Russian security doesn’t trump the security of Georgians, Moldovans and Ukrainians

Russian president Vladimir Putin nurtures many grievances. He seems angry about the possibility of Nato expanding to Russia’s borders. He appears indignant that the west is not as concerned about Russian security as he is. He says he is frustrated that the United States and Nato are ignoring Russia when it spells out its demands.

Russia has some legitimate grounds to be worried for its own security. It was attacked 80 years ago by Germany, more than 100 years ago by western-backed “White Russian” forces, and more than 200 years ago by France. For 45 years, Washington and Moscow had nuclear weapons trained on each other’s cities.

But European history is rife with past invasions and foreign occupations, as well as echoes of their lingering traumas. “If you go back far enough in the history books you can find grounds for wars that last a few hundred years and destroy our entire continent,” German chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Saturday.

National security is also important to the people of countries like Poland, Romania, Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine, which have for centuries been menaced by various foreign nations – often Russia. And the security of Georgians, Moldovans and, of course, Ukrainians is no less important than that of Russians.

Putin and his supporters claim historical kinship to former lands that were under Russian dominion. But Russia’s president is not yearning to preserve those cultural ties. He is a hard-nosed former KGB operative seeking to strengthen his position and secure his legacy. If he wanted to boost cultural bonds, he could increase student exchanges or fund art exhibits. Instead he is sending weapons and soldiers westward, not only to the borders around Ukraine, but to proxies in the Balkans.

No one should be confused as to why the small nations of eastern Europe and the Balkans have been clamouring to get into Nato for the last 30 years. Certainly during the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, western officials may have sought to seduce certain leaders into joining the bloc. But for many of the countries, it was an easy sell. No one dragged Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland into Nato. No one bribed North Macedonia, Montenegro or Albania into joining.

In fact, in order to enter Nato and the European Union, the countries must adhere to standards of transparency and good governance. They complied because they were desperate to get out of Russia’s embrace, and to paraphrase one Romanian I recently spoke to, join all the clubs they could before Moscow got its bearings together and began asserting itself against the countries that happen to lie in its claimed sphere of influence.

If the root of the entire Ukraine crisis is the expansion of Nato to Russia’s borders, Putin’s behaviour over the last few years has proven those leaders who embraced Nato absolutely right. The narrative of Russia’s actions against Ukraine over the last eight years resembles one big promotional video for Nato membership. Before Russia’s invasion and occupation of Crimea, only 35 per cent of Ukrainians wanted to join Nato. That number is now 60 per cent and rising.

The Russians “have spent many years complaining about Nato troops coming closer to their border, and unfortunately it is their actions – Russian actions, Russian aggression – that has resulted in more posture moving into central and eastern Europe,” Julianne Smith, the US envoy to Nato, told reporters in a briefing last week.

She explained that Nato bolstered its presence in Poland and the Baltic states after Russia invaded Crimea, and is now boosting troop numbers in central and eastern Europe in response to what Russia is doing.

Eastern European nations have been sounding the alarm for years. Poland’s national security establishment has identified its “most serious threat” as “the neo-imperial policy of the authorities of the Russian Federation, pursued also by means of military force”. Romania has warned that Russia’s “aggressive behaviour”, including its militarisation of the Black Sea region, has prompted it to expand its military and defence capabilities.

There is similar hostility against the militarism and arrogance of the United States in Latin American countries that have been subject to American imperialism over the last two centuries, as well as against the UK in the subcontinent, and against France in north Africa.

But unlike the US and Europe, Russia also suffers from another big problem, and this one is entirely of Putin’s making.

Mexicans, Algerians and Indians may despise the US, France and United Kingdom for their past and present imperial abuses, but they do not actually hate and fear their former tormentors themselves – just notice the immigration numbers for people in the global south heading in droves toward western countries they deem lands of prosperity and liberty, however flawed.

But Russia offers the countries it wants to peel away from Nato absolutely nothing of value – neither security nor prosperity nor rule of law. Like Russia itself, the countries under Moscow’s thumb are bleak, kleptocratic autocracies where the secret police run roughshod over citizen rights, and handfuls of oligarchs dominate commerce.

If Putin doesn’t want countries such as Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine to join the western alliance, perhaps he could offer something more than fake news pumped out on dodgy websites, blatant election interference, crony capitalism and clumsy GRU thugs with vials of novichok tucked into their satchels.

And it’s not just the governments of eastern Europe that prefer to join the western alliance over Russia. The people too are emigrating away from nations and territories under the Kremlin’s thumb.

Some five million Russians have fled the country under Putin’s rule, most of them young and educated, seeking lives abroad where they can speak their minds and earn their livings without fearing the arbitrary wrath of Putin’s modern-day Cheka.

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

“Almost all [Russian] opposition players and government critics with public visibility found themselves under significantly increased pressure from the authorities in 2021,” said a 2022 report released last week by Estonia’s secret services. “The entire arsenal of administrative measures was put into service, including fabricated administrative and criminal charges, and designating the targets as foreign agents or undesirable organisations.”

A record one out of five Russians would leave the country if they could, according to a poll a couple years ago by Gallup. In Belarus, Putin client Alexander Lukashenko’s regime was forced to restrict citizens from leaving the country in droves, barring even those with foreign residency permits from departing. The situation is even grimmer in Russian-controlled dead zones such as Transnistria and South Ossetia, fading enclaves that are havens for cigarette smuggling and low-end banking scams.

In fact, the biggest concentrations of Putin’s fans appear to be ensconced at western universities or in upscale districts of major western cities – far away from Vladivostok or Minsk.

Nato’s response to a major Russian attack on Ukraine will only increase the security threats and isolation of Russia. Nato “will expand its military capability and the number of forces stationed in Europe”, writes Harlan Kenneth Ullman, the former US naval officer who all but wrote the “shock and awe” strategy used against Iraq. “Nato members will develop and deploy more advanced weapons, including new classes of missiles with low-yield nuclear warheads.”

Perhaps the gravest threat to the security of Russian citizens is not Ukraine or even Nato. The biggest threat to Russians may be Vladimir Putin.