It was supposed to last three, four days, a week at the most. This was the time estimated by President Putin to reaffirm dominion over Kiev, the Donbass, the South, over all access to the sea, perhaps over the whole of Ukraine (45 million inhabitants, 600 km2 of surface area). It is said that in the idea elaborated in his mind, the Ukrainians, with their heads bowed, would have welcomed the Moscow army with their hands covered with flowers, thanking them for their release. It wasn't exactly like that.
And then free yourself from whom? To date, still, it has not been understood. From the Nazis? From Born? By the Ukrainians themselves? From the influence of the West? The versions of Russian propaganda and those of the President's speeches, intimidating and threatening, change, transform, contradict each other, but they always remain harsh, bullying, incomprehensible, old. Yes, old ones, because they seem to belong to a world that no longer exists, that hasn't existed for at least thirty years.
Once upon a time there was the Cold War. It ended in 1989. Someone lost it. It is a fact. It's history. It is time to accept it and, if so, to look for its causes within your own country, not outside, not in Ukraine, not in the "collective West", because revanchism, as we know, has never brought anything good to nobody.
Some analysts believe that Russia without an enemy, without a threat to its borders, cannot conceive of itself as a state. And the "enemy", in Russian logic, can only be fought on the battlefield, with the only means of violence.
This conception is associated with a stainless imperialist rhetoric, handed down over centuries of history, first Tsarist, then Soviet. It is a very powerful and well-oiled engine of the propaganda machine. Other commentators interpret what is happening with interesting literary reflections, with references to Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. In fact, in the famous opera, the protagonist Raskolnikov justifies the premeditation and then the killing of the old usurer with ethical reasons and social injustice, which, he believes, will allow him to bear the consequences of her actions. The idea therefore of achieving a greater good through blood, that is, the right to the life of others. The crime, however, will be followed by punishment, Raskolnikov's crisis of conscience and the sentence to be served in Siberia.
Many, on the other hand, to try to understand the present, invite you to reread the polyphonic writings of journalistic type of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2015 Svjatlana Aleksievič, Zinc Guys (relating to the war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989), Second-hand time (on the collective drama of the collapse of the Soviet Union), to name a few.
The more pragmatic commentators simply think that the special military operation in Ukraine is directly related to the approval rating of Vladimir Putin. When the President's rating cracks, Moscow systematically unleashes a conflict, so it was for Chechnya, for Georgia in 2008, for Ukraine in 2014 and today.
It is difficult to find a single answer, a reason for the gruesome scenarios that come to us every day from the heart of Europe, just as it is difficult to predict the near future and the years to come, first of all, for Ukraine, but also for the rest of the country. Europe and for the immense Russia. On the other hand, what seems certain is the fact that the global geopolitical structure known until 24 February 2022 has changed and that new dynamics, not necessarily positive, are settling.
To try to better understand the implications of the conflict and its repercussions, I reached out to Professor Giulio Tremonti, lawyer, politician, former Minister of Finance of the first Berlusconi government, Minister of Economy and Finance of the Berlusconi II, III and IV governments and author of several books of a political and economic nature, linked above all to the phenomenon of globalization, among these, Fear and hope (2008) Mundus Furiosus (2016) and The three prophecies (2020).
Professor Tremonti, what is your idea of this war?
“In recent years, an iconography has developed in the Russian Federation, an anti-globalist and anti-Western structure of Russia. Russia as the first anti-global state. All this is evident in the writings of President Putin, in his "Mein Kampf", published, among other things, in the Financial Times. The idea can also be found in the texts of the ideologist Alexsandr Dugin ”[Russian philosopher and political scientist, often referred to by the press as the“ Rasputin of the Kremlin ”and the“ Putin's ideologist ”. Dugin's Eurasian thinking aims at the unification of all Russian-speaking peoples in a single country through the forced territorial dismemberment of the former Soviet republics in order to create a radically new, ultra-nationalist Russia in clear opposition to the West ed]. «To explain all this, in my speech on Italian television, I summed up with the phrase Putin is not afraid of NATO, but the Internet and happy hour. The war in progress is to be considered in this logic, through this general order. This is a dystopian idea, since it is as if they had read Orwell's 1984 in the Kremlin, that is, the comparison between Oceania, Estasia, Eurasia. Today, in Moscow's communication, thoughts and actions there is not a conception of Europe extended from the Atlantic to the Urals, but, on the contrary, a movement for the "Sacred Urals" towards the Atlantic "[the Ural Mountains represent the natural border between the European side of Russia and the Asian side. In the Ural mountain range, the sacred mountain of Manaraga (1'660m) is often mentioned, also known as the “haunted mountain”, at the foot of which the ancient indigenous peoples of the Republic of Komi organized rituals ed].
«Russia has encountered a very high degree of resistance from Europe, from the West, and so I think it is very likely that it will take the path of Asia. But I don't think it will be China, also because the latter seems rather reluctant to embark on adventures with Russia, given its great dependence on the West. It is therefore possible that Russia will choose a different path, a bit like Tito's old Yugoslavia did with the third world, looking elsewhere for positions other than those of the West ».
The style adopted by Russia in its attack on Ukraine does not seem to be far removed from that employed by the Soviet Union during the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. What do you think about the fact that perhaps Putin, in his world view, has never really accepted the dissolution of the USSR?
“Indeed, in the events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union there is an accumulation of history, experiences and resentments that are emerging now. In the early 90s, from St. Petersburg, precisely where the young Putin and those who later favored him were, he was planning the entry of Russia into a "capitalist" world. Unfortunately, it was a world conceived on oligarchic mechanisms rather than based on laws, coupled with corruption and devastation. At that time it was said that Russia had become "a Nigeria with snow". Undoubtedly, in the historical phase in which the USSR collapsed, Russia was humiliated in morality and corruption and the sentiment formed then is still very present ».
Several Russian commentators often propose the thesis that when President Putin's approval rating drops in the country, the power machine starts a war. So it was for Chechnya, for Georgia, today for Ukraine. What is his opinion on this?
“The search for an external fact, an external enemy, is a typical technique of using power. When we begin to perceive, in some way, that power is wearing out, it is cracking, we tend to look for an enemy outside and, on the latter, we try to mobilize the country, the system, public opinion. . Frankly, I think that what is happening is simply the application of the doctrine of the return of Russia and therefore not a reaction to unpopularity, but precisely an expression of the will to power returning to the places of history ».
How do you judge the united reaction of the transatlantic axis to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, hence the sanctions packages and the dispatch of weapons?
«The West, Europe, reacted and, in my opinion, they did absolutely well. I think what we are experiencing could be an opportunity to really update on European defense. Until now there has been more NATO than the EU, almost a merger of the Union into NATO. However, I believe that they must be two distinct realities that collaborate. If Europe is desired, it cannot be conceived without a foreign policy and a common defense. In fact, this is exactly the path that the European Commission was following. It was 2003, when the Italian government proposed Eurobonds to finance infrastructure and military industry. I remember that the general opposition was that of the no to public debt and among the most energetic reactions I have in mind that of Gordon Brown, the English Chancellor, who said “Nice, but this is Nation-building”.
I am convinced that the time has finally come for Europe to have its own “Nation-building”. After all, the EU is only a few decades old, it is young and it is right to do it now. Without forgetting that it already goes back to the Ventotene Manifesto [document for the promotion of European unity, drawn up by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi in 1941, during the period of confinement on the Island of Ventotene, in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The recommendation according to which Europe should have a common army is considered one of the founding texts of the European Union. Furthermore, in the future, it is highly probable that the axis of NATO, or in any case of the West, will move towards Asia, while possible problems for Europe could arise in the Middle East and, potentially, also in the Balkans ”.
How do you imagine Russia's economic future in the years to come? Will it be comparable to North Korea, to Iran?
"Absolutely no. Russia is the largest country in the world, has 11 time zones and a gross domestic product as small as Italy's. The latter, however, is strategic, given that Russia embodies key geopolitical and energy elements. I believe that the world that will develop after the conflict, once peace is concluded, will be a world in which Russia will not be so bad ».
