Putin will not stop at Ukraine

Politicians on the left and right are too quick to dismiss warnings about Putin's wider war ambitions as “scaremongering”.

Putin visits soldiers in Ryazan, Russia (via Alamy/ 2K8CGT2)

This week, Diane Abbott MP wrote “Russia isn't the threat to the West that Starmer claims it is”, while Nigel Farage called Zelensky “unwise”, said he shows “no respect” and repeatedly called on him to accept Russia’s demands. While these political operators claim to be opposed, they find themselves frequently unified when it comes to views on Russian tyranny. These polarised appeasers are wrong, Putin will not stop at Ukraine. He is a threat to the UK.

“If Ukraine falls, Europe and the UK will be next”. This is what I was told, sat in an undisclosed Ministry of Defence building in Kyiv across the table from Deputy Minister of Defense for European Integration, Sergey Boyev. The chilling warning was reiterated to me by economy minister, Oleksii Sobolev, and by Economic Committee Chair, Dmytro Natalukha. Over Borscht and Horilk in Lviv, Colonel Turchek, Deputy Head of the National Police Department told me much the same: “The Russians will not stop, all we can do is slow them down before they reach you”.

When returning to the UK, away from the sound of striking Shahad drones, those on the right and left have labelled this perspective “scaremongering”. But there is extensive evidence to suggest Putin is on the warpath.

Putin has imperialist motivations in Ukraine and beyond. He has repeatedly said he seeks a restoration of power previously held by the Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Ukraine is just the first country on the map. In 2012, he self-proclaimed Russia a “state-civilisation”, seeking to justify interventionist foreign policy in any nation he deems to have an affinity with Russia.

A message clear from Putin’s deeply troubling essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, in which he argues for “Ancient Rus”, insisting Ukrainians and Russians “are one people”. His pre-invasion address further detailed how Ukraine had been “created” and should be renamed after Vladimir Lenin​. His refusal to refer to the conflict as a war with another state and use of the term “special military operation” also sullies the notion of Ukrainian sovereignty. As Timothy Snyder argues, this denial of the existence of the state of Ukraine is a classic example of the “language of empire” that is a precursor for Russia subsuming the nation of Ukraine.

Few disagree that Putin considers Ukrainian sovereignty a farce, many question whether this has implications beyond Ukraine’s borders. It’s important to remember that, in 2021, the Russian President referred to the collapse of the USSR as “the disintegration of historical Russia”, an end to “what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost”.

Like the warped shared history argument put forward to justify his invasion of Ukraine, Putin has issued a warning that he has ambitions for Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Moldova, Finland, Lithuania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Belarus. In Kyiv, sheltering from Russian ballistic missiles in an underground car park, an Estonian police officer told me “Everyone knows after Ukraine, he comes to Estonia”. Less than a decade ago, well respected academics dismissed the idea that Putin would invade Ukraine. Are we to make the same mistake again?

In the meeting with Defence Minister Boyev, we were briefed on how Putin had, in the last two years, transformed the Russian economy into a war machine. Mass mobilisation of troops, 24/7 armament factories, North Korean shells and munitions, investment in technology and drone warfare – Russia is ready for all-out war, and comfortably outproducing NATO nations. This economic and societal transformation has created a behemoth to the East. Are we to expect that post some kind of peace deal, Russia becomes a pacifist nation and lays down its arms rather than capitalising on the West’s comparative weakness?

Territorial conflict is clearly defined, and Putin’s ambitions go far beyond land mass. It’s not just an effort to restore the Russian Empire to its former glory but in his view, a step on the ladder towards a multi-polar world order. In the wake of Soviet Russia’s humiliating decline, Putin has been plotting revenge. His objective is an end to the rules-based order that lays the foundations for peace and stability, and instead a multipolar system that allows autocratic regimes to plunder and expand at will. His attack on Ukraine, a pro-Western, pro-NATO, pro-EU state was not just a breach of Ukrainian sovereignty, but a declaration of war on Western values. If he is not stopped now, it sets a menacing precedent for the world’s most tyrannical regimes.

Unified by their blindness, many on the left and right are emboldening Russia’s imperialist desires as well as Putin’s attempts to shift the world towards multipolar chaos. They make the case that there must be some sort of compromising peace in which Ukraine is forced to cede territories to Russia. If this takes place, this is the beginning of the end. Russian victory in Ukraine will give Putin vast momentum while destabilising the Western world. Russia must be defeated in Ukraine, and it must be globally witnessed.

Jonah Munn is a Senior Parliamentary Researcher for David Taylor, Labour MP for Hemel Hempstead