David Satter: The Real Reason For Putin To Invade Ukraine Is Very Banal

Their nonsense about the denazification of Ukraine conceals the real reason.

Is the Kremlin regime a fascist dictatorship or a kleptocracy? How to force Putin stop the war? What awaits Russia after the defeat?

The Charter97.org website talked about this with the famous American journalist David Sutter, who writes about Russia and the USSR.

– Why does Putin continue this war in Ukraine? What drives him?

– I think, what is driving him to continue the war is the same thing that led him to launch the war which is self-preservation. We often hear in the West that Putin is determined to reestablish the Soviet Union or dominate Ukraine. But I don't think that this is the real reason. I think that this is just a criminal group that thought — and they had some justification for thinking so — that a successful operation in Ukraine would bolster their hold on power — just as the seizure of Crimea in 2014 led to a surge in Putin's popularity and strengthened his grip on power at a time when the Russian people might have been disposed to learn some of the lessons of the Maidan revolt and to have undertaken some steps to deal with their own kleptocratic ruler.

– Do some fascistic tendencies, this regime has, go against this theory of Putin being purely criminal?

– The fascistic tendencies exist, of course, but nationalism in Russia plays well with the population. It's a perfect device (not just for Putin, but it was equally important for Yeltsin): a means of distracting the population from the corruption of the rulers.

They don't announce, "We're invading Ukraine so that the Russian people will continue to be propagandized and continue to support a group of kleptocratic rulers," — they can't say that. But they say something else, "We're going to restore Russia's glory. We're going to denazify Ukraine. We're going to change the regime, so NATO will no longer threaten us," — all of this is nonsense and it conceals the real reason. The real reason is very banal: it's self-interest of a small group. For that tens of thousands of people are dying — that's what's so sinister about it.

By the way, it's not restricted to Putin. Yeltsin was the same way: he launched the first Chechen war in order to improve his popularity after the suppression of the Parliament.

How did Putin come to power? By blowing up the apartment buildings in 1999. Did he do that because he was concerned about restoring Russia's greatness? No, he did it to make sure that he would take power and Yeltsin supported it or may have even ordered it for all we know in order to protect his corrupt family. Where is the great historic vision here? It really doesn't exist. These are not people who are predisposed to even think that way.

Putin came out of the criminal world of St. Petersburg, and he was involved in criminal activities. There were two criminal cases against him that were closed after he became Prime Minister. The fact that he had those criminal cases against him, that he was being actively investigated for embezzlement and fraud, didn't prevent Yeltsin from appointing him Prime Minister. As Yeltsin himself said, he did it after reviewing more than 20 candidates. So obviously, this is not a ruling group that thinks about the welfare of the country or thinks about anything except its own welfare. It's important to bear in mind.

– Why do people in Russia at large go along? Is it cynicism? Is it fear?

– It's many things. It's the influence of state television. The late Boris Berezovsky said, "If I control state television, I can put a monkey in the Kremlin." In fact, it's pretty close to what they did do.

The Russians have a traditional readiness to defer to authority. They identify with the power of the state, not with their own, and they don't value oftentimes their own individual dignity. As a result, they can be easily propagandized and directed towards some type of foreign adventure, which is presented always as idealistic, as self-defence: Russia never, never, never engages in aggression — Russia is always saving someone there. They were saving the Hungarians, they saved the Czechs, they saved the Afghans, they saved the Chechens, they are saving the Ukrainians from Nazism. They never do anything selfishly, they've always served, and if they're forced to attack, they do it because someone has blown up their apartment buildings and killed innocent people, and as a result, they had no choice, and no one should think that they did it themselves in order to have a pretext.

So, it's a very sinister mentality. It's a very sinister situation. Unfortunately, Russian people don't know their own history, and they are not fully able to untangle the degree to which they're being manipulated.

– If you would advise Western decision-makers, how could the Western leaders convince Mr Putin to stop?

– By defeating him. He will not be talked into anything. He will not be persuaded to stop. He will stop when his own survival becomes threatened.

– … a man, who has such a large table, seems to be concerned about his own security.

– Definitely. Much more concerned about his own situation than about the hundreds of thousands of young Russian guys who are being thrown into an inferno. He is not concerned about that, and he never will be. But he will be concerned about his own survival — that's what western leaders should bear in mind.

They should create a situation in which peace is in his interest and the path to personal survival is withdrawal from Ukraine and an end to the war. How to do that? There are various ways to do it.

– What's the realistic scenario out of this war?

– We have to give Ukraine everything that they need in order to defeat Russia.

– Let's imagine the time after the war, and let's focus on Russian society after the war: hundreds of thousands of people went through very traumatic war experiences, thousands upon thousands of able breadwinners are either dead or disabled. What does the future hold for such a country?

– If Putin loses power, if he is removed by some group inside the leadership, that group might be tempted to turn to the West because the country will be ruined economically, it will be ruined socially, it will be ruined psychologically, and the people who can help restore Russia and create a better future are in the West. The economic situation, as a result of sanctions will get progressively worse. Therefore, there will be a real interest on the part of whoever takes power, if Putin is removed, to try somehow to return to a normal relationship with the rest of the world.

If Putin is not removed, if he's in power, we could well see a repetition of what happened in Iraq where after the first Gulf War and after the liberation of Kuwait Saddam Hussein began a reign of terror against the Shiite population in order to hold onto power. Putin is perfectly capable of doing the same and even turning Russia into a giant North Korea.

How long he could hold out in that situation, it's hard to say because the simple fact of having lost the war will severely undercut his legitimacy in the eyes of the population.

– Do you see any early precursors of Putin losing grip on power in the future? Or does it look, as of today, as if it's become more like a North Korean-type of situation?

– Hard to say. We really don't know what the forces are inside the Kremlin, the army and the security services. I am sure that there are some people at the highest levels who understand that this is destroying Russia and that the war has to end. There are plenty of people who hate Putin. Are they strong enough and is there a possibility for them to remove him? We knew nothing about the coup that removed Khrushchev until it happened: one day it was announced that Khrushchev had been put on pension — this was an event that no one expected. Similarly, the removal of Putin, if it takes place, may not be predictable or evident in advance. We can only speculate.

I personally have experience, it's not true that everyone in the Russian Armed Forces is barbaric and stupid. I know that there are people who care about the country and not just in the Army, but in the security services. Are they capable of acting? That's the question we're all asking ourselves, but without being inside it's hard for us to provide any kind of confident answer.

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