Is this really what the West wants?

The West has not declared war officially on Russia and yet, to all intents and purposes, we are at war with the country. What else is the combination of sanctions and supplies of weapons to Ukraine? The western media – led by the poisonous US channels which strangely imagine themselves safely out of range of Putin’s missiles – have been hyping us all up. 

And we have every reason to be disgusted by the scenes of massacre being enacted before our eyes. Sadly, such scenes have been blocked to Russian citizens – who, for the past 2weeks, have seen only what heavy censorship allows them to see.   

I have just discovered, however, one Russian whose blog has been able to give us a sense of how things are seen on their side. As it happens, he is someone whose writing I have admired for the past few years – from his “Reinventing Collapse – the Russian Experience and American Prospects” (2011) to “Shrinking the Technosphere” (2016). He belongs to those who consider that our days are numbered and was, last I heard more than a year ago, living on a boat and posting on Club Orlov. He seems, however, to have pulled up anchor and returned to Russia - since today I was astonished to hear him say he was “happy to be back in Russia” and then, effectively (in both senses of the word), justifying the Ukraine “operations”.

And, sure enough, when I googled his blog, it was to discover that this has been his position since 2014. Let me repeat – this is someone whose writing I have admired for some years even if it occasionally seemed a bit excessive. But his perceptions of the direction the US has been taking in recent decades are widely shared - it was only a year ago this post made the point that in no way can we consider the US to be a democracy. The military do what they want and I have some sympathy with Orlov's point that, since 2014, Ukraine has been treated as a US colony.

The US website which contains his interview certainly feels under threat and my friends in the highly reputable Scheerpost would agree. This is where the limits of free speech begin to be tested. But it's much more than that - we need to pull back a bit and ask how on earth we reached this dangerous point. 

Basically we took our eye off the ball in 2014 - that seems to have been the point at which we started to ignore what was happening in Ukraine.....This is, of course, no excuse for the brutal murders being committed on civilians by Russian soldiers. But it does mean that we need to call a halt to the oversimplification and tribalism that is going on. I’ve selected this contribution from four analysts who are trying to help us assess how Putin should be dealt with -

 One of the triggers for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine seems to have been the mixed signalling over Ukraine’s Nato membership, which was neither ruled out nor firmly ruled in.

Nato and the EU both need to decide, and to communicate clearly, whether they plan to admit the remaining post-Soviet states that want to become members, and what the relationship with them will look like if they don’t. 

At the same time, even if it is unpalatable to talk about it now, there will also need to be engagement with the Russian government in some areas, as there was between the west and the USSR even in dark periods of the cold war such as the early 1980s. 

The most important area will probably be nuclear arms control. The western debate about a no-fly zone and the Russian government’s inflammatory, if vague, threats about nuclear weapons are a sharp reminder of the threat of escalation between nuclear superpowers – a threat that, worryingly, many seemed to have forgotten or dismissed. However hostile the relationship between Russia and the west becomes, dialogue on nuclear matters needs to be maintained. 

Similarly, some level of continuing military-to-military diplomatic contact on other issues will remain important – more important, in fact, than it has been in periods of better relations. Channels of communication between militaries are important for reducing the risk of miscalculation, even where they are unlikely to build much trust. 

Finally, the west will need to think about how it tries to engage with Russian society. Closing off all contact will simply confirm Putin’s narrative that the west wants to destroy Russia. States need to keep their doors open to Russians who want to study or visit, as well as those who are escaping repression. None of this is going to be easy, and much of it may fall foul of domestic pressures, wishful thinking, and splits within the EU and Nato. But Europe and the US’s future security depends on recognising that we are in a moment of acute danger, and that we are all in it together.