The Case for Vladimir Putin
Recent events have led me to re-examine the legitimacy of Putin's actions in Ukraine.
Russia’s “Special Military Operation” launched against Ukraine in February 2022 has been described as “unprovoked”, “disgusting”, “outrageous”, “immoral” — and above all, “ILLEGAL”.
Even commentators and analysts who can bring themselves to see Putin’s point of view still have to frame their opinions with the acknowledgment that even if Putin’s actions were “logical” from the Russian perspective, they were nonetheless contrary to international law.
I also found myself in this latter camp: while I could sympathise with Putin’s motivations for invading, I nonetheless had to admit that invading another sovereign country is, at its base, ILLEGAL.
The ICC “finally” issues an arrest warrant for Putin — but for what?
The recent decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Vladimir Putin for breaking international law has led me to re-examine my assumptions.
Why, I asked, has it taken them so long to declare that Putin has violated international law, and why are they indicting him for “forced deportation” rather than the seemingly much more egregious crime of “aggression” — i.e., invading a sovereign country-?
Could it be that the illegality of Putin’s actions last year is not so cut and dried as it seems?
Could it be that Putin’s argument based on the UN Charter was valid?
Or was it just a way for the ICC to avoid appearing hypocritical on the 20th anniversary of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq?
Would charging Putin while failing to charge Bush, only buttress Putin’s argument that the ICC is a biased “puppet of the West”?
That would be ironic, given that Putin specifically referenced the “illegal” invasion of Iraq when he made his speech announcing his own “operation”.
These questions sent me back to my sources to review — and reconsider — what arguments have been made most often to justify Putin’s so-called “Special Military Operation”.
Three common arguments to justify Putin’s actions
In my course of researching the Ukraine War, I have read hundreds of articles and watched hundreds of hours of interviews and debates. In my experience, those who seek to justify Putin’s “Special Military Operation” rely on one or more of the following arguments:
The legal justification: this is an acceptance of those articles of international law that the Russians themselves have used to justify the operation, as well as specific precedents that Putin cited in his announcement of the SMO.
The existential / practical justification: this argument bases itself on the reasons Putin gave for the SMO: Eastward expansion of NATO and the “existential threat” it posed to Russia’s very existence, coupled with the clear, present and urgent need to defend the ethnically Russian people of the Donbas and prevent them from being exterminated by Ukrainian “Nazi” forces.
The moral justification: aside from whether Putin’s move was strictly legal under international law, Russia has the “moral right” to refuse to live with a Nazi regime perched on its border and threatening to repeat what happened to Russia in WWII.
Most who seek to justify Putin’s actions in February 2022 rely on one or more of these general arguments.
Are any of them valid? Let’s see.
Reason Nr. 1 — The Legal Justification
This type of justification relies on what Scott Ritter calls “collective pre-emptive self-defense”. It asserts the following:
The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) were truly independent States that had exercised their right to self-determination under the UN Charter to secede from Ukraine and act as sovereign entities.
Russia had the right — also under the UN Charter — to recognise the DPR and LPR as sovereign States.
The LPR and DPR had legitimately requested Russia’s assistance to defend themselves against Ukrainian aggression.
The Special Military Operation was Russia’s legitimate response to the request for aid from the DPR and LPR.
On February 24, 2022, when giving his speech announcing the launch of the Special Military Operation, Vladimir Putin said the following:
“The people’s republics of Donbass have asked Russia for help. In this context, in accordance with Article 51 (Chapter VII) of the UN Charter, with permission of Russia’s Federation Council, and in execution of the treaties of friendship and mutual assistance with the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, ratified by the Federal Assembly on February 22, I made a decision to carry out a special military operation”.
The Right to Self-Determination
Putin cited the UN Charter as grounds for his SMO relying, essentially, on the founding UN principles of a people’s right to self-determination (Article 1 (2)), as well as the right to collective self-defense (Article 51, Chapter VII).
As Ritter points out, the self-defense aspect of this argument is actually one of pre-emptive self defense. This argument relies on UN Charter Article 2 (4), which requires Members to refrain not only from the use of force, but also from the threat of force.
People in NATO countries may recognise this idea as it was used to justify the US invasion of Iraq, as well as many other acts of US and Western aggression, from Serbia to Libya.
While this argument for justification seems to have been dismissed out of hand by most Western sources, it is vigorously promoted by some, such as Scott Ritter, who accept the legal argument while acknowledging that many reject the reason on “political” grounds.
Indeed, if one accepts the premise that the people in the Donbas (1) had the right to self-determination and (2) were justified in declaring their independence and creating the DPR and LPR, and thus (3) possessed the agency to enter into “collective self-defense” agreements with Russia, then the SMO is legally justified.
Still, there is a case to be made, and the fact that no one in the West is arguing or debating it seems to be just another strand of the Dominant Narrative pushed by the Western establishment ever since the Russians crossed the Ukrainian frontier.
DPR and LPR — and the Kosovo Precedent
Many people argue that the people of the Donbas did not have the right to secede from Ukraine, despite the ample evidence that the Ukrainian “coup” regime in Kiev had proven itself hostile to them and their culture, language and historical ethnicity.
One quick answer to this is the “Kosovo Precedent”. This precedent was specifically cited in the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Crimea written in 2014 and immediately recognised by Russia.
The same process took place in the DPR and LPR in 2022.
Putin has made repeated reference to the Kosovo Precedent as a way to point out “Western hypocrisy”, because the very countries condemning the Donbas secession movements are the same ones who support Kosovo’s self-declared independence.
What happened in Kosovo?
In 2008, Albanian-majority Kosovo “self-declared” its independence from Serbia with the backing of the West, following the 1998–1999 war in which NATO intervened to protect the territory. This move was opposed by the Serbs living in Kosovo, and Russia and Serbia also lodged official protests in the United Nations. But the Kosovar Albanians pushed ahead with their secession anyway.
Armed intervention to protect an ethnic population
In 1999, NATO rationalised the air war against Serbia on humanitarian grounds (called “Operation Allied Force”)—that is, to prevent the alleged ethnic cleansing operations against the Kosovo Albanian population.
Russia used this “Kosovo Precedent” to also justify their intervention to protect the people of the Donbas.
Kosovar independence
The result is that the West (US & NATO/EU) recognise Kosovar independence, while Russia and its allies do not.
According to Deutsche Welle:
To date, 117 countries have recognised the independence of the Republic of Kosovo, including the United States and most EU member states. Serbia, Russia, China, and some other states, on the other hand, continue to view Kosovo as part of Serbia. Five EU states — Greece, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Cyprus — have also so far refused to recognize Europe’s newest state.
So — it seems that, when it comes to recognising the right to self-determination, “where you sit decides where you stand”.
Or - “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander”.
Kosovo has applied for EU membership, and no doubt the USA and its Western allies want to see the break-away republic join the EU (and possibly even NATO) so they can have a solid foothold on the border of Russia’s main Balkan ally, Serbia.
Indeed, the Western-friendly International Court of Justice recognised Kosovar independence in 2010.
It therefore seems reasonable to argue “what’s good for Kosovo is good for the Donbas”.
In fact, it’s possible that Russia may even offer to officially recognise Kosovo as part of a Ukraine peace deal, in return for the West’s recognition of the independence of the Donbas.
Reason Nr. 2 — The Existential Justification
Inhis speech announcing the “Special Military Operation”, Putin also explained the “existential threat” felt by Russia and posed by the US and its allies:
“For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it”.
When Putin refers to having spoken about the “red line” on numerous occasions, he is of course referring to NATO expansion, and especially the prospect of Ukraine becoming part of NATO — either officially (de jure) or in practice (de facto).
In 2007 Putin gave a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference, which the Cato Institute described as “an important diplomatic warning to the United States and its allies that Russia’s patience with NATO’s encroachment was at an end”.
Indeed, in that speech — given 16 years ago — Putin warned the West:
“NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders…NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust…why is it necessary to put military infrastructure on our borders during this expansion?”
Needless to say, Putin’s warnings went unheeded and in fact unacknowledged by the US and its allies.
“But Ukraine never posed a threat to Russia”
I know many people argue that Ukraine never posed a threat to Russia. I urge those people to re-read the above quote from Putin’s 2022 speech. Putin does not mention Ukraine. Putin mentions only one country by name — the United States. THAT was the existential threat that Russia feared.
Anyone who has ever listened to a Russian official talk about the EU knows that Putin and his colleagues believe that “the US does not have allies, but rather they have vassals”. It is clear that Putin never saw the conflict in Ukraine as being solely between Russia and its smaller neighbour. The Russians have always seen the war as being one between Russia and the “collective West”.
Certainly that framing is hard to argue with, given that:
In 2002, NATO published the “NATO-Ukraine Action Plan”, a blueprint for pulling Ukraine into NATO.
In 2003, the USA fomented a CIA-backed “Rose Revolution” in Georgia to oust the pro-Russian government and install a NATO-friendly regime.
In 2004, the USA fomented another color revolution in Ukraine, the CIA-backed “Orange Revolution” designed to oust the pro-Russian government and install a NATO-friendly regime (it failed).
In 2005, Ukraine’s President Yushchenko was invited to a NATO summit in Brussels, after which NATO declared that the alliance was “ ready to deepen partnership with Ukraine”.
In 2007, the West ignored Putin’s strong warnings and protests at the Munich Security Conference.
In February 2008, the US ignored all warnings about the “red line” communicated directly to Ambassador Burns (“Nyet means Nyet”).
In April 2008, at the insistence of George W. Bush, who said he wanted to “lay down a marker”, NATO extended an “open door” invitation to Ukraine and Georgia to join the alliance.
In February 2014, the United States made good on the original 2004 Orange Revolution plan and backed a coup that overthrew the duly elected government in Kiev and replaced it with a pro-US, anti-Russian regime (as proven by the Nuland-Pyatt intercepts).
On February 20, 2014, during the course of the coup, the NATO Secretary General told the Ukrainian Armed Forces to “remain neutral” and not defend the President from the ultranationalist coup forces.
On April 15, 2014, Ukraine launched a “large-scale Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO)” in the East and started bombing, shelling and sniping the civilian population in the Donbas.
In 2015, Ukraine and its Western partners used the Minsk peace negotiations as a ploy to buy time and further train and arm Ukraine up to NATO standards (as confirmed by Hollande, Merkel and Poroshenko).
On May 20, 2019, with the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in the Donbas rising, and with the Minsk process going nowhere due to Western perfidy, Russia submitted a proposal to the United Nations Security Council urging discussion of the situation in Ukraine. NATO members Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom and the United States voted against the measure and it was struck down.
In April 2021, during his annual speech in Moscow, Putin AGAIN warned the West against “crossing the red line in respect to Russia”.
In December 2021, Putin presented the US with a “sweeping” proposal for a new security plan for Europe to address Russia’s concerns.
On February 2, 2022, Putin gave a press conference and stated that the US and NATO had “ignored” Russia’s concerns and his security proposal, and that the US was “using Ukraine as a tool” against Russia.
Ukraine responded by ramping up the shelling of the Donbas by 500% (according to the OSCE observers) and massing 125,000 troops (half its army) along the so-called “contact line”, ready to invade.
Finally, after 15 years …
Finally, after 15 years of warnings, pleadings, and searching for dialogue; after having attempts to engage the UN blocked, and faced with stonewalling by the US and NATO, Putin had to act to avoid the humanitarian calamity building up along the Donbas contact line. He needed to stave off an impending invasion by a NATO-armed, NATO-trained and NATO-supported Ukrainian military that could target not just the DPR and LPR but Russia itself.
After having exhausted all non-violent means of dealing with an existential threat, and having found all his diplomatic efforts to be cynically rebuffed ignored by the West, Putin chose to exercise “pre-emptive self-defence” and launched his Special Military Operation.
Reason Nr. 3 — The Moral Justification
InPutin’s speech announcing his “Special Military Operation”, he also made reference to the stonewalling by the US and NATO, the failure of the Minsk negotiations, and the West’s rejection of his request to discuss the security plan he had submitted in December:
“Of course, this situation begs a question: what next, what are we to expect? If history is any guide, we know that in 1940 and early 1941 the Soviet Union went to great lengths to prevent war or at least delay its outbreak…When it finally acted, it was too late.
“As a result, the country was not prepared to counter the invasion by Nazi Germany…The attempt to appease the aggressor ahead of the Great Patriotic War proved to be a mistake which came at a high cost for our people…We will not make this mistake the second time”.
Putin went on to address the Armed Forces of Ukraine directly:
“Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common Motherland to allow today’s neo-Nazis to seize power in Ukraine”.
Putin’s references to the “high cost” that Russians and Ukrainians paid in WWII, and his repeated references to “today’s neo-Nazis” form two key elements of this “moral justification” argument.
YES, Russia violated international law
Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter prohibits the threat or use of force and calls on all Members to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other States.
The first part of this moral justification argument accepts and confirms the fact that yes, by invading Ukraine, Russia may have violated international law.
IF one does NOT accept the legal argument that Russia was acting in “pre-emptive collective self-defence”, then it is absolutely clear that what Russia did on February 24, 2022 was in clear violation of one of the most fundamental principles of international law and the United Nation s Charter, namely the inviolability of a sovereign state’s territorial integrity.
The moral argument says that EVEN IF Russia violated UN and international law, Russia had earned the moral RIGHT to do what it did, and further, that there is a compelling historical precedent for granting Russia this right.
The Moral Justification and the Israel Precedent
I first heard the moral argument for justifying Putin’s invasion formulated by Norman Finkelstein, the American political scientist and activist who is an expert in the politics of the Holocaust as well as all things regarding Israel.
Appearing on the Katie Halper podcast, Finkelstein made a compelling argument to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine based on the “moral right” of the Russians, which he claimed was similar to the right bestowed on the Jews when they established the State of Israel in Palestine.
The establishment of Israel in Palestine, Finkelstein noted, was “technically” contrary to international law, insofar as creating a Jewish State in Palestine “robbed” the Palestinians of their right to self-determination as enshrined in Chapter 1 of the United Nations Charter.
How Russia “saved” the Jewish State in 1947
The most passionate argument “by a wide margin” given at the UN in favour of granting an exception for the Jews, Finkelstein said, came from an unlikely source: the Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko.
As historian Martin Kramer observes, the USSR’s support for the new Israeli State was fulsome and enthusiastic. In his essay “Who Saved Israel in 1947?”, Kramer writes:
Not only did the Soviet Union under Stalin vote for partition, and also recognize Israel, it had come out in favor of a Jewish state well before the United States. Moreover, it had held firm in that support both before and after the vote, and had indirectly assured that the newborn state would have the war materiel it desperately needed to defend itself.
Finkelstein notes this fact, and then reveals why the Soviets felt so strongly in favour of the Jews receiving a “waiver” of international law: it was because of the Holocaust.
Gromyko, he said, argued that, “due to the magnitude of the suffering” the Jews endured during WWII, Russia was going to support the founding of a Jewish State.
Supporting a Jewish State, Finkelstein says, “was an obvious violation” of the Arab people’s right to self-determination. However, he adds, Gromyko made a compelling argument nonetheless to allow the violation because the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust made the Jews “special”.
Russia has “earned the right” to do what it did
The Soviet Union, Finkelstein notes, lost 27 million people in WWII. This number of dead, he says, dwarfs the 700,000 lost by the US and the UK. Russia lost twice that number just in the Siege of Stalingrad, he adds.
This “magnitude of the suffering”, Finkelstein argues, is even far greater than what the Jews endured in the Holocaust.
He then goes on to remind us of all the diplomatic, legal and non-violent efforts made by Russia to resolve what they perceived to be an existential threat.
Russia, Finkelstein declares, “has earned the right” not to have nuclear missiles on its borders, and not to have a neo-Nazi regime as its largest and most strategically important neighbour.
Quoting Gromyko again, Finkelstein asserts that, just as the catastrophic suffering endured by the Jews had endowed them with “an historic right to a State”, so did Russia’s suffering in WWII endow them with a right NOT to have hostile, nuclear armed, Nazi-led adversaries directly on its borders.
Finkelstein closes with a quip:
“If you want reasons for why I believe Russia had earned the right to do what it did, I can give you 27 million of them.”
THE VERDICT: NOT GUILTY
In my opinion, each one of the three arguments outlined above contribute to an overall exculpation of Vladimir Putin.
As a preface for this finding, I think it is necessary to consider the very special and unique nature of Ukraine and its geographic and strategic importance for Russia.
Situated between Russian ally Belarus in the North and the Russian-controlled Black Sea in the south, Ukraine is a giant spearhead pointed at the heart of Russia. It is a giant land bridge that enemies have used to invade Russia for centuries — enemies like Napoleon and Hitler.
IT IS NO WONDER THEN that in 2008 the Russian Foreign Minister called the US Ambassador to his office and told him, face to face, that “Nyet means Nyet” (“No means No”) and that Ukraine was the ultimate in red lines for Russia and any move to expand NATO to Ukraine would result in a Russian response.
When you consider that the US President at the time, the warmongering criminal George W. Bush, responded to Russia’s warning by “laying down a marker” and issuing an “open door” invitation to Ukraine to join NATO (much to the dismay and chagrin of the NATO allies), it becomes obvious that the US wanted a confrontation with Russia.
We should also reflect on what Ukraine is. The name of the country literally means “The Borderland”. The Eastern part of Ukraine has always been Orthodox and pro-Russian, the Western part Catholic and pro-Europe. This is clear to see in the electoral map of the 2010 elections:
The Yanukovych regime had been studiedly neutral, dealing with both Russia and Europe, because the people of Ukraine were evenly divided, and no one factor — neither the Russian East nor the EU West — could be given complete control, lest it cause a civil war.
But that is what happened in 2014.
When you consider that the US helped to violently overthrow a duly elected and geopolitically neutral Ukrainian government to install a pro-NATO, anti-Russian regime that officially declared the ethnic Russians in the East to be “terrorists” and launched a military campaign targeting civilians in the Donbas;
When you consider that Russia tried to get the United Nations to address the slaughter in the Donbas but was blocked by the US and 5 of its NATO allies;
When you consider that the Minsk peace process was nothing but a ruse perpetrated by the West to “buy time” in order to turn Ukraine into what the Ukrainian Defence Minister himself says is “a de facto member of NATO” ready to go to war against Russia;
When you consider that, in the days preceding the invasion, Ukraine had massed 125,000 of its NATO-trained and equipped armed forces along the Donbas Contact Line and increased their bombardment of DPR and LPR by 500% …
Considering all the factors and precedents, it becomes clear that the US and the West planned and provoked a Ukrainian proxy war with Russia, and Vladimir Putin had no choice but to do what he did. There was no alternative way to save the people of the Donbas and prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO stronghold (de facto or otherwise) lodged in the heart of the Russian Federation and threatening Russia’s very existence.
#End
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Well written! Yes, the self determination argument there is strong, and I've been upset that it has been ignored by most. And I would say that the self determination argument also applies to the South Ossetians, whose plight was at the center of "PUTIN'S OTHER SUPER EVIL WAR" in Georgia back in the 2000s. BTW, I'm not saying he's a saint or anything, just that their more in the right than their opponents are in those two cases....
This information was readily available before Russian intervention in the Ukraine( I have refused from the start to call it an invasion of the Ukraine because that’s not what it is.
( it has always interested me in what would.d happen if Scotland decided to just declare itself a self governing country. Who would the USA support ? The rUK or Scotland because I know that’s all that matters in the grand scheme of things, how does it benefit or hurt America)