For the past year Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been engaged in a long provoked war which never should have been waged.  The war would not have taken place if the West had listened to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his successors who warned that post-Soviet Moscow would not accept NATO expansion to Russia’s borders by granting membership to Ukraine. Instead, the US, its allies and the alliance pressed Ukraine to join NATO, thereby violating assurances given to Russia in 1989-90 and thereafter.

For Russia, NATO membership for Urkaine was, and is, a casus belli because Russia regards Ukraine as its famillial, historical and cultural sibling as well as a protector of the Holy Russian Motherland.

If Russia were to form a North American military alliance with Mexico and Central American states, shift weaponry into their territory, and seek to recruit Canada the US would go to war against Ottawa to prevent Canada from joining this bloc. This scenario would not, however, have the historical, emotional and political charge felt by Russia and Russians over Ukraine’s desertion to NATO.

Putin, 70, belongs to the last generation of Soviet leaders. He was born in Leningrad, St. Petersburg in 1952, the third and only surviving child of his factory worker mother and sailor father who was reassigned to the army and was severely wounded during World War II. Putin’s brothers, Albert died in infancy and Viktor expired at two from diphtheria and starvation in 1942 during Nazi Germany’s 872-day genocidal siege of Leningrad.

The city of his birth and its circumstances have determined Putin’s life, career and attitude to the West. Founded in 1703 by the Tsar Peter the Great and named St. Petersburg for the Christian Saint Peter, the city became the political and cultural capital of the vast Russian empire from 1713-1918 when the last tsar was overthrown by the revolution. The city was renamed Leningrad in 1924 and reverted to St. Petersburg in 1991 after the Soviet Union’s fall.  

According to historians the siege inflicted the greatest destruction and largest number of fatalities ever in a modern city. Entire neighbourhoods were ravaged, museums looted, monuments damaged or destroyed. Out of 2.6 million inhabitants only 600,000 weakened, ill people survived. The city did not recover until the 1960s when Putin was a boy.

He studied law at university, joined Soviet intelligence (KGB) and trained in Leningrad. He served in East Germany until the collapse of the Communist regime, and returned to Leningrad where he served in the city’s administration. In 1996, Putin moved to Moscow to work for President Boris Yeltsin and, in 1999, was his choice for prime minister, launching a political career in this post and the increasingly autocratic presidency. A corrupt grouping of oligarchs has benefited from association with him.

Putin miscalculated when he invaded Ukraine. He dismissed Ukraine’s efforts to upgrade its military and thought Russia’s ramshackle army would prevail in a matter of weeks. Having witnessed US President Joe Biden’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s mishandling of covid, and NATO’S disarray, Putin did not anticipate serious opposition from the West. He did not take seriously Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelinsky.

Zelensky, 45, born into an educated middle class Jewish family while Ukraine was still a part of the Soviet Union. His father is a professor and computer scientist while his mother trained as an engineer. His grandfather — whose father and brothers were killed in the Holocaust — served in the infantry and reached the rank of colonel in the Red Army during World War II. Zelensky grew up speaking Russian. At 16 he passed the English language test and was offered a scholarship to study in Israel but his father forbad this.

Zelensky studied law but became involved with television where he founded his own team and made feature films. He starred in the television series, “Servant of the People,” acting the role of a president of Ukraine who campaigned against the country’s all-pervasive corruption. In March 2018, his company registered Servant of the People as a new political party. He campaigned heavily on social media, pledging an anti-corruption drive and peace with Russia when there was fighting over the ethnic-Russian majority Donbas region and strategic Crimea. Crimea had been ceded to Ukraine by Soviet President Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 but reclaimed by Putin.

Zelensky won the April 2019 presidential election with 73 per cent of the vote but he struggled to get his reformist policies adopted and retained corrupt figures in his administration. In 2021, the Panama Papers revealed that Zelensky and a partner owned a network offshore firms registered in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize and expensive properties in London. Zelensky’s efforts to resolve the dispute over the separatist Donbas region ended in failure although violence decreased.

In April 2021, following a Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s border, Zelensky urged Biden and NATO to speed up Ukraine’s application for alliance membership instead of saying “no” to NATO. This led to the Russian deployment of 100,000 troops in November and December. While Biden warned repeatedly that Russia intended an “imminent” invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky called on the West to refrain from creating panic in Ukraine and harming the economy. But he did not renounce Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership which might have avoided the invasion.

Zelensky miscalculated because he simply refused to understand Putin and take into consideration his background in gutted Leningrad/historic St. Petersburg. Zelensky also did not tackle Ukraine’s armed neo-Nazi militias which gave Putin Leningrad nightmares and caused him to argue they must be eliminated as they shelled the Donbas and opposed any peace deal with Russia.

Since Russia’s invasion, Zelensky has become the global voice of democratic Ukraine defending itself and Europe from autocratic Russia. He has bet on the lingering antagonism toward the Soviet Union of former Eastern bloc countries and Western politicians, particularly 80-year-old Biden. Zelensky has used his acting skills to secure billions of dollars in Western military and financial aid to defend Ukraine. He says he intends to “win” the war and refuses any compromise with Russia which will not cede Crimea or the eastern Donbas.

Ukraine has already lost the war. Out of a population of 43.7 million, 8 million Ukrainians are refugees in Europe and 5.4 million are displaced within the country. At least 7,200 civilians have been killed and 11,756 have been injured. Russia currently controls about 18 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, a little more than Russia held before the invasion. Urban areas, manufacturing sector and infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged. Ukraine will need billions to rebuild and recover but may find that countries ready to fund the war may not be eager to fund reconstruction.  

Photo: AP