The russian motives for invading Ukraine; part three

Draft version

The timing of the russian invasion of Ukraine corresponds to events within Ukraine, and to the political environment within the russian empire after the year 2000. Those circumstances explained next.

Ukrainian weakness due to a traitor president, and due to a now-mostly-destroyed oligarchy

The traitor ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych promised a wide integration with the European Union, expressed both verbally and in official documents. Cite one of several approaches to the European Union described in the «Program of Economic Reform for the years 2010-2014», translated:

Thus, when Yanukovych backtracked from completing his own program, and instead chose to pursue an integration with the russian empire, a series of resolute social protests called the «Maidan Revolution» ensued and, as consequence, the russian handlers of Yanukovych evacuated him to Russia at the end of February 2014. Cite, the words of the current russian autocrat, clarification in brackets added by me:

However, the traitor left his country in such disarray that the state institutions of Ukraine, included the armed forces, stood basically disorganized; hence, the russian empire calmly invaded Crimea without any response from the inoperative ukrainan state. Cite, from the ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation:

Then, russian state agents initiated a purportedly «civil» war in the eastern regions of Ukraine. The russian empire sent first semi-covert soldiers and afterwards regular soldiers to fight «during their vacations». As admitted publicly by a prominent russian soldier, Igor Girkin, about the start of the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014; cite, translated, clarification in brackets added by me:

There existed the ineffectiveness of the ukrainian armed forces, and the overwhelming concentration of income and resources in the oligarchy. Therefrom, a ukrainian oligarch utilized his personal resources to create a private military in order to fight the separatists and russian regular soldiers in the east of Ukraine. Cite, from a news report:

As of the end of the year 2025, Ihor Kolomoisky stands in jail and in public disgrace, since the ukrainian state pursues a legally-codified strategy of de-oligarchization of the public life and strives to administer impartial justice. The ukrainian state either absorbed, dissolved, or now commands all military battalions serving the ukrainian cause.

The political direction of Ukraine after the elections of 2019

The presidential and parliamentary elections in Ukraine in the year 2019 cemented a political direction away from the russian empire. Accordingly, the pro-russian puppets obtained only 13.06% of the votes for parliament, in a political environment with five major political parties. Meanwhile, no pro-russian candidate reached the second round of the presidential elections.

This election showed the existence of a clear diversity of organized groups within the ukrainian society, composing a majority opposed to the incorporation of their nation into the russian empire. This happened after the initial invasion of 2014 and the war which followed, by which the ukrainian society became certainly aware of the russian intentions.

Therefore, such outcome waned any russian prospect of installing puppets like Yanukovich and his associates in order to operate an annexation of Ukraine. Afterwards the only realistic prospect of the russians, for achieving their imperialistic goals, consisted in a military invasion.

The political environment within the russian empire after the year 2000

The most important factor in the timing of the russian invasion of Ukraine consists in the desire to rebuild an empire by the fascist formation which controls the russian state and oppresses any independent societal group within the empire. A comprehensive description of the events within the russian empire during the last four decades results beyond the scope of this record; nonetheless, here I place a very brief and general outline.

The collapse of the soviet empire left fascist individuals in Russia stunned during the decade of 1990. Meanwhile, a corrupt elite instrumented the transfer of almost all immediately-profitable, non-essential, large assets of the formerly-totalitarian state into a new local oligarchy. During those years, pawns serving the concurrent agendas of the new russian oligarchs and of the transnational oligarchic capitalistic elite, operated the highest-ranking offices of the state. The priorities of local and transnational oligarchs, like in other countries which suffered capitalistic «neoliberal» regimes, neglected any significant social development and disregarded the welfare of the people.

However, after the year 2000, the agendas of local and transnational oligarchs, together with their most outstanding pawns, gradually became replaced by an explicit supremacy of the state over the public life of the russian society. Straight in his first speech as autocrat, Vladimir Putin said in Russia would not happen any authoritarian «power vacuum». Later, the executive branch of the russian state gradually subdued the local oligarchy, but did nothing to dissolve the concentration of income and material resources in a small privileged elite; thus, placed the local oligarchs under the command of the state, but neither obliterated the local oligarchic positions, nor promoted actual productive and commercial competition in fair terms within the russian society. Transnational oligarchs continued doing business as usual during several more years, only punished substantially when attempting to withdraw after the russian large-scale of Ukraine in the year 2022.

So, the regime proclaimed the end of rampant oligarchic rule only to stabilize the societal positions acquired by those who robbed and acquired privileges before —very similar to Mexico and the USA, where new administrations and political groups proclaimed national «transformations» and «new historic stages» in the decade of 2020. Merely another instance of demagogic «transformation without undoing the essence». Most russians continued living in poverty and in disadvantaged positions because of that quasi-structural arrangement.

Thereafter, any outspoken dissident became isolated, persecuted, and prosecuted for political reasons; and eventually the regime outlawed all non-submissive political and social organizations. Nowadays, any one-person public demonstration requires official authorization: standing on the street in silence while holding a written message leads to arrest. Furthermore, the formal control of the russian state gradually extends into the private life of each subjugated person, by means of restricting, supervising, and regulating the content of personal electronic communications. Hence, Russia advances towards formal totalitarianism, again.

Here results indispensable to acknowledge and identify the societal schemes by which an autocracy functions. Thus, for example—

• In a medieval-style monarchy, the «nobility» controls allotted land, people, and other resources of behalf of the king; and the king ordinarily must ensure the overall satisfaction of the interests of the members of such nobility in order to preserve his post.
• During the «soft» dictatorship of the political party called PRI in Mexico, during the 20th century, the party operated composed by several «sectors» —e.g. peasant sector, military sector, industrial-workers sector, informally-adjunct business-owners associations. Each «sector» functioned under the command of a small elite, or by lifetime «leaders», and specialized on controlling the corresponding part of society assigned to it; this control implemented by a variety of means. Of course, the party operated largely fused with the state institutions and above the law. In that dictatorship, each president operated as the autocrat during a single presidential term.

In present-day Russia, the societal scheme which directs the state and controls the regular members of society consists in a semi-secret fascist formation with thousands of members. This formation I originally described in the notes «The Saint Petersburg Hive», and then made a fairly better-redacted and compact description in the book «Asynchronous Exchange: The End of Capitalism». Therefore, will not describe it again in this record.

A frequent miscalculation about the russian empire consists in attributing the choices of the russian destiny to the current autocrat; while, in fact, he merely strives to satisfy the fascist social base from which derives his dominion over other humans. Two factions I identified as the components of the russian fascist formation: one faction craves for a traditional imperial monarchy, while the other faction craves for a more pragmatic empire.

Accordingly, the suffering inflicted by oligarchic «neoliberal» capitalistic regimes over human societies created an ardent desire of retrogression among authoritarian individuals who, upon the failure of «the future» and «modern ways», now seek to return to the last known «highly-prosperous status quo». Thereat, authoritarian regimes emerged. A comparison among nations results illustrative:

• Fascist russians seek to rebuild the 17th-century russian empire.
• A very large subset of fascist stateians (not all the fascists) seek to return to a 19th-century-style stateian empire —ethnocentrism, racism, and Monroe Doctrine included.

• Highly-authoritarian mexicans seek to return to a refurbished but modified version of the «soft» dictatorship of PRI —utilizing a new political party— corresponding to the status quo of mid 20th century. This attempt still not stabilized at the time of this writing.

  An important difference with the old version of PRI, consists in the deliberated consolidation of the national police, security and military intelligence agencies, and regular armed forces into a single institution —into a centralized command chain; the elected president the sole independent civilian at the top. This state institution also bestowed with ample and loose legal capacities to collect information about any person. Moreover, now active-service members of the armed forces can de-facto participate in political parties, only needing to request temporary license for a few months in order to run for public office. Thereat, a highly restrictive law against civilians holding firearms place ordinary persons as sheep in a slaughterhouse.

  Thus, given the proper conditions, the path to a military dictatorship seems clear; whereas the old version of PRI made great efforts to avoid any form of political dominion by active-service members of the armed forces achieved by a military coup, or by otherwise abandoning discipline in order to pursue factional interests. Fully describing the mexican case stands beyond the scope of this record.

The fascist russians proceed 20 years ahead in their retrogression, compared with stateians and mexicans. In all cases, the elites which commanded and benefited from «neoliberal» capitalism strive to accommodate themselves in order to preserve their gains with either zero or minimal loses. And the transition from «neoliberal» capitalism happened with either the acquiescence of, or by accord with, predominant members of those same elites, when instability of the social order became evidenced by ordinary people everywhere dissatisfied with self-assessed poverty yet still unorganized.

One cannot underestimate the damage done by «neoliberal» capitalism to humankind in general, which supported and organized the massive, irrational, and wasteful consumption of natural resources and destruction of biodiversity of Earth during recent decades; while, at the same time, failed to produce acceptable living conditions for the majority of the population which enacted it, and served as foundation for oligarchic regimes adverse for societal development; and, therewith, squandered the first and so-far only opportunity to democratize and thereby dismantle the russian empire.

Here ends this multi-entry record.

--
Anders Baerbock
2025.340

References:
[https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/n0004100-10] «Програма економічних реформ на 2010-2014 роки "Заможне суспільство, конкурентоспроможна економіка, ефективна держава"»
[https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/file/docs/5/d325760.pdf]
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[https://zavtra.ru/blogs/kto-tyi-strelok] «Если бы наш отряд не перешёл границу, в итоге всё бы кончилось, как в Харькове, как в Одессе. Было бы несколько десятков убитых, обожженных, арестованных. И на этом бы кончилось. А практически маховик войны, которая до сих пор идёт, запустил наш отряд. Мы смешали все карты на столе.»
[https://www.vesti.ru/article/1860975] «Более того, скажу еще откровеннее, среди нас воюют и нынешние военные, которые предпочли провести отпуск не на пляже, а среди нас, среди братьев, которые сражаются за свою свободу»
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[https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1780-20#Text] «Про запобігання загрозам національній безпеці, пов’язаним із надмірним впливом осіб, які мають значну економічну та політичну вагу в суспільному житті (олігархів)»
[http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22280] 31 декабря 1999 года, «Новогоднее обращение исполняющего обязанности Президента Владимира Путина к гражданам России»
[http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102087370]
[https://ivo.garant.ru/#/document/12135831] «Федеральный закон от 19 июня 2004 г. N 54-ФЗ "О собраниях, митингах, демонстрациях, шествиях и пикетированиях"»