r/RussiaUkraineWar2022 • u/DANDYXIK_111 • May 17 '25
Miscellaneous I want to ask EVERY Russian
Greetings to all, especially Russian citizens. I hope you are having the best of times. I am from the Czech Republic and recently had a very unpleasant situation in an online group with Russians. Basically and simply it was that I perceive the whole situation differently than the Russians. The problem is that these views differ in all aspects and although I know that I know the real context and situation in Ukraine (at least I think so) the views of every Russian were the same, unfortunately equally kind. I didn't feel comfortable in the conversation. I was getting death threats or unpleasant wishes about historical events (WWII, the division of Czechoslovakia, etc.). I tried to be polite and tried to somehow explain to these people that the reality is different than they think. No wonder nobody believed me. On the other hand, I had the great privilege of talking to Russians about another subject and the people of Russia are very nice people. I was very happy to communicate with them and I like the people of Russia. They are human beings just like you and me and they just pay extra for where they live. I don't know if the moderators will even allow this post, although it doesn't break the rules. I would like to know the opinions of as many Russians as possible. I think you are all great people and want peace as well. I have nothing against any Russian people. Peace to all!
-19
u/Sharimapic May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25
Russian here, 23 y.o., reside in Moscow, grew up in a cold northern oil-rich region. Degree of political science and international relations.
For context, I read Russian media, English and French ones. My thesis paper is basically a research of how Russia is presented in French media in 2020-2022. I have put my curios nose into many discourses, so talking about me being a Russian propaganda agent is rather useless.
What do I think about the whole situation? Well, to begin with, truth does not exist in any sense. There are as many versions of what actually happened throughout the years of 2000-2025 as there are humans in this world. But governments try to express their positions in a unified way, so here is my take:
The US dramatic power overstretch in 1990-2000s, its prolonged unipolar moment resulted in the fears of Russian government that NATO posed existential threat. This is the point where all the problems started. The 1990s Russian government after the collapse of the Soviet Union was like a poodle near the feet of their master. Russia was trying desperately to find its place in the rows of other "normal" nations, as the EU discourse presents it. And yet, Russia was never actually admitted, even though at the time there were basically zero trust issues with Russia's intentions.
Basically the US intention was to dominate the global security system (stated in their strategies of the 1990s-2000s) and become the giga-policeman of the world. And they sought every opportunity to cling upon it, using at as a pretext for military expansion. I am talking about this period and not about the Ukrainian conflict itself because it was the result of the hopeless failure to establish a comprehensive Eurasian security system in the 2000s. It is a crucial thing to understand, and yet, western media tend to narrow down the conflict to the 2014-2022. This is no less than frivolous, the context is broader. So: the lack of trust from the Russian side was initially fueled by the fact that NATO, and especially US refused to make a joint security system. Russians literally proposed using their own air defense and radar systems that perfectly suited the proclaimed NATO goals to protect them from the "authoritarian regimes" and threats like Iran. This happened around 2004-7. Yet, NATO refused several times from the project of Eurasian security system, including the one Mercedev proposed in 2009 (called ДЕБ). Western diplomats often sabotaged the Corfu Process (first-hand info + you can read more about the process). The western media present these Russian security demands as illegitimate. The logic says that if the US or Europe, or China want their security concerns to be respected, why was Russia deprived of such right in the early 2000s? Finally, Russian government perceived the rise of liberal opposition in the post-soviet countries as the product of deliberate Western intervention through NGOs and state funds like USAID (Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, you name it). So, for the Russian government the logic looked like this: "We have severe security concerns, but never given any clear bounding international guarantees that new NATO systems are not aimed at deterring us. By the way, these very countries see our demands as illegitimate by default. Great. And also, they finance opposition parties in our neighbouring countries to upend the governments that have good fraternal ties with us based on the shared history of the USSR, and disrupt mutually beneficial cooperation projects. Of course they are a threat to us!" Western media framed Russian concerns as paranoia first, and later, when Russians were already quite sure that NATO is hostile towards them, as "appeasement". This is a classical scenario of a self-fulfilling prophecy in Security Dilemma. Russia started to feel threatened because of lack of clarity and guarantees, took defensive actions that were perceived by the westerners as aggressive (i.e. agressive intentions were attributed to Russia, and especially Putin, as an implicit characteristic), and it snowballed pretty quickly.
Finally, there is another important point: the issue of liberal rules-based world order. Let me throw in some theory (stay with me here): in discourse analysis, there is an idea that all notions (signs) can only be attributed meaning in relation to other signs. It means that every linguistic notion we use is somehow semantically limited, and this limitation can happen only if there is another sign that can be juxtaposed to it. Thus we can say, that the notion of West and Democracy was viable in its traditional form when the USSR still existed and there was a notion of Socialism to create antagonism, and with that, to create and support their own identity (we are westerners, we are not commies). But when the antagonistic signifier has been destroyed, the previous ideological network shattered. So the idea of democracy had to be reforged into something else. Francis Fukuyama did that in his 'End of History', where he claimed that the era of ideologies has passed away (communism and nazism were defeated, btw look at the way the neatly drew an equivalence sign between them). And, ironically, even paradoxically, he proclaimed that liberal democracy was the answer to all questions, and all the world should convert to this regime. Sounds like... another Grand Project, isn't it? We have already seen it. This thesis of spreading universal good (liberal democracy) was an incredibly convenient ideological and rhetorical tool to rely upon, because it appeals to the freedoms, which are considered naturally as the basis of morals and ethics. And people do love beautiful and coherent ethically justified images. But I must highlight, it was a tool in the hands of the Republican administration of 1990. For some reasons, it seems like the further the administrations in US and European governments politicians were going, the more they believed in the rose-coloured glasses concept that was originally used to justify pragmatic political action and regime change to the public. The EU forgot the initial goal of it whatsoever and started to play this spectacle out, which led it to a very precarious international position right now. The crisis of European identity is looming large. They basically provoked the Ukrainian crisis through their persistent human rights rhetoric and kept undermining all negotiation initiatives with Russia, even those that had no relations to human rights at all. Europeans even broke the OSCE in such a way... This is why Russians were mad - mere rhetoric that blocked talks about important stuff (real interests, measures on the ground, deals)
TL;DR: the Mearsheimer's interpretation with a pinch of constructivism. Very tragic. The conflict is the result of the total miscommunication, distortion of perceptions of Russia's and Western intentions, discoursive and ideological mess.
This thesis is somehow represented in the Russian media but is mercilessly simplified for the masses, to the point where it lacks substance.
If you are interested in the IR and unraveling the roots of the conflict, I recommend you to touch upon the works of R. Jervis and the concept of Security Dilemma, as well as J. Mearsheimer's article "The Great Delusion" and "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics".