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Why did Putin launch Operation Z in Ukraine? Are Ukrainian forces using neo-Nazi volunteers? What are the forces involved and the reality of the military conflict over the past six months? What do we know about war crimes like Butcha? Have Western economic sanctions worked? Is the massive arms shipment from the West having an effect on the conflict?

After the best-selling book Putin: Master of the Game, whose analysis has been acclaimed worldwide, Jacques Baud returns in this book to the root causes of the war in Ukraine and the reasons that pushed Vladimir Putin to intervene on 24 February 2022. Using intelligence information and official reports, he analyses the course of the military actions and the way they were interpreted in the West. It explains the political and economic disruption of the world order and the long-term consequences of Western sanctions on our daily lives. It reveals how the conflict could have been avoided and what avenues were deliberately left open by the US and Europe.

Jacques Baud was a member of the Swiss strategic intelligence. A specialist in Eastern Europe and head of the UN peace operations doctrine, he was involved in negotiations with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the Ukrainian crisis of 2014 and then participated in assistance programmes to Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Governing by the fake news, L’Affaire Navalny and Putin : Game master ? published by Max Milo.

Copyright

Max Milo, Paris, 2022

www.maxmilo.com

ISBN: 978-2-31501-086-8

Introduction

On 18 May 2022, George W. Bush sparked hilarity around the world by castigating

the one-man decision to launch a totally unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq... I mean, of Ukraine.

This Freudian slip illustrates and underlines the absurdity of the Western attitude towards Russia. On the one hand, it accepts and supports the crimes of the Western powers and, on the other, it applies a barrage of sanctions against Russia that border on the absurd.

Three months earlier, on 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin, speaking on Russian television, announced his decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine at the request of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, whose independence he had recognised three days earlier. The Western world, shocked, began to rain down sanctions on Russia and Belarus. Ukraine is neither a member of the European Union nor of NATO, but since 2014 its regime has been under Western protection. Resolving crises by force is rarely the right solution. The Russians know this as well as we do. So was Vladimir Putin’s decision the right one? In unison, the Westerners answer in the negative, but their unanimity stems from a reading of events that conveniently combines a form of negationism and revisionism aimed at taking into consideration only what confirms their prejudices. In addition to the political lies, there is also the media illusion, as our media outlets have contributed to the confusion by painting a reality that is far from the facts.

But the way we understand the crisis determines our strategy for getting out of it.

The aim of this book is to provide precise, factual and nuanced information, which will facilitate a calmer view of this crisis. Not everything is black; not everything is white. The truth lies in the shades of grey. The biased and extremist discourse tends to make the least discordant information appear favourable to Russia. It is time to remember what popular wisdom has been saying since the dawn of time: there are always two relevant points of view in a conflict.

Readers with an exclusively Westernist perspective will judge this book as «Putinian» or even «Putinolite». On the contrary, those who seek a better understanding of the crisis in order to find a path towards dialogue will find this book to be peace-friendly and therefore ultimately pro-Ukraine.

To understand the inconsistent way in which the West has responded to the Ukrainian crisis, one need only ask why this conflict - and Russia in particular - are more reprehensible than those we initiated before.

The illegal and illegitimate invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Syria by Western countries have not been met with sanctions or condemnation. American or Polish disabled athletes have not been deprived of the Paralympics; British cats have not been excluded from cat shows; Polish, German, American, British, French or Lithuanian weightlifters have not been condemned for crimes they did not commit personally; British, American or Swiss tennis players have not been forced to condemn their governments in order to participate in a tournament, Chopin’s «Polish girls» have not become «Iraqi girls», and the atrocities of the Polish military have not been condemned, etc.

With the Russian operation, it seems that, all of a sudden, the West has created a conscience, but one that functions - as we shall see - in a very selective and variable geometry manner...

Methodology

In order to counterbalance the radical, simplistic and under-informed discourse that hinders understanding of the conflict and favours the recitation of an anti-Russian vulgate to the detriment of informational objectivity, my approach is different from that of the media that respect neither the Munich Charter nor the most elementary journalistic deontology - among which are Swiss Radio-Television, France 5 or LCI. It is also different from those who fight the propaganda of one party by using the propaganda of the other (and often of the extreme right), such as heidi.news. My aim is to combat the propaganda of each party by examining its own information and therefore its own contradictions. Therefore, I will use exclusively Western and Ukrainian sources (governmental side), as well as those from the Russian opposition.

The lack of diversity in the French-speaking media landscape has led me to take most of my sources from the Anglo-Saxon mainstream media, which are often more honest than their French-speaking counterparts, even if they remain fiercely opposed to Russia.

1. Fundamentals and perceptions

The way the Western community has reacted to the Ukrainian crisis shows that the nature of the conflict is singular. While Western countries (and my detractors) have accepted and even applauded the massacre of Arab populations without ever condemning or sanctioning the perpetrators, this crisis has unleashed passions. With a foolishness and hatred rarely seen in history, Russia has been fought on all fronts, in a low, often thoughtless and totally unnecessary manner.

The crisis results from the convergence of three types of factors.

1.1. The emotional and cultural level

The first factor is emotional and cultural. It can be summed up by a feeling that is quite widely shared in the West, which some call «Russophobia». In Ukraine, it has been developing since the beginning of the 20th century and is reminiscent of the old fear of «Judeo-Bolshevism» which inspired the ultra-nationalist paramilitary militias. In the West, it feeds on the confusion maintained by many self-proclaimed experts and our media between Russia and the USSR. It explains the sometimes irrational character of sanctions that seem more interested in satisfying old grudges than in achieving a concrete objective, such as the exclusion of Russian cats from cat shows or the embargo on certain typefaces in Russia (!).

It is not unimportant that some current Western political leaders have a family history that seems to prevent them from having the necessary hindsight to manage in a calm manner. This is the case of Chrystia Freeland, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen1, President of the European Commission, Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor, Anthony Blinken, US Secretary of State or Victoria Nuland, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs2. All of them - for totally different reasons - have a partisan view of Russia that illustrates and explains our temptation to treat this conflict differently from all other previous conflicts.

In a way, the very passionate and irrational dimension that the conflict has taken in the West could be explained - at least in part - by the revenge of grandchildren for their grandparents. Largely of Generation X, European politicians do not seem to have the intellectual maturity to deal with complex issues3. As a result, they tend to deal with issues that are too demanding for their limited intelligence with their guts. Their political action is guided more by emotion and ideology than by reflection. In contrast, more experienced personalities such as Henry Kissinger4, Oskar Lafontaine and Jürgen Habermas encourage - alas in vain - current leaders to take a step back5.

1.2.The strategic level

1.2.1.The Russian perspective

Victims of several invasion attempts in two centuries (1812, 1918-1922 and 1941-1945, not to mention the 1917 Revolution, instigated by Germany), the Russians have retained a deep distrust of Westerners, whose unfortunate tendency to start wars is no longer in evidence. June 1941 is still very much in the memory, and the Russians do not want to experience such a situation again.

The Russian perception of their environment has two dimensions that the West tends to amalgamate, in order to support a narrative more favourable to Ukraine.

The first is the strategic dimension, which we will see below, and which is Russia’s permanent quest to be surrounded by a neutral and non-hostile zone. This is why, even during the Cold War, the USSR was content to have neutral Finland on its northern border and Romania (which was not part of the Warsaw Treaty, and where there was no Soviet military presence). Similarly, it maintained cordial relations with Iran, as the Shah’s policy - although close to the US - was to maintain equidistance with both superpowers. Like the USSR, Russia does not need to be surrounded by a ‘zone of influence’ but by a ‘zone free of influence’. That is why it did not see NATO’s eastward expansion as hostile. It was only after the US withdrawal from nuclear disarmament treaties and the installation of missiles in the former Eastern Bloc countries that Russia perceived a danger in the early 2000s.

The second dimension is more cultural and emotional. The break-up of the USSR left Russian minorities, established for several generations in now independent countries, but whose populations were hostile to Russians. The countries of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have nationalisms that have never really been able to express themselves since the beginning of the 20th century, and this probably explains resentment and absolutist behaviour towards their ethnic minorities today. The result has been a sense of responsibility for Russia - and for the Russian people in particular - for these ‘abandoned’ communities. This is also reflected in Vladimir Putin’s sense that ‘the collapse of communism was the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century’: he does not regret the system (his policies are the opposite), but the consequences of this collapse on the Russian population.

This dimension is essential for understanding relations between Russia and its neighbours since 1990. It is what has determined Russia’s commitment to the implementation of the Minsk Agreements since 2015. It also explains why Vladimir Putin maintains - and even increases - his popularity in Russia, despite the effect of sanctions.

It should also be remembered that even Alexei Navalny, who is seen by some in the West as Vladimir Putin’s main opponent, has said that if he were in power he would not return Crimea to Ukraine6. This is what the West does not want to understand and has not understood, which is why they thought that imposing sanctions on Russia would cause the «regime» to collapse.

1.2.2.The American perspective

Despite the end of the Cold War, the US has not given up on weakening Russia. Taking advantage of Russia’s structural weakness and a still developing China, the United States has enjoyed an advantage that has allowed it to impose itself on the international scene. This strategy began with a gradual withdrawal from the arms control agreements signed during the Cold War: the ABM Treaty (2002), the Open Skies Treaty (2018) and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (2019).

In order to maintain its dominant position, the US seeks to isolate Russia. No conspiracy here!This strategy is spelled out in two documents prepared in 20197 by the RAND Corporation8. They describe exactly the situation we see today: a form of ‘strategic mobbing’ aimed at alienating Russia from the international community and causing its collapse. It is a similar strategy that the United States is applying to China, which explains China’s resistance to following the West in condemning Russia.

This strategy also includes the fragmentation of Russia and the physical destruction of the Russian state by causing it to break up. The idea is not new and was revived by the US State Department, which organised a conference on the issue in June 2022, in the framework of the Helsinki Commission. This is a far cry from what the media call Vladimir Putin’s «paranoia».

As Robert Wade of the London School of Economics notes, the US has long been looking for a way to provoke a Russian attack on Ukraine9. He thus confirms what Oleksei Arestovich said in March 2019, as we shall see. But implementation is more a matter of belief and fantasy than strategy. The West, led by the Americans, has an image of a weak Russia, incapable of mobilising forces for a crisis. Their «strategy» is based on what the Anglo-Saxons call «wishful thinking». It is therefore often out of step with the reality of the facts, and requires an adjustment of the discourse:

- In March, the first stated objective was regime change10, using sanctions to cause the collapse of the Russian economy. The narrative was that Ukraine was holding up better than the Russians had expected, and their defeat was predicted; the rouble collapsed and the economy with it; anti-war protests grew in Russia. Joe Biden even talks about the fact that Putin «should not stay in power»11.

- By the end of April, the US objective is to weaken Russia so that it is no longer able to restore its capabilities12. The strategy is to «isolate Russia from the rich democracies13 «.

- In June, seeing that previous strategies had not worked, US objectives were reduced to providing arms to Ukraine to consolidate its position in negotiations14.

Thus, in less than three months, the objective of a regime overthrow in Moscow associated with a victory for Ukraine is replaced by the search for a firmer negotiating position. The Europeans are content to follow. In short, starting from false premises, the action of the West goes from failure to failure, demonstrating that they have no real strategy and no coherence in action.

1.3.The operative level

NATO expansion is of course essential to understanding Russia’s position, but it is not the cause of its intervention in February 2022. On this point, the Russians have always favoured a political resolution. It is likely that, without the conditions that led to the 24 February offensive, the problem would have been resolved around a negotiating table.

In a video filmed on 18 March 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky’s advisor Oleksei Arestovich cynically explains that conditions had to be created to force Russia to attack Ukraine15. This confession illustrates the perfidy of the West towards Ukraine because, as Volodymyr Zelensky notes in an interview on CNN16, his country has been instrumentalised to satisfy the US objectives set out in 2019.

However, to understand this operative level, it is necessary to look back at the events of 2014 and contextualise them.

11.Peter Kuras, ‘The Aristocratic Ineptitude of Ursula Von Der Leyen’, Foreign Policy, 30 April 2021

2.»Yiddish and the Ukrainian-Jewish roots of the new U.S. Secretary of State», Ukrainian Jewish Encounter, 30 November 2020

3.Rachel Elbaum, «European Shift: Generation of Young Leaders Sweeps To Power Across Continent», NBC News, 17 October 2017 (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/european-shift-generation-young-leaders-sweeps-power-across-continent-n811351)

4.Timothy Bella, «Kissinger says Ukraine should cede territory to Russia to end war», The Washington Post, 24 May 2022 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/24/henry-kissinger-ukraine-russia-territory-davos/)

5.Philip Oltermann, «German thinkers’ war of words over Ukraine exposes generational divide», The Guardian, 6 May 2022 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/06/german-thinkers-war-of-words-over-ukraine-exposes-generational-divide)

6.Anna Dolgov, «Navalny Wouldn’t Return Crimea, Considers Immigration Bigger Issue Than Ukraine», The Moscow Times, 16 October 2014 (https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/10/16/navalny-wouldnt-return-crimea-considers-immigration-bigger-issue-than-ukraine-a40477)

7. James Dobbins, Raphael S. Cohen, Nathan Chandler, Bryan Frederick, Edward Geist, Paul DeLuca, Forrest E. Morgan, Howard J. Shatz, Brent Williams, ‘Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground’, RAND Corporation, 2019; James Dobbins & others, ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia’, RAND Corporation, (Doc Nr RB-10014-A), 2019

8.The RAND Corporation is a think tank created in 1948 by the Pentagon to advise the US government on strategic issues.

9.Robert H. Wade, «Why the US and Nato have long wanted Russia to attack Ukraine», London School of Economics, 30 March 2022 (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2022/03/30/why-the-us-and-nato-have-long-wanted-russia-to-attack-ukraine/)

10.Sam Blewett, ‘Joe Biden calls for regime change in Moscow as he likens invasion to WW2 horrors’, The Independent, 26 March 2022 (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/joe-biden-vladimir-putin-ukraine-moscow-warsaw-b2044743.html)

11.Ashley Parker, Tyler Pager & Marianna Sotomayor, «Biden at war: Inside a deliberate yet impulsive Ukraine strategy», The Washington Post, 7 April 2022, (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/07/biden-war-ukraine/)

12.Sarakshi Rai, «Pentagon chief says US wants to see Russia ‘weakened’», The Hill, 25 April 2022 (https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3462190-pentagon-chief-
says-us-wants-to-see-russia-weakened/)

13.Olivier Knox, «The U.S. has a big new goal in Ukraine: Weaken Russia», The Washington Post, 26 April 2022 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/26/us-has-big-new-goal-ukraine-weaken-russia/)

14.Anastassia Fedyk, «Op-Ed: Why more weapons will help Ukraine and Russia negotiate a lasting truce», Los Angeles Times, 12 June 2022 (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-06-12/ukraine-russia-war-negotiations-peace-strategy)

15.»Predicted Russian - Ukrainian war in 2019 - Alexey Arestovich», YouTube,
18 March 2022 (https://youtu.be/1xNHmHpERH8)

16.Chandelis Duster, «Zelensky: ‘If we were a NATO member, a war wouldn’t have started’», cnn.com, 20 March 2022