or less well-organized geopolitical order. It was unpleasant, it was bad – it was based on mutual deterrence and many bad things – but it was pretty well-established and well-functioning. And in this situation, yes – borders were respected as something that ruled out conflict between the biggest players. And those conflicts were seen as so dangerous that we could not afford them. But the whole system collapsed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the new system was based on the idea that: Ok, formal borders should not be touched; but at the same time, if they do change – like happened in Yugoslavia, like happened in the Soviet Union, and in other places – that’s fine, especially if this change is in favour of the so-called free world, the Western-led international system.

And Russia did respect this – until 2014. Until Crimea. Russia was very clear about not violating this rule. Even in the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia formally recognised those states, but there was no annexation, no integration into Russia. The Soviet-drawn borders still existed – until Crimea. The Ukrainian development in 2014, however, was seen as an extremely strong Western intervention, intended to profoundly reshape the whole geopolitical status quo in this region. And that’s why the reaction was so harsh as to take this territory belonging to Ukraine – to take Crimea.

It seems to me that Crimea being in Ukraine was not such an unusual case – that there are many places in the world where people find themselves living as minorities because they somehow ended up on the wrong side of a border, and are unhappy about it. Isn’t this a big problem that should be tackled internationally somehow?

Yes, and in general I think in years to come the nature of borders might very well become one of the most vibrant and risky issues we face. Not only in the area of the former Soviet Union, but in many other places as well. Because it’s clear that many borders inherited from the 20th century were drawn for reasons which had nothing to do with rationality – be it in the Soviet Union, in Africa, Asia, the former Middle East, and so on. Even in Europe. I think we are entering an extremely dangerous space in regard to this issue. But it’s a little bit simplistic to say that everything was great and then Russia came and destroyed this great situation. No, unfortunately all the preconditions for this crisis were created much earlier.

Before we finish I’d like to ask how you see the current situation in Ukraine today, and how you think it’s likely to develop. In the kind of poisoned political atmosphere we have today, which seems to be getting only worse, do you think there’s any chance of serious talks taking place anytime soon?

Indeed, I think talks will take place in the end. The question is: How far are we from that point? And I’m afraid we’re still very far. So it’s not about any serious talks soon. We know from other conflicts that peace negotiations start to make sense only when the parties involved realise they cannot achieve much more by military means. And then, after this realisation comes – not immediately, but after a while – some kind of real diplomacy starts. But we’re still far away from that, on both sides. Actually in this particular conflict we have not two parties, but three: Russia, Ukraine and the West. And at this point none of them believe that the current situation on the ground, or the situation in general, calls for efforts to freeze it. And I don’t believe we will be there this year. Next year, maybe. But it could take another year as well. Of course, some things depend on the general political constellation, in particular the outcome of the elections in the United States. But having said that, I would not overestimate the importance of those elections. Even if Donald Trump wins – and he seems to have a somewhat different view on the Ukrainian issue than the current administration – he is not an emperor. He will not be able just to change the policy and totally revise everything.

How about on the Russian side?

On the Russian side, you can hear views that this conflict is of an existential nature. So we need to have a clear victory, in order to push the West towards the need to accept Russian interests. On the Western side we have basically the same thing, but the mirror image: that Russia should be delivered a significant defeat in order to save and strengthen the rules-based world order. From my point of view, both positions are too far to one side or the other to be realistic. On the Russian side, I don’t expect such a huge victory that would reshape the whole of European geopolitics. And on the American side, on the Western side, I don’t see how any outcome of this conflict – even if it’s a relative success for the West and Ukraine – will stop the biggest thing that’s happening: the objective trend toward the erosion of the American-centric international system. It’s happening already, and will continue. So I guess that both sides should at some point arrive at a more realistic assessment of the possible outcomes. Again, we are not there yet, and we will not be there anytime soon. But at the end of the day, there’s no other way but to negotiate a settlement. It’s inevitable.

Štandard