The insouciance with which luminaries of the diplomatic and academic world advocate the dismemberment of Ukraine (“Seize peace in Ukraine before it’s too late”, Letters, July 10) is astonishing. What is particularly disturbing is the assumption that Vladimir Putin’s aims are limited to the territory currently under occupation.
There is no recognition of the extent of Russia’s imperial ambitions in regard to Ukraine or even that Russia is an imperial power at all.
Putin’s own words, and those of the proxies he uses to express his aims more crudely, are ample evidence that it is the existence of Ukraine itself that he rejects. Putin’s war to destroy Ukraine is not an aberration, but is the latest iteration of a long-standing policy of denying Ukraine’s existence.
Catherine the Great’s destruction of the Cossack Hetmanate (the first Ukrainian state of the modern era) in the 18th century, the imperial regime’s repression of the Ukrainian language, literature and national movement in the 19th century, and Stalin’s genocidal policy towards Ukraine in the 1930s provide a genealogy for Putin’s war.
These attitudes to Ukraine continued in post-Soviet Russia.
The ink was barely dry on the Belovezh Accords of 1991 (which established Ukraine, Russia and Belarus as independent countries) before Boris Yeltsin started to raise the issue of Ukraine’s borders.
There is no evidence to suggest that a peace based on the surrender of territory would change Putin and Russia’s fundamental goals in Ukraine or in Europe for that matter.
Ignoring Russia’s imperial ambitions does not mean they do not exist.
Shane O’Rourke
Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of York, North Yorkshire, UK
