How to Help Putin Out

Aurolyn Luykx
8 min readMar 4, 2022

--

image credit: https://streetartutopia.com/2022/02/24/street-art-of-putin-behind-bars-by-pappas-parlor-in-motala-sweden/

Yeah, I know — not exactly most people’s top priority right now. But bear with me, and I think by the end of this post you’ll agree that we need to help Putin out.

Considering that both the news and late night TV seem to be having an all-Ukraine sweeps week right now, it’s surprising how little most people in the U.S. actually know about the region. I learned more about Putin’s decision to invade from this half-hour video than I did from several days of listening to NPR. All week, we’ve been treated to images of heroic Ukrainian grandparents, athletes, and even beauty queens taking up arms to defend their homeland. The yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flag has become ubiquitous not only on Facebook profiles, but on lapels in the halls of Congress. We grieve for the thousands of casualties, and thrill to the dashing young president waving off opportunities to flee the country (declaring “I need ammunition, not a ride”). Our hearts warm equally to the sight of Ukrainian civilians offering a captured Russian solder tea and a phone call to his mum, and to the Ukrainian grandmother offering those same young soldiers sunflower seeds to keep in their pockets, so that flowers may bloom from their rotting corpses.

Add to that the fact that, just days prior, audiences worldwide were treated to the spectacle of teenaged Russian figure skaters breaking down in tears under the weight of Olympic scandal and shame. So, to Russia’s current crime of invading a sovereign nation, we can add that of institutionalized child abuse. To call such images propaganda is not to deny the truth of them; and given that Putin has raised propaganda to a high art, it’s more than a little gratifying to see that those fighting to preserve Ukrainian independence are not entirely bereft of media savvy. In contrast to our own recent history, it would seem that choosing a president from the ranks of TV stars can indeed have some advantages.

Still, while all this high drama makes for great television, it does little to illuminate the reasons behind the unfolding disaster in Ukraine. To understand those reasons, we need to look at the economic, geographic, historical, and demographic factors leading up to the invasion. Central to this discussion must be Russia’s status as Europe’s only petro-state (with Ukraine poised to become the second).

Economic: “Economic factors” for Russia translates to “fossil fuels.” Russia is the world’s third biggest oil producer, after the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It has the largest known deposits of natural gas in the world. Gas and oil exports account for nearly one-third of Russia’s GDP. Most of Russia’s natural gas exports go to the E.U., accounting for 35% of the EU’s entire gas supply (and 50% of Germany’s).[1] Most of that gas (around 80%) travels through pipelines running across — you guessed it — Ukraine, which charges Russia billions for the privilege. To avoid those steep Ukrainian tariffs, Russia is building other pipelines that avoid Ukraine, but they won’t be functional for a couple years yet. And Germany is now certainly having second thoughts about future imports of Russian gas, no matter what pipeline it comes through.

The discovery, in 2012, of up to 2,000,000,000 cubic meters of natural gas deposits within Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea (surrounding the Crimean peninsula) was a real game-changer. Since Ukraine lacked the capital and the technology to exploit these resources,[2] western oil companies like Shell, Exxon, and BP were more than happy to help out. Their promise to help transform Ukraine into Europe’s second petro-powerhouse constituted a major threat to Russia’s GDP, and also signaled the likely future admittance of Ukraine into both the EU and NATO. While Russian ally Viktor Yanukovych was president of Ukraine, this threat was not so urgent. But when Yanukovych’s government fell to a pro-western revolution in Kyiv in 2014, that threat got very real, and so Russia responded by seizing the Crimean peninsula — along with 2/3 of Ukraine’s coastline, 4/5 of its offshore oil and gas reserves, and all the drilling installations and equipment that Shell and Exxon had put in. The western threat to Russia’s petro-economy was forestalled, and the west accepted Putin’s annexation of Crimea with much grumbling and some sanctions but no military response.

Geographic: A quick look at a map of Eastern Europe reveals that it is dominated by a geographic feature known as the North European Plain. This broad, flat region extends from a narrow, funnel-like opening in northern Germany and spreads east toward the Ural Mountains. Near its western corner, this “funnel” makes for an easily defensible point against a potential attack from hostile NATO forces — assuming that Ukraine remains a buffer zone. But if Ukraine were to join NATO, the resulting border with NATO territory would become much longer and, consequently, harder to defend.[3]

Then, add in the complications brought on by our ongoing global climate disaster. Crimea is made up largely of arid steppes and salty marshland. The North Crimean Canal, built during the Soviet era, supplies some 85% of Crimea’s fresh water, courtesy of the Dnieper River (north of Crimea on the Ukrainian mainland). Ukraine responded to the 2014 annexation of Crimea by blocking the canal with cement; since then, Crimea has been slowly dying of thirst, and climate change has made the peninsula even drier and saltier than it was before. 2020 was the driest year on record for Crimea, which now has no reliable source of fresh water large enough to meet its needs. Even before the events of this month, the Crimean population (made up mostly of ethnic Russians, by the way) was having to ration water, and Russia was spending billions a year sending it water by other routes.

Historical: Since the fall of the Soviet Union, nearly all of the former Soviet client states to the west of Russia — East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as the Baltic states — have been incorporated into NATO. The “buffer zone” between NATO and Russia has been reduced to Belarus and Ukraine. This is why Putin’s principal demand has been that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO — not now, not ever.

If Ukraine does join NATO, Belarus — Russia’s only major ally in the region — would be flanked by NATO on three sides. Like most freedom-loving, small-d democrats, I would rather see a dictatorship surrounded by NATO countries than the converse. But, from the perspective of Russia’s security, it’s not hard to see why NATO membership for Ukraine is absolutely a non-starter for Putin. It’s a much more serious threat than, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis was for the U.S.

Demographic: Russia’s demographic situation doesn’t explain the invasion per se, but it does explain Putin’s urgency. Russia has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, and its population has been steadily shrinking in recent decades (as the U.S.’s would be, if not regularly replenished by immigration). Factor in the Covid epidemic, and Russia is now experiencing its largest peacetime population decline ever. Russia currently has about 25,000,000 men of military age; however, the more time goes by, the smaller that pool of soldiers gets. Once Putin determined that an invasion of Ukraine was necessary, there was no advantage to waiting.

So, while the west swoons in solidarity with Ukrainian patriots and Russian citizens are treated to a steady media diet of alleged Ukrainian/neo-Nazi atrocities against peace-loving ethnic Russians in Ukraine, the stirring of ethnic and nationalist passions is really just window dressing. What is driving this conflict is cold, hard realpolitik, as Russia struggles to maintain its status as a world power and Europe’s only petro-state, in the face of what, from Putin’s perspective, can be reasonably viewed as an existential threat. It’s just Ukraine’s bad luck that it happens to be geographically and economically smack dab in the middle of that threat.

However, Putin miscalculated gravely, apparently thinking that he could take at least Donetsk and Luhansk in just a few days. He did not count on 1) the strong grassroots resistance from the Ukrainian people; 2) the near-worldwide condemnation of the invasion, which has left Russia a pariah on the global stage; and 3) the harsh sanctions imposed by the global community — not only NATO, but the fossil-fuel corporations that have dictated most of our own foreign policy over the last few decades. As BP, Shell and Exxon have stepped back from their partnerships with Russia, the ruble has plummeted and the Russian stock market is currently closed. While the rest of the world grumbles over higher gas prices, Russia faces both an immediate cash flow problem and a looming long-term financial disaster. As Russian military casualties mount, sanctions intensify, and internal resistance to the war grows (among Russian soldiers as well as civilians), the question becomes: How does Putin back away from his miscalculation and still save face (not to mention Russian economic and political power)?

Putin cannot lose Crimea, its nearby gas fields and the crucial Black Sea port of Sevastopol, without putting Russia’s entire energy economy and regional dominance at risk. Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been explicit in his aim to reclaim the Crimean peninsula, and joining the EU and NATO would put him in a much stronger position to do so. Thus Putin’s ultimatum about NATO not courting Ukraine — which of course NATO/the U.S. will not agree to.

We have already seen that Putin will take huge risks to achieve at least part of his agenda. That agenda centers on three demands, which he has stated a number of times:

- no NATO membership for Ukraine, ever.

- move NATO forces out of Eastern Europe, back to the pre-1997 NATO boundaries, and end NATO military drills in the region.

- no future expansions of NATO membership.

Given that Putin (not unjustifiably) views Ukraine’s alignment with the west as an existential threat, and seems little concerned about the loss of civilian life in pursuit of his aims, it’s conceivable that he would resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons to stop Ukraine from joining NATO. Preventing this escalation must be NATO (and Ukraine’s) main goal right now. I’m no expert on Eastern Europe, but it seems to me that any negotiations, in order to be fruitful, must focus on 1) the value of maintaining Ukraine as an independent, non-aligned buffer zone between Russia and the NATO countries; 2) apportionment of Ukraine’s offshore fossil-fuel resources and overland pipelines via a formula that both sides can live with; and 3) Crimea’s access to water. NATO is understandably reluctant to get involved militarily, and Putin doesn’t want that either (since Russian would lose). But that would seem to be a looming prospect unless NATO is willing to sacrifice Ukraine (hopefully not!), or put the issue of NATO expansion on the table.

It’s easy to think that Putin is most dangerous when he’s winning. But, what’s more dangerous than a bear with plenty of room to maneuver? A cornered bear, especially one armed with nuclear weapons. Which is why we need to look past our jingoistic inclinations and help Putin find a way out of the trap he’s put himself into.

[1] One wonders why Putin didn’t launch his attack in the dead of winter, when the EU would have suffered a lot more from sanctions against buying Russian gas, and Russian tanks would have been less likely to get bogged down in Ukraine’s muddy thaw.

[2] As well as shale oil deposits in Donetsk in eastern Ukraine — which Putin recently declared an “independent republic,” along with Luhansk, under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians there from their neo-Nazi neighbors.

[3] The important point here is not whether you or I think NATO would ever really launch such an invasion; the point is whether Putin thinks so. Also, it bears remembering that Russia HAS in fact been invaded from that direction within the last century, suffering immense loss of life in the process.

--

--

Aurolyn Luykx
Aurolyn Luykx

Written by Aurolyn Luykx

Recovering academic, aspiring farmer.

Responses (1)