Three Years of War: The Lessons of Black February That We Haven’t Learned

It has now been three years since Putin’s criminal aggression against Ukraine expanded into a full-scale invasion. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, millions of refugees have fled their homeland, and dozens of cities have been turned into ruins. Since March 2022, when the initial plan for a rapid “regime change” in Kiev definitively failed, Putin's “special military operation” has become a war of attrition. Disregarding casualties, the Kremlin has continued to raise the cost of war for both Ukraine and its allies with monstrous persistence.  For Putin's Russia itself, this war is no longer just about expanding the borders or increasing its influence in the post-Soviet space. Rather it is now an existential problem. The question is: can the Russian regime not only survive, but also make its outlook a new principle of world politics? It seems that the destruction of an independent Ukrainian state — which is the ultimate goal of the “SVO” — would be recognized by all as a sign of the superiority of a true military power over powerless international law. Only when the world enters a new era of imperialist redistribution — a struggle for territories between the strongest military powers — will Russia's “victory” be truly solidified. 

    Today, after the start of Russian-American negotiations, it seems that this “victory” is close at hand. However, this is not a military victory — the Ukrainian army continues to resist, and Russia has not been able to take a single major Ukrainian city in three years. Instead, it is an ideological victory, a victory of Putin's worldview. The very format of the meeting between Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio — representatives of military powers calmly discussing the division of another country's territory and its natural wealth — brings to mind the most shameful and unjust events of the past, like the partitions of Poland in the late 18th century or the Munich Pact of 1938. 

      The difference, however, is that, in contrast to what it was like in Munich, this time there are no maps on the negotiating table on which the diplomats might draw the new borders of empires. The U.S. administration does not offer any definitive plan to end the war, and Russia has not yet demonstrated any willingness to compromise and relinquish at least some of its territorial claims. For both sides, these negotiations are primarily of symbolic importance: it is important to them to show that such a scenario should no longer seem unthinkable and that the rules of the game have been radically changed. Although it was rather fruitless, this meeting will go down in history as the beginning of a new era — the era of 21st-century imperialism. However, if the whole world is really divided into predators and victims, is today's Russia — economically weak as it is and having already lost the lives of more than 200,000 soldiers — guaranteed a place among the ruling elites? 

     As is well known, the Russian Empire turned a deaf ear to a similar question on the eve of its entry into the First World War. Overestimating its own power and blinded by false imperial myths and contempt for its own population, Tsarist Russia did not capture Constantinople, but, instead, faced military collapse and revolution. Following the workers of the Russian Empire, millions of citizens of other countries engaged in war turned their anger against their own governments. It took another century for this lesson to be completely erased from the minds of the ruling elites, who are once again obsessed with the idea of imperial expansion. 

     The “peace talks” that are now taking place between Putin and Trump will bring nothing but new wars to the world. Imperialism never stops halfway — it only takes the acquisition of desired territories as an invitation to further aggression. The fate of tormented Ukrainians today may soon become the image of the future for humanity, but humanity always has the chance to say “Enough!” to this imperialist madness. 

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