| Russia’s Ukrainian Path to the Future MOSCOW – Russia and the West are losing each other yet again . The magnetic attraction and repulsion between the two has been going on for centuries . Indeed , historians have counted as many as 25 such cycles since the reign of Tsar Ivan III . In the past , however , Russia’s sharp anti-Western turns were reversed – usually out of simple necessity – after relations reached rock bottom . Not this time . On the contrary , the deterioration of the relationship nowadays has developed a momentum of its own . There are four reasons for this . First , the “ loss ” of the Cold War , and with it imperial and superpower status , has created a deep and so far unresolved crisis in the collective mentality of Russia’s political class . Russian leaders continue to perceive the West as a phantom enemy in opposition to which all the traditional mythologies of Russian foreign policy are being resurrected . Second , by the end of Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term , Russia’s modernizing dreams had been shattered . Modernization , indeed , simply turned out to be yet another redistribution of property to those on top , particularly those who came out of the St. Petersburg mayoral office and the Federal Security Bureau ( FSB ) . The image of the West as an enemy has become the only ideological excuse for Putin’s model of the corporate state . Third , the soaring price of oil has made the Kremlin’s inhabitants believe that they are all-powerful . Today’s Russia , which thinks of itself as a “ great energy state , ” laughs at its previous meager desire to catch up with little Portugal in terms of living standards . Finally , a series of Western mistakes and misfortunes , a crisis in transatlantic relations , lack of leadership , and the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalism ( in both the Middle East and Europe ) have led Russian leaders to believe that the West is a sinking ship , to be abandoned as soon as possible . While this belief unfortunately does have some validity , it requires one very important caveat : Russia is part of that ship . Russia can make advances to Hamas , Hezbollah , and Iran , and it can remind the Arab world that the Soviet Union helped it develop and offered it protection in the United Nations Security Council . But in the eyes of Islamic extremists , Russia is part of the “ Satanic ” West – indeed , its most vulnerable part . Thus , it is Russia , with a soaring birth rate among its Muslim citizens that is the most attractive for expansion and take-over . But Russia’s self-destructive confrontation with the West can be halted , and its centuries-old debate between Westernizers and the Slavophiles put to rest once and for all . This , however , will depend on Ukraine’s success on the path of European development it chose in the Orange Revolution of 2004-2005 . Ukraine does , indeed , present a threat , but not to Russia’s security , as Kremlin propagandists claim . The real threat is to the Putin model of a corporate , authoritarian state , unfriendly to the West . For the Kremlin’s occupants , it is a matter of life and death that countries that were once part of the Soviet Union but chose a different model of development – Ukraine being the chief example – should never become attractive to ordinary Russians . The example posed by the Baltic nations does not threaten the Kremlin much , because they are perceived as foreign to the Russian psyche . Indeed , in Soviet films , Baltic actors were usually cast in the roles of Nazi generals and American spies . Ukrainians , on the other hand , are close to us in their culture and mentality . If they made a different choice , why can’t we do the same ? Ukraine’s success will mark the political death of Putinism , that squalid philosophy of “ KGB Capitalists . ” If Ukraine succeeds in its European choice , if it is able to make it work , it can settle the question that has bedeviled Russian culture for centuries – Russia or the West ? So the best way to help Russia today is to support Ukraine’s claim that it belongs to Europe and its institutions . This will influence Russia 's political mentality more than anything else . For if Russia’s anti-Western paranoia continues and the Kremlin’s Eurasian fantasy of allying with China lasts another 10-15 years , Russia will end up seeing China swallowing its Far East and Siberia . Indeed , the weakened Russia that will be Putin’s legacy will then also lose the Northern Caucasus and the Volga region to their growing Muslim populations . The remaining Russian lands would then have no other choice but to attach themselves to Ukraine , which should by then have become a successful member of the European Union . After 1,000 years , Russia will have come full circle , returning to Kievan Rus after wandering on the roads of the Mongol hordes , empire , communism , and farcical Putinism . So Russia now has a choice : Ukrainian plan A or Ukrainian plan B. |