OPINION:
Russia’s brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has for all practical purposes terminated the post-Cold War period. Successive U.S. administrations made every effort to find common ground with Russian President Vladimir Putin, notably with former President Barack Obama’s ill-fated “reset” policy even after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. President Biden gave diplomacy one last chance during his April 2021 summit with Mr. Putin in spite of the 70,000 Russian troops mobilized on Ukraine’s border.
But Mr. Putin had a more cataclysmal strategy in mind for Ukraine.
The foundations of the post-Cold War period actually began eroding after Mr. Putin became President Boris Yeltsin’s prime minister in August 1999. During the 1990s, as Russia’s military, economy and geopolitical influence cratered, only Russia’s intelligence services continued to operate at full throttle. It should have come as no surprise, even if there was a touch of irony, that Mr. Putin became a modern-day Russian czar thanks to Yeltsin, who bravely led protests against the same KGB where Mr. Putin was groomed. Yeltsin made a Faustian, self-serving bargain with Mr. Putin, whose first act as president was to grant Yeltsin immunity from prosecution for stealing so brazenly from the Russian state.
Mr. Putin never hesitated to use indiscriminate force, starting with his brutal campaign in Chechnya. He used a banned chemical nerve agent against military intelligence defector Sergei Skripal and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. And he turned FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko into a human dirty bomb in downtown London after having him poisoned with polonium 210.
At home, Mr. Putin took control of Russia’s media and harassed opponents as well as journalists by falsely declaring them a fifth column of “traitors and scum” doing the bidding of Russia’s external enemies. Mr. Putin wields unlimited power to control and subvert his nation’s domestic and foreign policy.
Under Mr. Putin’s leadership, Russia continued on a destructive path as a revisionist autocratic power by invading Ukraine and illegally annexing Crimea in 2014; targeting civilians and inducing a massive flow of displaced people in Syria in support of dictator Bashar al Assad and his use of chemical weapons; interfering in U.S. and European elections; and launching malicious cyberattacks.
And now the Russian military is raining down hell on Ukrainian innocent civilians, who are reaping what the KGB sowed.
Estonian former Chief of Intelligence Eerik Kross has accurately identified the challenge, “which is immeasurably deeper, wider and older than Putin and his band of gangsters.” The Soviet Union’s human rights atrocities at home and abroad, Josef Stalin’s purges, the gulag system, as well as illegal annexations of the Baltic States and parts of Finland and Poland “were never criminalized.” Mr. Kross argues there was “never a national leadership-led redemption attempt.” There were no trials for Soviet war crimes. Mr. Kross assesses Mr. Putin has perpetuated the national myth about Russia being a liberator, when in fact “liberation” meant only subjugation and exploitation.
For Mr. Kross, it’s not about Mr. Putin, but rather Russian society. Only the Russians can begin a “process of redemption and reeducation.”
This of course is precisely what Mr. Putin fears most and it’s why he deals such harsh blows against anyone seeking to protest his rule. Mr. Putin’s war on Ukraine is consistent with Soviet goals of exercising influence and when needed military control over its regional space as well as defending Putin’s own regime security. Pro-West democratic and prosperous former Soviet republics are an existential threat to Mr. Putin’s corrupt and repressive regime.
Russia’s barbaric war in Ukraine, which is grinding into its second month, will at some point reach its end, possibly with a comprehensive peace deal preceded by a humanitarian cease-fire.
But especially if Mr. Putin remains in power, Ukraine will always be in Russia’s crosshairs.
NATO was created in 1949 to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. No country has arguably done more to defend, deter and counter Russia and its KGB operative in the Kremlin than Ukraine. The Biden administration has pledged to defend “every inch” of NATO territory, but it is Ukraine that is on the front lines fighting desperately to defend freedom, liberty and democracy from the Kremlin’s brutal onslaught.
Russia should be held accountable for killing innocent civilians and destroying Ukrainian cities. Ukraine will need a massive infusion of military support and a robust alliance with the West as insurance against any potential future Russian aggression. Anything less would grossly dishonor the Ukrainian victims of Russia’s horrific invasion and condemn Ukraine to live in a state of perpetual vulnerability on this century’s geopolitical fault line between democracy and dictatorship.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Follow him on Twitter @DanielHoffmanDC.
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