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Putin’s Wars
 Putin’s Wars
The Rise of
Russia’s New Imperialism

Third Edition

Marcel H. Van Herpen

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
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4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
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Copyright © 2024 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

First edition 2014. Second edition 2015.

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systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Herpen, Marcel H. van, 1945– author.
Title: Putin’s wars : the rise of Russia’s new imperialism / Marcel H. Van Herpen.
Description: Third edition. | Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, [2024] | “First
edition 2014”—t.p. verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023044378 (print) | LCCN 2023044379 (ebook) | ISBN
9781538183861 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781538183878 (paperback :
acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781538183885 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Russia (Federation)—Relations—Foreign countries. | Russia
(Federation)—Relations—Russia (Federation)—Chechnia. | Chechnia (Russia)—
Relations—Russia (Federation) | Chechnia (Russia)—History—Civil War, 1994– |
South Ossetia War, 2008. | Ukraine Conflict, 2014- | Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich,
1952– —Military leadership. | Imperialism—History—21st century. | War crimes—
History—21st century. | Genocide—History—21st century.
Classification: LCC DK510.764 .H47 2024 (print) | LCC DK510.764 (ebook) | DDC
327.47—dc23/eng/20231107
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044378
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044379

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
To Valérie, Michiel, and Cyrille
 Contents

Author Note and Acknowledgments xiii

Glossary and Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
Russia: A Post-Imperium? 2
Structure of the Book 5

PART I: DESPOTISM AND THE QUEST FOR EMPIRE

1 Despotism and the Quest for Empire 11
Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Diderot: Early Critics of Russian
Despotism 11
How Lost Wars Led to Short-Lived Reforms 13
The High Expectations of 1989 14
The Four Roots of Russian Imperialism 15
Russian Despotism and Russian Imperialism: Inseparable
Twin Brothers? 17
2 Comparing Western and Russian Legitimation Theories for Empire 27
Imperialist Legitimation Theories: Christianity, a Superior
Civilization, and the White Man’s Burden 27
Social Darwinism: The Primacy of Naked Power 30
Three Russian Legitimation Theories for Imperial Expansion:
Orthodoxy, Pan Slavism, and Communism 32
The Symbiosis of Church and State 33
A New Legitimation Theory: Pan Slavism 34
From Pan Slavism to Racism: Pogroms and Anti-Semitism 36
How the Russian Revolution Forged a New Legitimation
Theory for Imperialist Expansion 40

vii
viii Contents

3 Putin and the End of Russian “Empire Fatigue” 47

Empire Fatigue: A Chance of Becoming a “Normal State”? 48
Handling Post-Imperial Pain 49
Two Reactions to the Loss of Empire: To Accept or
Not to Accept 50
Pitirim Sorokin and the Eternal Cycle of Ideologies
in Revolutions 51
The Use of Nationalist Propaganda by the Leadership 53
In Search of a New Legitimation Theory for a
Post-Soviet Empire 56
A New Ideological Triad: Orthodoxy, the Power Vertical,
Sovereign Democracy 57
4 Putin’s Grand Design 61
Back to the USSR? From Commonwealth to the Russia-Belarus
Union State 62
A Politically Inspired Customs Union 66
The CSTO: A Mini-Warsaw Pact? 68
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: A Double-Edged
Sword? 69
BRIC, BIC, BRICS, or BRIICS? 70
5 The Eurasian Union: Putin’s Newest Imperial Project 75
Precursors of the Eurasian Project: Igor Panarin and Aleksandr
Dugin 75
Fear of Loss of Sovereignty 77
Eurasian Union versus European Union 78
The Ultimate Goal: The Creation of a “Big Country” 80
Expansionism Even beyond Former Soviet Frontiers? 81
The Eurasian Union as the Ultimate Integration Effort 82
Bringing Ukraine Back into the Russian Orbit 84

PART II: THE “INTERNAL WAR”: CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

6 Russia as a “Pluralist” One-Party State 91
A One-Party State with Four Parties? 91
East German Communist “Pluralism”: A Model for Putin? 92
The Use of Fake Political Parties 93
Unequalled Election Fraud 95
Mikhail Prokhorov’s Revolt against the Kremlin “Puppeteers” 97
Another Pseudo-Pluralism: The Diarchy at the Top 101
 Contents ix

7  reaching the Ultranationalist Gospel: The Transformation of

P
“United Russia” 105
The Ultranationalism and Revisionism of the Communist Party 105
“Unkulturaufstieg”: The Spread of Ultranationalist Ideas 107
Putin’s “State of the Union”: Touting Patriotism 108
Putin’s “Russian Idea”: State, State, and More State 110
National Rebirth and Consensus Building 112
United Russia’s Electoral Success: A CPSU Effect? 113
The Bear Wants to Fly: How United Russia Got Different
Party Wings 115
United Russia’s New Ultranationalist Course 116
Russia’s Frontiers “Are Not Eternal” 117
Russia’s Rebirth 118
8 The Nashi: Fascist Blackshirts or a New Komsomol? 123
“Walking Together”: Skinheads to Defend the Kremlin’s
Message 123
Founding the Nashi: A Kremlin Initiative 125
“Patriotic Training” in Nashi Summer Camps 127
The Nashi Manifesto and “Megaproject Russia” 128
Harassing Diplomats and Internal Foes 129
Cyber Attacks 130
Preparing for More Muscled Actions: The Nashi Battle Groups 131
Orthodox Battle Groups? 133
A Historical Precedent: Khrushchev’s Druzhiny 134
The Nashi: Komsomol, Red Guards, or Hitlerjugend? 135
9 Send in the Cossacks 143
The Rehabilitation of the Cossacks 144
Touting “Cossack Values” 145
The Role of the Cossacks in Post-Soviet Local Wars 146
Cossacks Patrolling the Streets 147
A New Praetorian Guard? 148
A Cossack Political Party 149

PART III: THE WHEELS OF WAR

10 Three Lost Wars: From Afghanistan to the First Chechen War 155
The Cold War: Containment versus Expansionism 155
The War in Afghanistan: Andropov’s War? 156
The First Chechen War: Four Differences with Former Wars 160
The First Chechen War: Yeltsin’s War 161
x Contents

Chechnya: Russia’s Whipping Boy 163

A Genocide? 165
11  he Mysterious Apartment Bombings: Detonator of the Second
T
Chechen War 171
The Detonator: A Secret War against the Russian Population? 172
Panic in the Family 173
A Real or Constructed Casus Belli? The Alleged Chechen
Attack on Dagestan 175
Storm in Moscow 176
A Strange “Exercise” by the FSB 177
Foresight or Leaked Information? 177
The Duma Investigation Commission 180
Yeltsin on the Apartment Bombings 182
12 The Second Chechen War: Putin’s War 187
Bombardments: The Massive Slaughter 187
Kontraktniki: The Criminal Volunteers 189
Zachistki: The Purges 191
Filtration Points: Hiding Torture 193
Forced Disappearances and Blowing Up Dead Bodies 193
The Process of Chechenization 195
The War in Chechnya and the European Court of Human
Rights 197
A Genocide? 199
13  he War with Georgia, Part I: A Premeditated Russian
T
Aggression 205
A Five-Day War? 205
The Russian-Georgian Cold War: The Passport Offensive 207
The Lukewarm War: Russian Provocations and Preparations
for War 210
The Hot War: August 7–12, 2008 214
14  he War with Georgia, Part II: Six Events Announcing the
T
Kremlin’s Preparation for War 219
A Slow-Motion Annexation? 222
The Central Question: Did Russian Troops Enter South
Ossetia before the War? 223
15 The War with Georgia, Part III: The Propaganda War 227
Russia Accuses Georgia of Genocide 227
Ethnic Cleansing and Cluster Bombs 228
 Contents xi

Does a Lie Told Often Enough Become a Truth?

The Victim as Aggressor 230
The Real Reasons for Moscow’s Land Grab 233
16 Origins of the War in Ukraine 239
The Kremlin’s Obsession with Ukraine 239
Postmodern Europe: The Hubris of a Weak Continent 244
Political Mistakes by Leading European Politicians 246
Barack Obama’s Ill-Conceived Russia Policy 250
Consequences of the Ukrainian Crisis for Poland and
Other New NATO Member States 256
17 Russia’s “Hybrid War” in Ukraine: Five Scenarios 265
Putin’s Strategic Goals 266
Putin’s “Hybrid War” 270
What Will Happen Next? Five Scenarios 272
Putin’s Strategy: A Matryoshka Model? 274
18 2022: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine 281
Why Putin Decided to Invade Ukraine 282
The Failed Russian “Blitzkrieg” 283
The Situation in Russia: Increased Repression and the
Struggle of the Elites 286
The Reaction of the West 288
Sanctions: Did They Work? 289
Military Support Provided by the West 292
The Kremlin’s Nuclear Threats: Bluff or Real Risk? 294
What Did the War Change? Assessing Its Global Impact 297
How Will the War End? Putin’s New Strategy of a Long War 298
The Ukrainian Counteroffensive 299
Bibliography 305
Index 313
About the Author 333
 Author Note and Acknowledgments

English quotes of Russian, French, German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish

works were translated by the author.

In writing this book I owe a lot to the discussions with the members of the
Russia Seminar of the Cicero Foundation. I want to thank Emma Gilligan,
Hall Gardner, Christiane Haroche, Rona Heald, Albert van Driel, Peter
Verwey, and Ernst Wolff, who read chapters of the book and gave useful feed-
back. I want to thank also Susan McEachern, Carolyn Broadwell-Tkach, and
Jehanne Schweitzer, who, with great professionalism, shepherded the book
through the editorial production process. Finally, I want also to thank my
wife, Valérie, who gave me her patient support during the years of research
and writing. I dedicate this book to her and to my two sons, Michiel and
Cyrille, who share their father’s interest in Russian history.

xiii
 Glossary and Abbreviations

ANC African National Congress

ANI Associazione Nazionalista Italiana
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BRIC Acronym of grouping referring to Brazil, Russia,
India, and China
BRICS Acronym of grouping referring to Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and South Africa
BRIICS Acronym of grouping referring to Brazil, Russia,
India, Indonesia, China, and South Africa
CaPRF Cossack Party of the Russian Federation
CFE Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty
Cheka All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for
Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage
(Soviet secret service, December 1917–1922)
CIA Central Intelligence Agency (USA)
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
CPRF Communist Party of the Russian Federation
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization
CU Customs Union
DKRR Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic

xv
xvi Glossary and Abbreviations

DMD Dobrovolnye Molodezhnye Druzhiny

(Voluntary Youth Militias)
DPNI Dvizhenie protiv nelegalnoy immigratsii
(“Movement Against Illegal Immigration,”
extreme right organization)
EU European Union
EurAsEc Eurasian Economic Community
FSB Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (Federal
Security Service of the Russian Federation)
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GRU Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie (“Main
Intelligence Directorate,” Russian Military
Foreign Intelligence Agency)
HJ Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth)
IMF International Monetary Fund
ITAR-TASS Russian News Agency
KGB Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
(“Committee for State Security,” secret service
of the Soviet Union)
KOMSOMOL Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodezhi
(“Communist Youth Union,” youth department
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)
KTO kontrterroristicheskie operatsii (counterterrorist
operations)
LDPR Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia
MAP Membership Action Plan (NATO)
MID Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del Rossiyskoy
Federatsii (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the
Russian Federation)
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
(National Socialist German Workers’ Party)
OAS Organisation de l’armée secrète (French far-right
paramilitary organization)
 Glossary and Abbreviations xvii

OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting

Countries
OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe
PACE Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe
PA CSTO Parliamentary Assembly of the CSTO
PARNAS Partiya Narodnoy Svobody (“People’s Freedom
Party”)
PDPA People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(Communist Party of Afghanistan)
RIA NOVOSTI Russian News Agency
ROC Russian Orthodox Church
ROSMOLODEZH Russian Federal Youth Agency
SA Sturm Abteilung (paramilitary organization of
Hitler’s NSDAP)
SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SdP Sudetendeutsche Partei (Sudeten German Party)
SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands
(Communist Party of the German Democratic
Republic)
SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands
(German Social-Democratic Party)
SVR Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (Russian Foreign
Intelligence Service)
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
USA United States of America
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VAD All-Russian Association of Militias
VTsIOM All-Russian Center for the Study of Public
Opinion (official state pollster)
WTO World Trade Organization
 Introduction

In December 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist. The end of the last
European empire came suddenly and unexpectedly, not least for the Russians
themselves. However, with hindsight it seemed to be the logical conclusion
of a chapter in European history. Other European countries had gone down
the same road. Spain had already lost its colonies in the nineteenth century.
France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands had decolonized after World
War II. Even Portugal, a colonialist “laggard” that clung to its possessions in
Africa and Asia until the bitter end, had to give up its empire after the “car-
nation revolution” of 1974. Decolonization—until now—has seemed to be
an irreversible process: once a former colony had obtained its independence,
it was unlikely that the former colonial power could make a comeback. The
history of European decolonization has been, so far, a linear and not a cyclical
process. The chapter of European colonialism seems to be closed definitively,
once and for all. But is it? Does this analysis also apply to Russia? This is
the big question because not only were the conditions under which Russia
built its empire quite different than for the other European countries, but also
because the process of decolonization was different. Let us consider these
differences. There are, at least, five:

• First, Russia did not build its empire overseas, as did the other European
powers. Its empire was contiguous and continental: the new lands it ac-
quired were incorporated in one continuous landmass.
• Second, with shorter communication lines and no need to cross oceans,
rebellions and independence movements in the colonized territories could
be more easily repressed.

1
2 Introduction

• Third, Russian empire building was also different because it did not come
after the process of state-building, as was the case in Western Europe. In
Russia it was an integral part of the process of state-building itself.
• Fourth, Russian empire building was neither casual, nor primarily driven
by commercial interests, as was the case in Western Europe, but from the
start, it had a clear geopolitical function, namely, to safeguard Russia’s
borders against foreign invaders.
• Fifth, in Russian history periods of decolonization were never linear, nor
irreversible. Decolonization was never definitive. When, for instance, after
the Bolshevik Revolution, the colonized lands of the Russian empire were
set free, they were soon afterward reconquered by the Red Army.

It is these five historical characteristics of Russian colonization and de-

colonization that one has to bear in mind when analyzing the behavior of the
Russian leadership. The thesis of this book is that—unlike in Western Europe,
where the process of decolonization was definitive—the same is not neces-
sarily true for Russia. For the Russian state colonizing neighboring territories
and subduing neighboring peoples has been a continuous process. It is, one
could almost say, part of Russia’s genetic makeup. The central question with
which we are confronted after the demise of the Soviet Union is whether this
centuries-old urge to subdue and incorporate neighboring peoples has disap-
peared or if this imperial reflex might be making a comeback.

RUSSIA: A POST-IMPERIUM?

According to some authors, the end of the Soviet Union sounded the death
knell of Russian colonialism and imperialism. One of these authors is Dmitri
Trenin, a Russian analyst and the head of the Moscow bureau of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. In his book, with the telling title Post-
Imperium, he tries to reassure the reader that “Russia has abandoned the age-
old pattern of territorial growth. A merger with Belarus was not pursued as
a priority. Abkhazia and South Ossetia were turned into military buffers, but
only in extremis.”1 In his book Trenin repeats this reassuring mantra again
and again. He writes: “The days of the Russian empire are gone; Russia has
entered a post-imperial world”2; or: “Russia will never again be an empire”3;
and again: “The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that
had lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan is gone. In
the two decades since the collapse, imperial restoration was never considered
seriously by the leaders, nor demanded by a wider public.”4 Trenin gives
several arguments for his thesis. The first of these is the presence in Russia
of an empire fatigue. Russians, he argues, are no longer willing to pay for
 Introduction 3

an empire: “At the top, there was neither money nor strong will for irreden-
tism.”5 Instead of an empire, he continues, Russia has only the desire to be-
come a “great power.” The difference between the two is, in his opinion, that
great powers are selfish. They don’t want to spend money on behalf of other
nations. “Empires,” writes the author, “for all the coercion they necessarily
entail, do produce some public goods, in the name of a special mission. Great
powers can be at least equally brutish and oppressive, but they are essentially
selfish creatures.”
However, the sudden eclipse of Russia’s eternal imperial drive cannot be
explained exclusively by “selfishness.” Trenin gives a second reason, which
is the growing xenophobia in the Russian population. Although xenophobia
may be an ugly, anti-humanist attitude, in Russia’s case, it would have some
positive effects. “What the rise in xenophobia, the upsurge of chauvinism,
and the spread of anti-government violence also tell,” writes the author, “is
that there is no appetite whatsoever for a new edition of empire, only residual
nostalgia for the old days.”6 Like Bernard Mandeville, who in his Fable of the
Bees explained how public benefits could emerge from private vices, Dmitri
Trenin explains how in contemporary Russia private vices, such as xenopho-
bia and egoism, result in a public benefit: the lack of appetite in the Russian
population for the restoration of the lost empire.
However, the problem with Trenin’s analysis is not only that it is too
simple, but also that it contradicts the facts. One of these facts is that dur-
ing Putin’s reign the phase of “empire fatigue” has definitively come to an
end. Under the guise of the “Eurasian Customs Union,” “Eurasian Economic
Union,” and—most recently—“Eurasian Union,” new efforts of empire
building have begun. As concerns xenophobia, presented by Trenin as an
effective antidote against empire building, history shows that xenophobia,
far from eliminating an imperialist drive, often accompanies it. One does not
have to go back to the 1930s to find extremely xenophobic regimes that at the
same time were expansionist and imperialist. A good example of this combi-
nation in contemporary Russia is the leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party
in the Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who, in his book Poslednyy brosok na
yug (Last Push to the South), likens immigrants to Russia from the Caucasus
or Central Asia to “cockroaches” (tarakany) who should be expelled from the
European center of Russia.7 This does not prevent Zhirinovsky from pleading
for a reconquest of both the Soviet and tsarist empires (the latter included
parts of contemporary Poland and Finland). Zhirinovsky even claims Turkey,
Iran, and Afghanistan as exclusive spheres of influence, not excluding that
“Russia gets a frontier with India.”8 Trenin’s argument that the widespread
xenophobia in Russia will prevent Russia from becoming imperialist is
therefore not valid. In fact the contrary is true: ultranationalism and imperial
chauvinism are often most developed in xenophobic and racist countries.
4 Introduction

Ironically, Trenin mentions in his book a number of facts that undermine his
own theory of Russia as a post-imperium. These facts are rather disconcert-
ing. When Trenin mentions how Putin called the demise of the Soviet Union
“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” he writes that
“Putin’s words were interpreted as evidence of an active Kremlin nostalgia
for the recently lost empire, and even as a sign of his intention to bring back
the USSR. This was a misinterpretation.”9 Trenin is certainly right that Putin
did not want to bring back the USSR—because, as he rightly stresses, Putin
“blamed the non-performing communist system for losing the Soviet Union.”
But a Russian empire does not have to be a communist empire, as the tsar-
ist experience proves. Trenin also mentions Putin’s remark at the Bucharest
NATO summit in April 2008 that Ukraine “was not even a state” and “would
break apart.” This was, according to Trenin, neither an expression of Russian
imperial arrogance and contempt, nor a barely disguised threat. Putin, he
wrote, “was probably highlighting the brittleness of Ukraine’s unity, which
would not survive a serious test.”10
But if Putin was completely free of any annexationist fervor, why, in 2003,
did he propose that Belarus return to Russia and join the Russian Federation as
six oblasts (provinces), a proposition that was refused by Belarus? As long ago
as 1993, the Supreme Soviet laid claim to the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol.11
However, if Putin’s objectives are so radically different, why would his gov-
ernment distribute Russian passports in the Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine,
knowing that the Ukrainian Constitution strictly forbade dual nationality?
And why was this distribution of Russian passports accompanied in August
2008 by Medvedev’s introduction of “five foreign policy principles,” which
included the right for the Kremlin to protect Russians “wherever they are” and
intervene on their behalf? These principles were applied in the case of Georgia,
which was invaded in August 2008. And why, after the Orange Revolution,
did Russian politicians speak out in favor of the “federalization” of Ukraine?12
As Trenin himself writes, this proposal was interpreted by Ukrainian politi-
cians as “paving the way to its breakup and the absorption of its eastern and
southern regions by Russia.” And why, in 2003, did Putin equally propose the
federalization of Moldova?13 Was it not because it would make a breakup of
that state easier and bring the breakaway province of Transnistria definitively
back within Moscow’s sphere of influence? Trenin also mentions that after
the Ukrainian bid for a route into NATO, “some not entirely academic quar-
ters in Moscow played with the idea of a major geopolitical redesign of the
northern Black Sea area, under which southern Ukraine, from the Crimea to
Odessa, would secede from Kiev and form a Moscow-friendly buffer state,
‘Novorossiya’—New Russia. As part of that grand scheme, tiny Transnistria
would either be affiliated with that state or absorbed by it. The rest of Moldova
could then be annexed by Romania.”14 These sentences need to be read very
 Introduction 5

carefully: for “some not entirely academic quarters in Moscow,” one could
read: the Kremlin or Kremlin-related politicians. For “played with the idea of
a major geopolitical redesign,” one could read: military intervention in order
to break up Ukraine, an internationally recognized sovereign state (also recog-
nized by Russia). Moreover, the creation of a Russia-friendly “buffer state” has
traditionally, in Russian politics, led to that state becoming part of Russia. One
could be tempted to see some historical parallels. But, of course, you need not.
Because Trenin is reassuring us: Putin’s Russia has no plans to reconquer its
lost empire. Russia is a post-empire and intends to remain so.
The thesis of this book is that the Russian Federation is both a post-
imperial state and a pre-imperial state. The aim of this book is to analyze
Putin’s wars in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine and to put them in a broader
context in order to better understand the inner dynamic of Putin’s system.
The key idea of the book is that in Russian history there has always existed
a negative relationship between empire building and territorial expansion on
the one hand and internal democratization on the other. Reform periods in
Russia (after 1855, 1905, and 1989) are often the result of lost wars and/or
the weakening of the empire. Periods of imperial expansion, on the contrary,
tended to have a negative impact on internal reform and democratization.
Gorbachev’s perestroika—a product of the lost Cold War—is an example of
the former; Putin’s policy of a reimperialization of the former Soviet space is
an example of the latter.

STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

The book consists of three parts.

Part I: “Russia and the Quest for Empire” (chapters 1–5)

In this part I analyze the role of empire building in Russian history and look at
the similarities and differences with empire building in Western Europe. Why
is it that in Russia empire building and despotism have always tended to go
hand in hand? What are the differences and similarities between the legitima-
tion theories used for empire building in Russia and in the West? This part
ends with a chapter on “empire fatigue” in post-Soviet Russia and suggests
that empire fatigue came to an end with the arrival of Vladimir Putin, who con-
sidered it his historic role to reestablish the lost empire. In the final chapters of
this part the different diplomatic initiatives of Putin are analyzed, such as the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), the Russia-Belarus Union State, the BRICS, the Customs
Union, as well as his most recent project: the Eurasian Union.
6 Introduction

Part II: “The ‘Internal War’: Consolidation of Power” (chapters 6–9)

Part II analyzes how Putin, convinced that in order to rebuild the empire he
needed to rule for at least twenty years without interruption, put a system in
place that guaranteed this continued rule. It analyzes in detail how he eroded
and dismantled the democratic reforms, manipulated the party system, in-
troduced fake parties, falsified elections, and transformed the ruling party
“United Russia” from a centrist party into a revanchist and ultranationalist
party. One particular chapter describes the activities of the Kremlin’s youth
movement “Nashi,” which enabled the Kremlin to inculcate its adherents
with its ultranationalist ideology and strengthen its grip on civil society by
harassing and intimidating opponents. Another chapter describes the new
role, assigned to the Cossacks, who function as Putin’s praetorian guard and
auxiliary police force after the mass protests of 2011–2012.

Part III: “The Wheels of War” (chapters 10–18)

In this part the wars of Putin’s regime are analyzed and compared with other
recent wars fought by (Soviet) Russia. In the first chapter three lost wars
are analyzed: the war in Afghanistan, the Cold War, and the First Chechen
War. This analysis is followed by a chapter on the casus belli, which offered
(then) Prime Minister Putin an opportunity to start an all-out second war in
Chechnya: the so-called “apartment bombings” of September 1999, which
killed hundreds of Russian citizens. The Kremlin ascribed these attacks to
Chechen terrorists, but the official Kremlin version is put in doubt by allega-
tions that the FSB, the KGB’s follow-up organization, masterminded these
explosions. This chapter is followed by a chapter on the Second Chechen
War, a war characterized by purges, torture, and forced disappearances. I ex-
plain that this war had a triple function for the Kremlin: to consolidate Putin’s
position, to legitimate Putin’s power, and, additionally, to enable him to roll
back the democratic reforms. In chapters 13 through 15 the 2008 war with
Georgia is analyzed. I distinguish three phases in this war: a “cold” war, a
“lukewarm” war, and, finally, the “hot” (five-day) war. Despite the Kremlin’s
declarations that this war came as a surprise, I present and analyze the many
circumstances indicating that this war was preplanned with the objective
of bringing about a regime change in Georgia. In chapters 16 through 17 I
analyze the origins of the war in Ukraine. These are manifold and are not re-
stricted to the Kremlin’s obsession with Ukraine. The false premises of post-
modern European politics—falsely assuming that power politics is something
that belongs to the past—and Barack Obama’s ill-conceived Russia policy
also played an important role. In chapter 18 the Russian invasion of Ukraine
on February 24, 2022, and its consequences are analyzed.
 Introduction 7

NOTES

1. Dmitri Trenin, Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endow-

ment for International Peace, 2011), 142.
2. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 200.
3. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 232.
4. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 233.
5. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 208.
6. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 62.
7. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Poslednyy brosok na yug (Moscow: Liberalno Demokratiches-
kaya Partiya, 1993), 117.
8. Zhirinovsky, Poslednyy brosok, 138.
9. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 27.
10. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 46.
11. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 45.
12. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 57.
13. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 100.
14. Trenin, Post-Imperium, 100.
 Part I

DESPOTISM AND
THE QUEST FOR EMPIRE
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