Running Away from Russia and Russification: An Unintended Consequence of Putin's Vicious Revanchist War in Ukraine

A protest outside of parliament in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Symbol of a new world order, with the flags of the country of Georgia, Ukraine, and NATO united?

"Ukraine Can Win," The Atlantic Monthly, July 2022,
by Richard D. Hooker, Jr. Ukraine can win - Atlantic Council
 "It is far better to confront the threat now while Russia is reeling from high casualties, depleted stocks of high-tech munitions, low morale, severe losses among senior commanders, and inferior generalship."

Putin's war in Ukraine is having a ripple effect on all the former Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) and countries in Eastern and Central Europe that were once in Russia's orbit. It's a fascinating development, an unintended consequence of the war Putin started to exterminate Ukraine. Russian aggression is exposing its revanchism and weaknesses and, in the process, creating an evolving new world order that is shrinking Russian influence forever. 

The bottom line: Former SSRs (shown and listed on the above Wikipedia map), as well as countries once in Russia's orbit, do not want anything to do with Russia. Putin's war has assured that. 

 What country can look at what Putin is doing in Ukraine and not   think the same thing could happen to them? 

They know what it's like. They know from experience the criminal excesses, the violence, the relentless Russification designed to propagandize their citizens and liquidate their histories and culture.

And today, right now, look at the places Russia is occupying in the Donbas, in Bakhmut, Mariupol, the village I served with the Peace Corps. Look at the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, where workers describe beatings, torture and looting. Look at Crimea, once-beautiful, diverse, peaceful, now Stalinized, militarized and terrorized.

Everything Russia touches turns into Soviet-style gulags and reigns of terror. Wastelands. Everything. Putin's unjust, vindictive, vicious war proves it. The world is seeing it.

This is why more former SSRs and Eastern and Central European countries are lining up to join NATO. 

Why, for example, did Finland join NATO? 

"We reacted to Russia, actually," Kai Sauer, Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs, told CBS News. "It was a reaction to an action by Russia, and the action was Russia's aggression on Ukraine."  

Same reason the three Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, are members of NATO. They fear Russia will attack them next. They see what's happening in Moldova and Georgia, where Russia is working to destabilize those countries like it did in Crimea. Same playbook. It's why they are sending arms, too. Latvia is sending all of its Patriot air defense  systems. In fact, Poland, Slovakia and Romania, most all the neighboring states of Ukraine, are sending all the help they can. 

These fiercely independent nations understand all too well the risk a Russian victory poses, and they fear the consequences that the loss of Ukraine would have on their security, in their own countries and across the world. 

Protest against Lukashenko in Belarus

So Putin's war is having the direct opposite results he intended, exposing how backward his thinking, how old and worn his perspective, how out of touch he is with ever-changing modern international relations. 

Russia is now a pariah state. Who wants to join Putin's revanchist bandwagon? They want to look ahead. The Belarus government is an exception, but its people are soundly against the war. Does Belarus really want to be a vassal state of Russia? 

Same with countries once fully aligned with the Soviet Union. Bulgaria is an example. Bulgaria’s foreign minister Nikolay Milkov, echoing Finland's Kia Sauer, told the Kyiv Independent that the Russian invasion of Ukraine "has accelerated his country’s efforts to eliminate Russia’s influence." Bulgaria is struggling to find its footing in the post-Soviet world. It's not easy. So are countries like Georgia, still fighting Russia's hybrid war, still fighting to rid itself of Russian influence. Even the Central Asian states are starting to pull away, especially among the younger generations. 

Protestors wave the Ukrainian, Georgian, and European Union flags outside Georgia's parliament in Tbilisi on March 8, 2023, amid a demonstration against the Georgian government's plan to introduce a "foreign agent" law reminiscent of Russian legislation used to silence critics. (Photo by VANO SHLAMOV/AFP via Getty Images)

Putin's war is birthing a whole new order. It will be his downfall. It will be Russia's loss. Zelenskyy has warned him: Get out now or be destroyed. He means it. Putin's deliberately destroyed Ukraine village by village, city by city. Reduced them to ashes. Annihilated them. War crimes upon war crimes against the people, infrastructure and landscape of Ukraine. It's given Ukraine a whole new goal, a new mission: To take back its territory in the East, in the South, and in Crimea. To get Russia out. Putin's loss will be his humiliation and his end. Ukraine can win.

Sources/Notes: 

1. How Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ruined Russia | Journal of Democracy. by Kathryn Stoner, July 2022. Excellent article.

2. ‘I Cry Quietly’: A Soldier Describes the Toll of Russia’s War - The New York Times (nytimes.com). The saddest video, the saddest war, the death and dying.

3.  Russia’s Assault on Daily Life in Ukraine - bellingcat. See Bellingcat's TimeMap of harm done to civilians at bustops, train stations, schools, hospitals, and places that Ukrainians use as part of daily life. The map documents verified war crimes upon war crimes. 

4.  Batu Kutelia: Lessons from Georgia of geopolitical procrastination (kyivindependent.com)

5.  Finland doubling NATO's border with Russia in blow to Putin (yahoo.com)

6.  goog_779994558Why you should care about Belarus (yahoo.com)

Protest in Minsk against 2020 election results.
Lukashenko despised. He's reduced his country into a RU minion 
rather than build the modern state ordinary Belarusans desire.

7. ‘They’ll kill me if I come back’: Abduction, torture become routine in Russian-occupied Melitopol (yahoo.com).  This experience is true everywhere Russia occupies.  

8.  Nuclear workers describe beatings, detention, and looting by Russian soldiers to force them to keep a Ukrainian power plant running (yahoo.com).  

9.  Ukraine war latest: Defense Ministry says 'complex measures’ of counteroffensive ‘underway’ in the east (kyivindependent.com).  

10. What does membership mean for NATO newcomer Finland? (yahoo.com)

11. ‘I was naive about Russia’: Central Asians on the Ukraine war | Russia-Ukraine war News | Al Jazeera. Article by Mansur Mirovalev, 17 February 2023.  Views are changing. Younger people no longer support Russia. China is supporting these nations to reduce Russian influence, another developing story. “The younger those polled are, the worse is their attitude towards Russia” because they have access to independent and diverse online media, he told Al Jazeera./ Another sobering factor is regular threats from Russian political figures to annex northern Kazakh regions that have a sizeable ethnic Russian minority./And that is where Beijing, whose economic clout in Kazakhstan has already surpassed that of Moscow, stepped in./In September, during a visit to Astana, the Kazakh capital, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to protect Kazakhstan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty."

12.  Wikipedia. 

According to the United Nations definition, countries within Eastern Europe are Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and the western part of the Russian Federation (see: European Russia map).

In most definitions, the countries of Central Europe are Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary.In some definitions, Switzerland and Croatia would also belong to Central Europe, as well as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia and Albania. All these countries are in the Central European Time zone (CET = UTC + 1 hour).

The Central Asia region (CA) comprises the countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It is a diverse region with a mix of upper middle and low income countries with major strategic importance due to their geographic location and natural resource endowments. They are all former Soviet Socialist Republics, still pro-RU but all in the process of change.