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Ukraine’s war and the non-Western world
A new poll provides more evidence that Western and non-Western countries just don’t agree on how best to respond to the war in Ukraine.
Most Americans and Europeans say their governments should help Ukraine repel Russian invaders. Many say Russia’s threat extends beyond Ukraine. People and leaders in non-Western countries mainly want the war to end as quickly as possible, even if Ukraine must surrender some of its land to Russia to bring peace.
That’s not necessarily the message you might take from a recent vote on this subject in the UN General Assembly. On Feb. 24, the invasion’s one-year anniversary, 141 countries voted to condemn the invasion and to demand that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally” withdraw from Ukraine. Thirty-two countries abstained. Just six – Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and Mali – voted with Russia against the motion.
But it’s one thing to denounce the invasion. It’s another to arm Ukraine and sanction Russia.
Among the 32 countries that abstained – a group led by China, India, South Africa, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and others – and even in states like Brazil and Turkey that voted with the majority, there is deep resistance to the Western approach to the war. The reasons vary by region and country, but their argument with the West can be grouped into three broad categories.
First, the US and Europe, they say, are prolonging this costly war at a time when world leaders must turn their attention and focus their nation’s resources on other urgent global threats.
As India’s President Narendra Modi said this week in his role as chair of this year’s G20 summit: “After years of progress, we are at risk today of moving back on the sustainable development goals. Many developing countries are struggling with unsustainable debts while trying to ensure food and energy security. They are also most affected by global warming caused by richer countries. This is why India's G20 presidency has tried to give a voice to the Global South.”
It’s noteworthy that Modi delivered these comments in English.
In other words, the longer the war in Ukraine continues, the longer world leaders will be distracted from other challenges and the fewer resources they’ll have left to meet them.
Second, what gives Europeans and Americans the right, some ask, to decide which wars are legitimate and who is guilty of imperialist behavior? The US says Russia launched an invasion under false pretenses, but memories of Americans hunting Iraq for weapons of mass destruction bolster charges of hypocrisy. Many Latin Americans remember that Cold War-era Western crusades against Russian Communism included support for brutal dictatorship in their countries. Many in Africa and the Middle East who live in states whose borders were drawn by Europeans reject European appeals to defend Ukraine against imperialism.
Third, many developing countries value the chance to buy Russian energy and food exports at bargain prices. Western refusal to buy Russian products has given many poorer states the chance to fuel their recovery in this way, and their governments are well aware that any bid to remove these products completely from markets would cut deeply into global supplies, driving world food and fuel prices to dangerous new highs. Many of these countries need post-COVID economic lifelines and continuing to do business with Russia, especially on newly favorable terms, can help.
Americans and Europeans can make counterarguments in all these areas, but leaders and poll respondents in non-Western countries continue to warn that Western governments can’t expect others to share the sacrifices they claim are needed to resolve Western problems.
Should Western governments worry? The US and Europe will continue to supply Ukraine and sanction Russia with or without help from others. But if Western leaders want to effectively isolate Russia, both economically and diplomatically, reluctance and resistance from non-Western countries will limit how much they can hope to accomplish and how quickly.Protestors gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of the oral arguments in two cases that challenge President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan.
What We’re Watching: SCOTUS mulling student debt relief, Blinken visiting Central Asia, Biden's partial TikTok ban, Petro’s post-honeymoon phase
US Supreme Court weighs student loan forgiveness
The US Supreme Court began hearing arguments on Tuesday in a pair of cases that will test the limitations of presidential power and could derail Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt. Biden campaigned on debt relief, promising to help families burdened by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. But now the court will decide whether Biden has the authority to forgive student loans. The White House cites a 2003 law aimed at alleviating hardship suffered by federal student loan recipients following a national emergency, but opponents say debt relief should require congressional approval. Biden hopes to fulfill his campaign promise ahead of next year’s presidential race, and millions of millennials and Gen-Z scholars – many of whom could see up to $20,000 of their federal student loan debt wiped away – will be waiting with bated breath. A decision will drop before the court adjourns in June, but so far, justices in the conservative majority seem critical of Biden’s move.
Blinken’s trip to Central Asia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday met with foreign ministers from five former Soviet Republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Blinken wants to signal solidarity with Russia’s neighbors and try to ensure that trade routes in these countries are not used by Russia to evade Western sanctions. The 'Stans are happy for the support because they have all felt pressure from Moscow to form closer ties with Russia. In particular, Putin has pressed Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, without success, to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. Tokayev has a reason for concern: Putin has cited the defense of persecuted ethnic Russians in Ukraine as a motive for his war, and Kazakhstan is home to the second-largest population of ethnic Russians among former Soviet Republics. These states, faced with varying degrees of economic trouble exacerbated by the food and fuel inflation that followed the invasion of Ukraine, could also use some direct US help. During the visit, Blinken announced $25 million of new funding to support economic growth in the region in addition to $25 million the Biden administration had already pledged.
Will China respond to Biden’s government TikTok ban?
China hit back at the US on Tuesday for joining the European Union in banning TikTok from government devices. China’s foreign ministry said that Washington’s move – which gives government employees 30 days to remove the social app from their phones – is an abuse of “state power.” Canada, for its part, followed up with a similar ban. These developments come amid fears that the app, owned by Chinese company ByteDance but based in Singapore, is being used by China’s Communist Party to gather government data. Will Beijing retaliate? Anna Ashton, a China expert at Eurasia Group, thinks any significant reprisal by Beijing for a partial or even a full TikTok ban in the US is unlikely. “It isn’t clear that Beijing will bear any significant loss if TikTok stops operating in the United States, nor is it clear that there would be any real gain in lashing out over such a ban,” she says, noting that there was no clear retaliation from Beijing when India banned TikTok a few years back. What’s more, Ashton says, “TikTok is a private company, and social media companies (much like online sales platforms) are not strategic priorities in China’s technological development plans.” Meanwhile, Congress will proceed on Wednesday to further a bill that would allow the Biden administration to ban TikTok for America’s 100 million users. Being tough on China is a rare bipartisan policy issue. Still, it’s unclear whether the Democratic-controlled Senate will back the GOP-sponsored legislation.
First cabinet reshuffle in Petro’s Colombia
A clash over healthcare and education reforms has provoked the first reshuffle of Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government since he took power last August. The left-wing leader’s plans to expand the government’s role in both sectors drew a public backlash from several of his more centrist cabinet officials. Among them was Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria, whom Petro promptly sacked along with the ministers of sport and culture. Petro – a notoriously headstrong former guerilla – was elected on a change platform, but at the outset of his term, he brought in centrist allies to quell fears that he’d govern as a wild-eyed revolutionary. Now, as his honeymoon period melts away, is this reshuffle simply a necessary move to preserve policy unity, or is he starting to show his true colors?Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon, and Turkmen President Serdar Berdymukhamedov pose for a picture during the Central Asia-Russia summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Bickering picks up steam in Russia’s backyard
Since it invaded Ukraine, Russia hasn't just been making enemies – it’s also been losing friends. Some Central Asian countries – considered part of Russia’s backyard thanks to their Soviet heritage – have begun distancing themselves from Moscow.
Tensions have been building: In October, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon told Vladimir Putin at a summit that his country needs “more respect.” At September’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization conference, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov kept Putin waiting before a meeting. And last week, four of Russia’s treaty allies – Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan — abstained from a vote in the UN General Assembly that demanded Moscow pay war reparations to Ukraine.
“Central Asian Republics have always wanted to be free of Russian influence. Seeing Russia falter in Ukraine, they sense their opportunity,” says Husain Haqqani, director for Central and South Asia at Washington’s Hudson Institute.
Kazakhstan is proving the boldest. Many in the region were treading carefully at first. No one had openly criticized Putin, and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which depend on Russian troops for security, were particularly quiet. But it was Kazakhstan, the largest Central Asian economy, that took the lead, declaring its support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Soon after, Uzbekistan, the second-largest economy in the region, followed suit.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has had the top job for a year and was elected Sunday to a seven-year term. He has repeatedly refused to back Russia's invasion, and Astana, the Kazakh capital, has rejected the Russian-manufactured “independence” of the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
The signaling hasn’t just been diplomatic. At home, Astana canceled an annual summer parade marking the World War II defeat of the Nazis by the Soviet Red Army, and it banned the "Z" military symbol used by pro-Russian/anti-Ukraine elements.
Most notable, however, was Kazakhstan’s refusal to send troops to Ukraine at Moscow’s request. This was a striking move by Tokayev, whose regime was rescued from a violent uprising in January when Russian troops were airlifted to come to his aid.
Considering Tokayev’s recent moves and new electoral mandate, experts expect the leader of the richest Central Asian country to navigate further away from Moscow. “Kazakhstan, as the largest and most prosperous and influential player in the region, seems to be asserting greater strategic autonomy,” Haqqani says.
But Tokayev also faces a dilemma: Kazakhstan shares the second-largest border on the planet with Russia, an indefensible 4,750 miles. The country also houses the second-largest number of ethnic Russians after Ukraine, making up just under a quarter of its 19-million-strong population.
The invasion of Ukraine being premised on the excuse of protecting ethnic Russians is something that would make any Central Asian country with a Russian minority – which is all of them – nervous. Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and Putin’s one-time stand-in, has called Kazakhstan an “artificial” country, echoing Putin’s language about Ukraine. Pro-war commentators in the Russian government and media have also stepped up their anti-Kazakh rhetoric, accusing the country of being disloyal and even hinting that it’s next in line for invasion.
Plus, most Kazakh imports and exports are dependent on Russia. Kazakhstan is the world’s 10th-largest energy producer, and 95% of its oil and gas flow through pipelines that Russia controls – pipelines Moscow has switched off at will. So how can Astana reduce its dependence on Russia without drawing its ire?
Having the right friends is important. As regional heavyweights, China and Turkey are watching this space, but they’re also showing up to bat. Both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have recently voiced their support for Kazakh "sovereignty and territorial integrity."
If push came to shove, China would probably not get involved directly, considering its “no limits” friendship with Russia. But Turkey, which is tied to Kazakhstan through the Organization of Turkic States and even military intelligence cooperation, would probably help out.
Diversification is key: Kazakhstan wants to avoid suffering secondary sanctions and becoming collateral damage. So Astana is seeking solutions in the form of new partners, energy routes, and diplomatic ties. Again, leading the pack are China and Turkey, both of which are bound through new investments, infrastructure, and security deals with the Kazakhs.
Kazakhstan’s smart “multi-vector” foreign policy has helped it develop inroads with China and the West in recent decades – and experts believe that’s to Astana’s advantage. While Kazakh oil and gas flow through Russia, the increasing use of tanker and rail transport links now accounts for 5% of its energy export traffic. The idea is to grow these and enhance its “Middle Corridor” to connect China with Europe, bypassing Russia entirely, but diversifying out of Russia’s orbit won't come cheap.
Can Kazakhstan escape? Russia thinks of itself as a Big Brother-cum-BFF to Central Asian states and won’t simply walk away. Moscow watches over the region through diplomatic oversight backed by military might. Regional forums like the SCO (that it co-leads with China) provide it cover, while security pacts like the Collective Security Treaty Organization grant it legitimacy. Maintaining military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, meanwhile, give it muscle.
Astana can diversify its trade and diplomacy, but the country’s proximity to Russia – compounded by political, cultural, and economic ties – means Kazakhstan will struggle to fully escape Russia’s sphere of influence.
Firefighters at the site of a Russian missile attack in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
What We’re Watching: G7 stands up to Putin, Israel and Lebanon reach maritime deal, South Korea touts missile shield
The war grinds on
Following another day of sound and fury as Russia fired more missiles into Ukrainian cities on Tuesday, G7 leaders announced “undeterred and steadfast” military and financial support for Ukraine’s defense and warned Vladimir Putin’s government that any Russian use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Ukraine would be met with “severe consequences.” Ukrainian air defenses shot down some of Russia’s missiles on Tuesday, but Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told G7 leaders that more and better systems were an urgent priority. On Wednesday, Putin is expected to meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a security conference in Kazakhstan, and the Kremlin spokesman told reporters the two leaders might discuss the possibility of peace talks. So, in a week of dramatic images from Ukraine, what has really changed? Ukraine has proven it still has partisans inside Crimea that can inflict real damage on important Russian infrastructure. Putin has demonstrated that he’s willing to satisfy the demands of Russian nationalists to punish Ukrainian civilians, though he says the next steps will continue to be incremental. Russia’s dwindling stockpile of precision-guided missiles, which Western export controls will make hard to replace, dwindled further. And despite pleas for peace from foreign governments, neither Russia nor Ukraine has signaled any credible basis for compromise.
Lebanon-Israel deal is finally underwater
The two countries have reached a deal that ends decades of disagreement over where exactly their maritime border lies. The underlying issue, as it were, is the presence of vast untapped natural gas fields in the area. Those could be an economic and geopolitical boon for both sides, but particularly for Lebanon, which has endured years of financial crises and power shortages. Ambiguity over the border between the two countries, whose history of conflict dates back to the late 1970s, had hobbled major energy investments in the area until now. As recently as July, Israel shot down several Hezbollah drones that were flying over the area. Under the US-brokered agreement, Israel will maintain full control over one of the large gas fields in the area, while another will be split, but with Lebanon in charge of granting exploitation rights.
What We're Ignoring: South Korea's missile defense bravado
South Korea's military says it can detect the various types of missiles that North Korea has been on a rampage to test since the beginning of the year. But experts warn that even the US-developed THAAD missile defense system (which China doesn’t like one bit) might not be enough to stop some of Kim Jong Un's newest toys, including a new short-range nuclear-capable ballistic rocket and especially what Pyongyang claims is a hypersonic missile. What's more, if Kim were to attack, he'd do so by firing so many projectiles at the South that it wouldn't matter if a lot get intercepted because just a few of them could turn Seoul and other cities into a sea of flames. The North Koreans also have nuclear weapons, which would be almost impossible to shoot down if launched from such a short distance. We get that the South Koreans want to assure the people that they are prepared for an attack from their hostile neighbor, but claiming you've got the goods to repel a barrage of North Korean missiles will likely only make Kim want to beef up his arsenal even more.This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Sign up today.
A Russian-flagged bulk carrier transits the Bosphorus near Istanbul.
What We're Watching: Black Sea wheat pirates, Kazakh referendum, Korean missile tit-for-tat
Donbas battle rages as stolen wheat hits high seas
Ukrainian and Russian forces are locked in a fierce battle for control of the strategic eastern city of Sievierodonetsk. Taking it would help Russian forces occupy a broader swath of the Donbas. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, visiting frontline troops in nearby Zaporizhzhia, said his men had “a chance” to hold the city despite being outnumbered. The question remains — at what point should Ukraine consider negotiating? Meanwhile, US officials have warned as many as 14 countries that Russian grain ships may arrive with cargos pilfered illegally from Ukraine. Still, amid a growing global food crisis that’s been made worse by the war, are governments really prepared to turn away huge shipments of wheat?
Is this a new Kazakhstan, or just a new old one?
Voters in the sprawling, oil-rich former Soviet republic approved constitutional changes that would decentralize the political system and strip former strongman Nursultan Nazarbayev of his emeritus privileges as “leader of the nation.” The move is seen as a bid by current President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to move out of the shadow of his predecessor, who ruled the Central Asian nation from the Soviet collapse until stepping down in 2019. This isn’t the first swipe Tokayev has taken at Nazarbayev. Back in January, amid mass protests that began over fuel prices, Tokayev removed him from a key security post, while also calling in troops from a Russia-led regional security alliance to restore order. Those forces left soon after, and in the wake of that unrest, Tokayev proposed a range of constitutional reforms meant to tackle nepotism and move away from what he has called a “super-presidential” system. Tokayev has also sought to distance himself from Russia’s position on Ukraine, in a move experts say is also about distinguishing himself from Nazarbayev. After the YES vote, it remains to be seen whether the changes are really about moving Kazakhstan away from strongman rule, or merely cutting a path for one strongman to replace another.
US & South Korea show off their toys to Kim Jong Un
We're used to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un firing off a missile or two when he wants attention from Washington or Seoul (even on Puppet Regime!), as he did, yet again, on Sunday. The Americans and the South Koreans rarely respond with their own shows of force, but that is precisely what they did on Monday by launching seven projectiles from South Korea and one from the US — the second such retaliatory launch in two weeks. What's changed? First, South Korea has a new leader, President Yoon Suk-yeol, who won't play nice with the northern neighbor like his dovish predecessor, Moon Jae-in. Second, the US was not amused that North Korea decided to test a suspected ICBM just hours after President Joe Biden departed South Korea during his recent Asian tour. More broadly, now that he has the more pro-US Yoon in Seoul, Biden likely feels more emboldened to push back every time Kim goes ballistic. But what if Pyongyang's next step is to test a nuke for the first time since 2017, perhaps to distract attention from North Korea’s worsening COVID crisis? Don't expect tensions between the two Koreas to subside anytime soon.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
Protest against the war in Ukraine outside the consulate general of Russia in Almaty.
“How do we live?” Central Asia treads carefully with Ukraine war
The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has echoed around the world, but spare a thought for the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. All have close economic and cultural ties to Russia, but they also have reasons to be wary of what Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine.
For one thing, Western sanctions meant to cripple the Kremlin war machine could cause serious collateral damage in the region. Over the past several decades, millions of people from Central Asia have migrated to Russia in search of work. The most famous one outside of Russia was probably this guy.
Today, the money they send home keeps the region’s smaller economies afloat. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two of the poorest countries in Asia, rely on remittances for between a quarter and a third of their economies overall. Most of that comes from Russia.
But now, with sanctions projected to shrink the Russian economy by as much as 7% this year, millions of those people could be out of work. The World Bank already says remittances to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan alone will fall by up to 30% this year.
What’s more, says Erica Marat, a regional specialist at the National Defense University, there is a real fear of what could happen if large numbers of migrants or second generation citizens of Russia decide to come home looking for work. The official unemployment rate in Tajikistan, for example, is already at 7%.
“We’ve never seen such a large population returning home,” Marat says, “and everyone sort of hopes it won’t happen because it would destabilize a lot of things. It’s just a huge wild card.”
At the same time, Russia’s invasion sets a scary precedent. The sight of Putin invading a neighboring country under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians raises some uncomfortable questions for the Central Asian countries, all of which, like Ukraine, have sizable ethnic Russian minorities of their own.
That’s especially true in Kazakhstan, where Russians make up some 30% of the population, and are heavily concentrated in northern regions that border Russia. Prominent Russian officials have in the past questioned whether Kazakhstan is even a real country at all — an echo of Putin’s views on Ukraine.
Within the region, everyone is treading carefully, but some more so than others. No one has openly criticized Putin, of course. And Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – both of which also depend on Russian troops for security — have kept particularly mum.
But energy-rich Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the region’s top two economies, have sailed a little closer to the wind, declaring support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sending aid to the country directly.
Kazakhstan, for its part, even refused a Russian request to send troops to Ukraine — a striking move for President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, whom Russia saved from a popular uprising just months ago.
In part, says Marat, that could be because Tokayev wants to demonstrate, however carefully, that he is not in fact totally beholden to Moscow. Kazakhstan has always prided itself on having a “multi-vector” foreign policy — carefully balancing its ties with Russia, China, and the West. It may also be a shrewder play to attract Western businesses that are fleeing Russia but wish to stay in the region.
Overall, the Central Asian states are in a kind of limbo — waiting to see how bad the economic fallout in Russia is, and how far Putin really tries to go in Ukraine. Everyone understands that they are now living with a new and more internationally isolated Russia, says Marat, but it’s a Russia that they are still tied to in many ways.
The prevailing mindset right now, she says, is an anxiously pragmatic one: “How do we live?”
Ethnic Russians in Ukraine: A look back
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, kicking off another week.
It's been a month now of a Russian invasion into Ukraine. Things certainly not getting any better on the ground. I could give an update of all of it, but rather than doing that, I wanted to go back to how I started my career as a political scientist, because believe it or not, it was on this issue.
I started my PhD work back in 1989. And as you can imagine, the most interesting thing in the world was that the Wall came down and the Soviet empire was collapsing, and the nationalities of the former Soviet Union were starting to explode. It looked like the whole place was going to come apart. And so that's of course what I did my research on.
And most specifically I did my research on Russians in Ukraine. That was actually the title of my dissertation in 1994. Can you believe that? "The Politics of Ethnicity: Russians in the New Ukraine", and it was kind of interesting. Back then, one of the most important theories of international relations, certainly very popular at the time, was this idea that, "Okay, the Cold War is over; the Soviet Union is collapsing, and instead we're going to have a clash of civilizations." This was Samuel Huntington, the Harvard don, his big article and book that said the new conflict that we would see now that it wasn't going to be a Cold War. Was civilizational. Western civilization, Orthodox civilization, Islam, Hindu, Chinese, and along those lines are where the fighting would be.
And I mean, first of all, there's a big question about whether that's really true. That sounded like a horrible world to live in. So I hoped it wasn't true. And there wasn't a lot of actual research that drove that view in the book. It was just a lot of sort of analysis and implications. So I thought, well, here you have the Soviet Union collapsing, and by '91 collapsed. And you've got a laboratory, a literal laboratory of 15 new countries. And outside of Russia, all of these former Soviet Socialist Republics that were ethnoterritorial administrative divisions. In other words, they were demarcated on the basis of the ethnic identity of the majority population on the ground there. So there was an Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic that became Armenia. There was a Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic that became Georgia. Ukraine as well.
And the interesting thing is that Russians, ethnic Russians, who were the dominant nationality, and in some ways the titular nationality of the Soviet Union, they became suddenly minority populations in all of these new independent states. And with the exception of Armenia where they were only a couple of percent of the population, they were more than 5% of the population in all of these countries. They were a significant minority. So here's the question: do they or do they not clash on the basis of civilizational divide? And you could go on the ground, as I did, to Kazakhstan and to Ukraine and to Georgia, to these countries, and see to what extent there was conflict on the ground.
And I spent a year in Ukraine back in 1992 and 1993 across the whole country. I went to Kiev, Kyiv now, but Kiev when I was there. I went to Lviv, I went Crimea, I went to Southeast Ukraine, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and did survey research. Actually interviewed all of these people, Russians and Ukrainians and Tatars as well in Crimea, and asking them how they conceived of their role in this new country, with the idea that if there was a civilizational divide, you'd see fundamental conflict in places like Kazakhstan, where it was Islam versus Russian Orthodoxy, where in Ukraine you'd find much less of that. And the reason being is because civilizationally, these people are very, very similar.
I mean, in fact, you go to Crimea and Southeast Ukraine, you get people that they look the same, they have the same accent, they've got very similar cultural background, they see each other as very similar from an ethnic perspective. I mean, it's true that the Ukrainians have borscht and the Russians have shchi, the cabbage soups. The industrious Ukrainians added the beets. Those are very similar thing, right? And they even in Southeast Ukraine had this kind of dialect that was a mix of Russian and Ukrainian language. So again, you'd think, no problem. And yet what I found, specifically in Crimea and Southeast Ukraine, in the part of Ukraine where the Russians were a large percentage of the population, they had lived there for a long time, and historically they viewed it as a part of a greater Russian nation, that they really saw it as Russian. And they saw it as not Ukrainian. And that identity was very strong.
Where in the West of Ukraine, where the Ukrainians were historically dominant, and it was not part of Russia, it was actually... Lviv used to be Lemberg. It was part of Poland. Didn't have that sort of identification at all. So it seemed fairly clear even back in 1992, '93, '94, when I was writing my dissertation, that Crimea was something very different, that the vast majority of people that lived in Crimea wanted either the Soviet Union to come back together or they wanted to be a part of Russia. And indeed Crimea became an Autonomous Republic inside Ukraine with their own parliament. Everybody spoke Russian, and they even had a tricolor, Russian tricolor flag on top of the parliament. It felt very, very different. Southeast Ukraine was in between. Kiev was much more Ukrainian in sensibility, but the divides were still real. And the farther you got to the west, the more that didn't really matter.
And indeed, if you went to Kazakhstan, it was very similar. It was how long Russians had been there and whether they thought it was their territory that mattered much more than the fact that the Kazakhs were Muslim and the Russians were Orthodox Christian. So in Northern Kazakhstan, there was much more of that identity, and in the south of Kazakhstan where Almaty was, at that point the capital, no such issue. And indeed, in other parts of the former Soviet Union, like in Transnistria on the Southwest Ukrainian border, this part of Moldova that is this breakaway Russian province, very similar for the ethnic Russians that were living there. So the good news is it turns out that there wasn't a clash of civilizations. It wasn't about Islam versus Christianity.
And indeed, if you pull forward the clock by some 30 years, it turns out that much of the most violent fighting that we talk about Islam, is really intra-Islamic fighting. It's Sunni versus Shia. It's not Muslim versus Christian. And indeed the worst fighting we're seeing in the former Soviet space is between the Russians and the Ukrainians who are ethnically virtually identical and yet now we're creating, and Putin is creating, an incredibly strong Ukrainian sense of nation because of the atrocities that are being committed every day on the ground in an independent Ukrainian state.
So, that's where we are. I thought people would find that kind of interesting. It's not every day you go back to talk about your PhD from some 30 years ago, but I was a baby when I wrote it. And frankly, I didn't even make into a book. I was so sick of it at that point. I'm like, "Ah, let's just move on, do other stuff."
But happy to talk to you about it. And anyway, we'll be keeping a close on what's happening on the ground in Ukraine and with the Russians and everything else. We'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com- Could this spread beyond Ukraine? - GZERO Media ›
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After Kazakhstan, how will Russia escalate in Ukraine?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hey everybody, Ian Bremmer here and kicking off the week with some excitement in Kazakhstan and the beginning of the most important bilateral negotiations the US is going to have in some time with the Russians.
First I'll start off on Kazakhstan. It was a surprise to everyone, certainly the Kremlin to find out that suddenly what had started as worker demonstrations that got violent very fast, because fuel prices went up significantly with the Kazakh government, suddenly became nationwide and very violent. And the special forces, the interior forces were basically standing aside. Looks like this... Yes, there's a lot of anger with corruption. There's a lot of anger with a state that's unresponsive to the economic needs of its people. But there was also major elite infighting and Nazarbayev, the former president, the still leader of the Kazakh people, got the short end of the stick. Tried to make a move against Tokayev, failed. His head of intelligence has been removed and arrested. Dozens of Nazarbayev connected oligarchs have fled the country.
And what's most interesting is the Russian government having had no idea that any of this was likely to happen. Was requested by President Tokayev to send troops and they did within 24 hours. And 3,000 Russian peacekeepers, paratroopers and others, and once they showed up to provide support and secure key facilities, suddenly the members of this security forces knew that Tokayev was going to win. It became very violent, very brutal. It looks like some 200 people have died. Thousands have been arrested, but this is the end of the story. So Nazarbayev is basically out, Tokayev is in charge. The Russians have more influence than before though, Kazakhstan's always leaned in that direction. And a message has been sent very strongly to Belarus and to the West. That the Russians are prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure that they exert dominion over countries and governments that they think are within their sphere of influence.
That of course leads to the big question, which is, well, what about Ukraine? Because of course, Ukraine has an independently elected government that is very aligned to the West. They want to join NATO. They'd like to join the European Union. Neither of those two things are really on offer, but the population is massively anti-Russian, only more so because of the 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion into Southeast Ukraine. The negotiations have gone nowhere yet. I would say it is on balance slightly better than not, because the Russians and the Americans both agree they'd like more talks in the near future. More talking means that the Russians aren't about to escalate in the immediate future. But the Russians continue to say that this is urgent, decisions have to be made quickly and that nothing has been provided so far from the Americans that would lead the Russians to believe that they don't need to escalate.
The big question is what is that escalation? In the West, there's been a lot of concern that the Russians are going to invade and take further Ukrainian territory. If they do that, of course, then you'll have a collective stronger response from the US and EU, from the US and its NATO allies, which doesn't help the Russians at all. So I think the real issue here is are the Russians prepared to escalate in ways that are short of invasion, but have the potential to drive apart the Americans and the Europeans. And as the Russians say that that is something they are credibly able to do, do the Americans in response allies or without even prepared to provide any level of concession to the Russians that would allow them both face saving and the ability to back down, the willingness to back down? And that right now is a very open question.
So still very big uncertainty and indeed instability over what the Russians are likely to do in Ukraine vis-a-vis the Americans and the Europeans. And hard for the Americans to respond effectively. But at least they're still talking. The US Russia talks that we just had are by far the most important, the NATO talks aren't going to go very well, but that's not where the action is really happening. At least not from Moscow's perspective. And they're the ones that are doing the escalating. What will be most interesting, we see when is the next Putin-Biden conversation. I expect that's going to be announced in short order and more bilaterals at a high level between Moscow and Washington.
That's it for me. Hope everyone is real good. Talk to you soon.
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