The Rafael del Pino Foundation organised, on Monday 7 November of 2022, the Keynote Conference "Ukraine the first battle of the third world war". who gave Yuri Felshtinsky on the occasion of the publication of his latest work of the same title, published by Deusto.
Yuri Felshtinsky (Moscow, 1956) is a Russian historian, based in the United States since 1978, and an expert on the Russian secret service, whose behaviour he has studied from 1917 to the present. Yuri Felshtinsky has privileged access to Russian dissidents and defectors. He was the driving force behind a project to decipher and publish the famous 'Kuchma tapes' on Ukrainian President Kuchma's involvement in the brutal murder of a critical journalist. After his arrival in the United States, he continued his studies in history at Brandeis University and Rutgers University, where he earned his PhD. He returned to Moscow and became the first US citizen to earn a PhD in the country. He is the author of numerous scholarly works and monographs, including The Age of Assassins: How Putin Poisons Elections (Gibson Square, 2008), and co-author of Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring back KGB Terror (Gibson Square, 2007), in which he recounted with Alexander Litvinenko the poisoning of the KGB colonel.
The escalation of tensions between Western allies and Russia over the war in Ukraine has brought back a scenario that was thought to have been overcome since the end of the Cold War: the resurgence of nuclear threats. What began as a regional conflict has now become a global war in which the new international order for the 21st century will be decided. In their book (Deusto, 2022), Yuri Felshtinsky and Mikhail Stanchev carry out one of the most complex studies to date on the geostrategic implications of the war in Ukraine. The authors argue that, far from being the expansionist delirium of a fanatic, the Russian invasion of the neighbouring country is the first phase of Vladimir Putin's project to destabilise the current balance of powers, and to foster the emergence of an Eastern axis to dispute US hegemony. The authors go back to the beginning of Ukraine's history and its attempts to free itself from neighbouring interference to shed more light on how the conflict came to be.
Summary:
On 7 November 2022, the Rafael del Pino Foundation organised the master conference "Ukraine, the first battle of the third world war?", given by Yuri Felshtinsky, Russian writer and historian and expert on Soviet, Russian and Ukrainian politics, on the occasion of the publication of his latest work of the same title, published by Deusto.
According to Felshtinsky, we need to understand what we are facing and whether we are facing the possibility of a third world war. Europe has already faced two world wars. Is the Russian-Ukrainian war a local war or not? This is a question we must ask ourselves. To do so, we have to understand what is happening in Russia, who is leading Russia and what the Russian leadership wants, what their plan is.
The war began in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea. At that time, everyone expected Putin to have a limited plan to seize Crimea and unify it with Russia. Many Western leaders thought that Putin had to be given something to appease his ambitions and that after the annexation of Crimea everything would calm down.
But Putin did not only start invading Ukraine from the east in 2014. He also gave a major speech in Moscow saying that Russia was going to start redrawing the European borders that resulted after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which Putin considered a failure of Russia. That was the day Putin openly declared his plans for the future.
This was not the first time Russia had invaded a foreign country. First came Chechnya. In August 2008 Russia invaded Georgia and nobody did anything about it. This was overlooked, as if it had never happened. Looking back, if Europe had reacted to this war as it did to the invasion of Ukraine, nothing else would have happened. In fact, nobody punished Putin for it.
In 2014 the second step was taken, with the annexation of Crimea. Who was to blame for this invasion and the lukewarm reaction of the West? When the invasion took place, everyone avoided using the word war, for fear of thinking that a war was taking place in Europe, including the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians did not break diplomatic relations with Russia and trade continued to flourish between the two countries until 2022. Europe did not use the word war either. And while some sanctions were imposed against Russia, they were not strict, which Putin saw as an indication that the West was weak, unprepared to confront Russia and able to pursue its plan to create a new Soviet Union.
This recreation of the Soviet Union also included the Baltic states. But by 2014 they were already NATO members, so it was not so easy to invade them for political reasons, so Ukraine was at the top of their list and Belarus was second. But Ukraine could not be taken over without first controlling Belarus. Then, in 2014, Putin took Crimea and triggered a conflict in the Donbass, but he could not attack Kiev because it is impossible to do so from Russian territory. He could only do it from Belarus. To do so, he had to take over Belarus first. Therefore, it was necessary to observe what would happen with Belarus, if there was a Russian annexation, because the next step would be the occupation of Ukraine.
The Belarus operation took place in 2020, before the occupation of Ukraine. This is something that hardly anyone realised. With everything that happened with Lukashenko, it was clear that Russia was taking over the reins of the country. In 2020, Lukashenko lost the elections in Belarus, which triggered protests that were suppressed by Lukashenko with the help of Russian forces, and from then on he became a puppet dictator managed by Russia. Russian troops were thus able to enter Belarus, but it went largely unnoticed and no one protested.
Belarus is strategically very important territory for Russia because it opens the gates to Europe. So when Russian troops moved into Belarus, it became clear that this was a huge danger for Ukraine. But nobody thought about an invasion at that time, even when Putin massed troops on the Belarus-Ukraine border, preparing the invasion, everybody expected that this was a bluff, that Putin was trying to overthrow the Zelensky government, but not that he was ready to start a real war. But he wasn't bluffing, although there was a component because the idea was that Zelensky and Ukraine would capitulate to avoid war, because it's a very dangerous thing to do. For Ukraine, which is much weaker than Russia, to engage in a war against Russia is a very dramatic decision.
We now know that, just before the war started, Lukashenko called Zelensky on behalf of Putin and offered to capitulate and hand over Ukraine to Russia and Zelensky refused. This was the day Ukraine won the war against Russia. Everyone at the time, the night before the war started, thought that Ukraine was going to be a cakewalk for the Russians, that they were going to take over Kiev in, at most, a month, and re-establish the former pro-Russian president Yanukovych. The idea was that after this Putin would move his troops into Transnistria, a region of Moldova with an ethnic Russian population. Putin's hope was that he could quickly take control of Moldova and, using the Ukrainian troops, attack the Baltic states via Belarus.
This was based on the idea that the West lacked sufficiently powerful conventional forces to deal with the Russian military. Putin was convinced that Russia had to be the hegemonic power in the East, including the Baltic states, and that it would be a matter of six months. But this did not happen because Ukraine decided to fight. After eight months, Putin has no army, which has been destroyed by the Ukrainians, and he cannot raise a new army because when he wanted to mobilise 300,000 people in September, many of them went abroad. The Russian army cannot fight now because no one has trained new troops. Putin has just given a conference in which he openly told journalists that Russian troops are weakened. This kind of army cannot beat Ukraine.
The question now is whether the Ukrainians are winning the war. It seems they are, but at the same time they cannot drive the Russians out of their territory. The West is helping with arms and money and accepting their refugees, but, at the same time, the West wants to avoid a global confrontation. The EU, NATO, the US hope that this war will be kept within Ukraine's borders and that the Russians will not be provoked. This is a perfectly understandable position because the difference between World War II and this war we are facing is Russia's ability to use nuclear weapons. If this situation arises, if the pressure against Russia or Putin increases, if the Russian army is on the verge of collapse or Russia is on the verge of losing the war, it may choose the nuclear option. Right now, this is the most important issue because, if it were not for nuclear weapons, we would not be so worried about this war. From the point of view of European security, NATO and the US, if Ukraine keeps Russia at bay, it is a good outcome, and if it keeps Russia at bay for a long time, Russia could collapse.
The problem is that Putin has lost his army and may lose another, but he doesn't care that people may die. Life in Russia is cheap, society is under control, people have no say in what happens to them, there is no freedom of the press, there is no opposition. So Putin can do what he wants and is prepared to send more and more people into battle, a battle he cannot win with conventional weapons. What Putin has in mind is extorting the West for the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons. He is playing on the idea that he could use them if Ukraine is not handed over to him. That is what we are facing now, that extortion because he thinks that, with it, the West would stop supporting Ukraine so that Ukraine cannot continue the fight.
The question is what to do: do we continue to defend Ukraine at all costs or do we stop doing so and surrender Ukraine, in the hope that this will end the conflict? To answer this question, we first need to understand who Putin really is and who is really in charge of the country. In 2014, as in 2022, the decision to invade was made by five people. The first, of course, was Putin. The second person was Nikolai Patrushev, who is the former head of the FSB and is now in charge of the security council of the Russian Federation. The third person was Bortnikov, the current head of the Federal Security Service. The fourth person was Defence Minister Sergei Shoighu and the fifth person was the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian army. Of these five people, three of them were from the Russian security service. This was not a decision of the government, the parliament or any other Russian institution. It was a military and security service decision.
The problem with this is who has the power in Russia. Because if Putin were a dictator, he could be overthrown, something could happen to him and the conflict would be over. But this is not the case. In Russia we are dealing with the FSB and it is the first time in the history of the world that the state security, the security service, is in charge of the country. It is also run by the army, whereas in other countries it is independent of other institutions. So we have to accept the fact that the problem is not only Putin, it goes beyond that, it is more complicated because we have to deal with a group of people and institutions. And this institution was created in 1917, it is more than a hundred years old, it is the oldest institution in Russia and the only one that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is now in charge of Russia and it took over this power with a vision of confronting the West and destabilising it. That was its goal. That is why this war is not just about Ukraine, it is not even an attempt to recreate the Soviet Union. This war is an attempt to destroy the West as an institution that, according to Putin, competes against Russia. That is why this cannot be stopped unless Russia is defeated.
Now, it is very difficult to defeat a country like Russia, which plays such an important role in Europe, especially when this country has nuclear warheads. So we have to think about what options we have. There is a way to deal with this problem. The Ukrainians are doing better than expected and Ukraine has an army capable of stopping Russia. The problem is that it is receiving aid under certain conditions. They are not receiving weapons that would allow them to advance against the Russian army and they are not using the weapons they receive from the West to open fire on their enemies in Belarus and the Russian Federation. From a strategic point of view, these conditions leave the Ukrainians in a situation where they cannot win the war if they cannot fire on enemy territory. Russian troops are concentrated in Belarus and Russia, which is where the Ukrainians cannot fire. If they cannot attack pre-emptively, Russian attacks will succeed and the Russians will be able to regroup. Therefore, until the West changes its posture and strategy from defensive to offensive and allows the Ukrainians to act freely against the Russians, the West will be in a weakened position that provokes Russia to use nuclear weapons. If the war goes on any longer, Putin will come to the conclusion to use nuclear weapons because he will have nothing left to fight, he will run out of people, weapons and time. At the same time, he cannot afford to go on fighting for much longer. So we can avoid a nuclear confrontation if we help the Ukrainians win this war.
We will not be able to stop Putin in Ukraine and at some point we will have to face a nuclear ultimatum, which will start with what we think is a bluff, but will be no such thing when it becomes clear that extortion does not work. Putin will not do it from Russian territory, to avoid retaliation on Russia. That is why, despite his desire to annex Belarus, Belarus remains an independent country. Attempts to annex Belarus are not seen because Putin plans to use nuclear warheads against Ukraine and Eastern Europe from Belarusian territory so that retaliation will be directed against Belarus. The fact that Belarus is under Russian control should not be dismissed because Putin, again, is going to try to use Belarus to carry out nuclear retaliation against the West, Eastern Europe and Ukraine.
In today's world, movements of nuclear weapons cannot be hidden, but these weapons can be moved quickly. If they were to be introduced into Belarus, it may be too late to react by then because we may not have time and Europe may face the risk of a nuclear attack from Belarusian territory. The only way to avoid this is to manage the Belarus issue pre-emptively if we want to avoid a nuclear confrontation, because Putin is not going to attack from Russia to avoid retaliation. In order to deal with Belarus, we have to allow Ukraine to act as it sees fit and to be able to fire on Russia and Belarus.
Dealing with Russia is complicated, but Belarus is easy. Lukashenko's regime is quite weak, not popular at all. As for his army, one of its units is currently in Ukraine fighting against Russia. So there is a Belarusian army in Ukraine ready to liberate Belarus, there is a government in exile made up of many political opponents, there are opponents of Lukashenko incarcerated. Therefore, Putin could quickly lose control of Belarus with the help of the Ukrainian army. Of course, in this case Putin would declare Belarus part of the Russian Federation and annex it, thus losing the possibility of attacking Europe from independent Belarusian territories. So it could be that Belarus would remain under Putin's control, but the risk of a nuclear attack from Belarus would be avoided.
The fundamental problem after eight months of war is that Putin has no conventional army. The only option he has is the possibility of using nuclear warheads. If that option is taken away from him, because it is unlikely that he will use them from Russian territory, he would lose the war in Russian eyes, even though many Russians support him and support this war in Ukraine, but they do not want to lose it. This is the only chance to defeat Russia and stop a war that would otherwise go down in history as the first battle of World War III.
The relevant questions, now, are how long this will last, how it will develop, how long this will last, what price we will pay for the collapse of the Russian Federation. We don't know if and when the collapse will take place. Nobody could do Russia as much damage as Putin has done to it. Sooner or later the Russians will understand this and start to create something different, but for that they will have to accept defeat and forget the idea of creating an empire.
The Rafael del Pino Foundation is not responsible for the comments, opinions or statements made by the people who participate in its activities and which are expressed as a result of their inalienable right to freedom of expression and under their sole responsibility. The contents included in the summary of this conference, written for the Rafael del Pino Foundation by Professor Emilio González, are the result of the debates held at the meeting held for this purpose at the Foundation and are the responsibility of the authors.
The Rafael del Pino Foundation is not responsible for any comments, opinions or statements made by third parties. In this respect, the FRP is not obliged to monitor the views expressed by such third parties who participate in its activities and which are expressed as a result of their inalienable right to freedom of expression and under their own responsibility. The contents included in the summary of this conference, written for the Rafael del Pino Foundation by Professor Emilio J. González, are the result of the discussions that took place during the conference organised for this purpose at the Foundation and are the sole responsibility of its authors.
