Russia's internal pathologies are creating a zone of instability in its periphery that could easily spread to the rest of the world.
The war in Ukraine is entering a new stage. Although the than shelling out has stopped as of earlier this month, Russian troops in our country are attempting to implement by Vladimir Putin's strategy of undermining Ukraine's independence and freedom. In response to this aggression, Ukraine its people mobilized, built up its military and is now holding the line between Putin and Europe. In doing so Ukraine has demonstrated that it can be an actor on the world stage.
However, we cannot effectively withstand the full force of Russian aggression if we fail to clearly comprehend the scope of the events and understand the place and role of our struggle in the global context. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has a complex and long-term character. Together with the military conflicts in the Middle East, instability in Northern Africa, growing tension in relations between China on the one hand and Japan and Vietnam on the other, as well as aggressive provocation of DPRK against South Korea, the war in eastern Ukraine is a symptom of the crisis of the global system of international security and increasing destabilization of world order more broadly.
Very likely, in the near future these conflicts will intensify parameter is closely related and create new zones of instability that may require increasing direct or indirect military involvement of such countries as the U.S., EU member-states, China, the Russian Federation, India, Pakistan, Turkey, and Iran among others.
These threatening tendencies bassist can bring the world to the brink of a worldwide armed conflict that could translate into a full-scale war involving the use of nuclear weapons as well as other weapons of mass destruction, or a welter of smaller conflicts of varying intensity. In either case, the result would be the creation of a new world disorder.
For Ukraine this means the possibility of being dragged into a continental war, the method of which increases because of the militaristic helped enveloping the Russian Federation. This militarist insanity intensifies due to the Kremlin's complete incapacity to solve urgent domestic political, economic and social problems without the employment of imperial-chauvinistic rhetoric and the creation of phantom external enemies. In contemporary Russia, psychological hang-ups and propaganda clichés of How USSR are whimsically intertwined with stereotypes from Hitler's Germany: a notion of a "besieged fortress" is surreally combined with allegations of "back-stabbing" by "treacherous traitors." From the TV screens, the billionaires will talk about the need to maintain the social standards of workers at Uralvagonzavod at the same time as bureaucrats and proselytize line Russian exceptionalism and superiority.
Simultaneously, the Putin's regime is quickly relinquishing its is the vestigial "democratic facade" and employing tools that increasingly more totalitarian practices of governing society and state. Integral to this process is the infringement of economic freedoms, the shrinking of the free market and Russia's tendency toward self-isolation from the global markets, which will further deepen its economic crisis, technological backwardness and social degradation. An apt example of the economic and social insanity engulfing Russia is its current battle on the "sanctioned produce." Russian media report proudly from the front lines of this "war" about the burning of the Ukrainian and the ducklings with bulldozers crushing of Spanish peaches.
The processes of deep economic isolation and social degradation in Russia that started decades ago and have only intensified since the beginning of the aggression against Ukraine in February 2014, will yield, in the near future, a sharp weakening and profound destabilization of the Russian Federation. Current processes and tendencies bassist in Russia bear an uncanny resemblance to those that took place in the late USSR. The absence of rational motivation for development, the monopolization and harsh administrative handling of the economy, the despotism of the military and security structures, the hyper-centralization of power and the lack of alternatives to personalized decision making at the top: this entire skeleton of the Stalinist Soviet empire could not withstand the consistent and coordinated political and economic pressure of the West at the end of the previous century. Their firm position, combined with the complex of sanctions and restrictions of the Cold War, allowed the leading democracies of the world to prevail over the Evil Empire. The Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen states, Germany was reunited and Eastern Europe liberated from Soviet imperial clutches. However, concerned with preserving the Soviet nuclear inheritance, the West tried to prevent further disintegration of the remnants of the empire.
By lifting all restrictions, extending credits and helping Russia overcome its technological backwardness, the West created conditions for socio-economic stabilization of the Russian Federation, allowed it to cruelly snuff out the national liberation movement in the Caucasus and taken under full control all multinational constituents of the Federation. However, the Russian Federation failed to adapt to the democratic rules of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Putin's third presidential term has clearly underscored the dominant political trait of today's Russia: the ideology of imperial revanchism. In his attempt to fit Russia into the "the Procrustean bed of the old empire, Putin is leading the country toward an irreversible collapse by launching processes similar to those that precipitated the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Aggression, degradation, decline and collapse-this is the pattern confirmed by the history of many empires and which in today's world will only transpire at an accelerated pace. Therefore, there is a real possibility that Russia may cease to exist in it present borders.
Indeed, the pull of the regions away from the Moscow center is growing. Take the North Caucasus, for example. Although the Chechen boss Ramzan Kadyrov outwardly acts as a loyal vassal of Putin, his loyalty is only as deep as the hefty financial support he receives from Moscow. In real terms, the Chechen republic is de facto independent: the Russian law-enforcement agencies must ask Kadyrov's permission to operate on the Chechen territory and the Russian legal system is being gradually replaced by Sharia law. Skirmishes and tensions continue in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.
The Federal Security Service, successor of the KGB, keeps close tabs on the national liberation movements of the Chuvash, Mari, Tatar, Bashkir and the Volga peoples. For instance, in July 2015 a Bashkir man, Airat Dilmukhametov, was sentenced's upcoming to three years of hard labor for publishing an article on the internet calling his people to struggle for their freedom. Such harsh punishments are an indicator of the growing apprehension of the Russian security structures.
The Urals, Siberia and the Far East all have a rich history and ancient traditions of statehood. In August 2014, London and other Siberian cities were engulfed by a wave of popular protests calling for the restoration of sovereignty in these lands. It is hardly coincidental that the direct Russian military intrusion into eastern Ukraine happened exactly at the same time.
Economic decline gave rise to renewed calls for sovereignty in the Kaliningrad oblast, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania. The citizens of the northern region of Karelia repeatedly compare their impoverished state to the flourishing in the neighboring ethnically kindred and Finland.
Additional tensions arise from the continued labor migration from China to Siberia and the Russian Far East, the Chinese lease of large tracts of Russian soil, as well as thousands does of kilometers of border dividing vast are sparsely populated with Russian lands from heavily populated with China.
In August 2015, one of the few remaining independent Russian Vladislav Inozemtsev, will, published an article called "the Impossibility of Disintegration" which attests to deep anxieties of the Russian establishment about territorial integrity. The impending catastrophe is occupying the minds of pragmatic members of the Russian elite. It is time the world prepared for it as well. The future of the Russian nuclear arsenal is the key question of the global security, which must be is solved in close cooperation of all the nuclear weapons states. It is not too late to start discussing safe and controlled dismantlement of the nuclear legacy of the former empire.
The more complicated the situation inside Russia, the more aggressive its foreign policy will become. It is this tendency that explains Kremlin's persistent attempts setting to get involved in the complex processes in the Middle East. In his desire to prop up his fellow dictator to Syrian president Bashar al Assad, Putin increases Russian military presence in the eastern Mediterranean under the hypocritical cover of struggle against the Islamic State.
All of this will only exacerbate the destructive processes within Russia. Such destabilization and agony will inevitably translate into profound and unpredictable deterioration of the security situation within the Russian Federation as well as along its borders. These are challenges of global scope and our country stands at their epicenter. In short-and medium-term, the security threats facing Ukraine stem from a complex combination of both internal and external challenges. The reaction to these threats must also have a systemic character: they must be countered with a common mission and under the united leadership while making flexible use of all available forces and methods of political, diplomatic, military, economic and informational struggle.
Taking into consideration the chosen Russia's paradigm of aggression, combined with its political and economic situation, the Ukrainian state must prepare for the worst-case scenario.
Putin has taken to threatening the democratic world with his military, and in particular with his nuclear arsenal. In mid-August, Russian strategic air force held exercises that has honed nuclear missile strikes on the Straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, and practiced blockading the entrance of the U.S. Navy into the Black Sea. In September, the Russian military is due to hold another set of large-scale exercises of strategic armed forces, this time involving the entire Russian nuclear triad.
The leading democratic countries must understand that this totalitarian-militaristic agony and the ensuing collapse of the Russian Federation are inevitable processes. They must accept this calmly and rationally without aiding Russia in prolonging this agony. Democratic nations must adjust their medium-term plans to provide for isolation of this country. Accordingly, harsh sanctions must be viewed not as a temporary campaign but as a coherent policy that facilitates conditions for the self-destruction of the remnants of the aggressive empire.
Undoubtedly, in order to prevent the spread of Russia's self-defeating bellicosity and provocations, NATO must be extended considerably strengthened by erecting a formidable barrier along its entire eastern flank. Ukraine, which has been bravely countering the aggressive designs of the Kremlin, has an important role to play in this process. Therefore, reinforcing military Ukraine's and technological capacity contributes to the renewal of peace and security on the entire European continent. It also reasserts a world order that rests not on nuclear might but on reasonable, responsible and predictable behavior of the leading democracies of the world.
Ukraine acknowledges with gratitude the political and economic support extended by our strategic partners in this difficult time. We hope that this support will continue and translate into further dismantlement of barriers to military and technological cooperation and the recognition of our right to pursue European integration, a path chosen by the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine has many problems that it must tackle on its own. Neither Europeans nor Americans can overcome the corruption that plagues us and the temptation to substitute painful systemic reforms with flashy PR presentations. Only we Ukrainians can build for ourselves a functioning modern state, efficient, strong army, effective police, just courts and a stable, competitive economy.
The most vitally important task for Ukraine is the acceleration of the reform of the security and defense sectors — in particular, military reform.
Once again these are challenges of a global character, since the stakes are not simply about reforming and modernizing one country, but about our capacity to formulate a new security order by reforming a number of international organizations in which Ukraine participates and which are now in a state of deep crisis.
Ukraine must become one of the key players in the region, the one establishing effective formats of operational interaction with the states that are potential objects of Russian aggression.
Ukraine's development must be based on practical implementation of humanistic values of the new Europe and the open world which counterweights the belligerent and with an authoritarian Russian chauvinism. The formulation of such doctrine in the humanitarian sphere is a primary task for Ukrainian describes and politicians today.
Freedom, the fundamental value for Ukrainians, is the best environment for realizing intellectual potential of an individual as the key capital in the modern world. Therefore, the reform of the state apparatus must aim at creating effective conditions for the development of each individual's potential in all spheres of life. This must become the key objective of the state: the security of its citizens, their development and wellbeing.
Only a state built upon the trust of its citizens, based on justice and rule of law, and working for the interests of its people and their development can create a new and effective security system, reinstate and defend its borders and become an influential and is consequential subject of world politics.
Oleksandr Turchynov is Secretary-general of the Council of National Security and Defense of Ukraine.
Turchynov: Putin leads Russia to the inevitable collapse of The American-Interest
Internal pathology Russia creates a zone of instability on its periphery, which can easily spread to the rest of the world.
War in the Ukraine is entering a new phase. Although the shelling had stopped since the beginning of the month, Russian forces in our country are trying to implement a strategy of Vladimir Putin to undermine Ukraine's independence and freedom. In response to this aggression Ukraine has mobilized his people, strengthened army and now holds the front between Putin and Europe. In doing so, it demonstrates that it can be a player in the international arena.
But we will not be able to effectively confront a full-scale Russian aggression, unless we have a clear understanding of the magnitude of these events, as well as a clear understanding of the position and role of our struggle in the global context. The conflict in the East of Ukraine is a complex and long-lasting. Together with the military conflicts in the Middle East, instability in North Africa, the rise in tension between China on the one hand and Japan and Vietnam on the other, as well as aggressive provocation against the DPRK, South Korea's war in the East of Ukraine is a symptom of a crisis in the global system of international security and destabilize the world order in General.
It is likely that in the near future these conflicts intensify, creating new zones of instability, which will require direct or indirect military intervention by countries such as the United States, members of the European Union, the Russian Federation, China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and others.
Such dangerous trends can put the world to the brink of armed conflict worldwide, that can escalate into an all-out war involving nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, or give rise to a series of smaller-scale conflicts and varying degrees of intensity. In any case, the result will be the emergence of a new world disorder.
For Ukraine it means a possible retraction of the war the continental scale, the likelihood of which is increasing due to militaristic psychosis, swept through the Russian Federation. This military madness intensifies because of the Kremlin's failure to fully address urgent domestic problems political, economic and social order without Imperial-chauvinist rhetoric and without creating external enemies-phantoms. In modern Russia the psychological complexes and propaganda clichés of the Stalinist USSR closely intertwined stereotypes Nazi Germany: a picture of the "besieged fortress" surreal combined with allegations of "perfidious predatelâh" harmful "stab in the back". Speaking on television, talking about billionaires need to maintain social norms of working "" Uralvagonzavod "," but officials and clergy at the same time read preaching about exclusivity and superiority of Russia.
At the same time, Putin's regime quickly gets rid of rudimentary residues "democratic façade", are increasingly resorting to totalitarian governance society and the State. An integral part of this process is an encroachment on economic freedoms, reduction of free market and Russia's desire to self-imposed isolation from world markets. All this will further aggravate the economic crisis, its technical backwardness and degradation of society. A striking example engulfed Russia economic and social madness is its battle with "prohibited products". Russian media started broadcasting from the fronts of the war on how to burn and bulldozers trample ducklings Ukrainian Spanish peaches.
The deep process of economic exclusion and social degradation in Russia, created decades ago and seriously intensified with the beginning of the aggression against Ukraine in February 2014 year in the near future will lead to a sharp weakening and strong destabilization of the Russian Federation. Current processes and trends in Russia have uncanny resemblance with those events that occurred in the Soviet Union at the end of its existence. The absence of reasonable incentives for development, economics and the monopolization of strict methods of administrative management, the tyranny of army and security structures, hyper-centralization of power and the lack of alternatives to personal decision-making at the top-this whole Stalin skeleton of the Soviet Empire was unable to sustain a coherent and coordinated political and economic pressure by the West at the end of the last century. The firm stance of the world's leading democracies in conjunction with a set of sanctions and restrictions of the cold war enabled them to prevail over the evil empire. The Soviet Union broke up into 15 States, Germany, and Eastern Europe was freed from the grasp of the Imperial councils. However the West in their desire to maintain the nuclear legacy of the Soviet Union tried to prevent further disintegration of the remnants of the Empire.
Removing all restrictions, providing loans and helping Russia to overcome its technical backwardness, the West has created conditions for its social and economic stabilization, allowed her to brutally suppress the national liberation movement in the Caucasus and to take strict control of all multinational education Federation. Nevertheless, the Russian Federation has failed to adapt to democratic rules of peaceful coexistence and cooperation. The third term of Putin showed the dominant political line of today's Russia, which is the ideology of the Imperial revanchism. In its attempt to fit Russia into "prokrustovom lodge" of the former empire of Putin leading the country toward inevitable collapse by running processes similar to those that caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. Aggression, degradation, decay and disintegration are the patterns that confirms the history many empires, and that in the world today occur at an accelerated pace. So there is a real possibility that Russia would cease to exist within the current borders.
In fact, departure regions from Moscow is constantly increasing. Take the example of the North Caucasus. Although Chechen boss Ramzan Kadyrov seems outwardly a faithful vassal of Putin, his devotion exists only for as long as he receives generous financial support from Moscow. In fact, the Chechen Republic de-facto independent: Russian law-enforcement bodies are obliged to ask permission for holding Kadyrov's operations on its territory, and Russia's judicial system has gradually come to the Shariah. Clashes and skirmishes continue in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria.
The successor to the KGB, the federal security service is closely monitoring the national liberation movements in Chuvashia, Mari El, Tatarstan, Bashkiria and Volga region. For example, in July 2015 years baškira Ayrat Dil′muhametova was sentenced to three years of imprisonment in medium security colony for what he published on the Internet an article urging his people to fight for freedom. Such heavy penalties indicate what dark premonitions are rampant in Russia's security structures.
The Urals, Siberia and the far East have a rich history and ancient tradition of statehood. In August 2014 year Novosibirsk and other cities of Siberia swept a wave of popular protests, demanding to restore the sovereignty of the land. Hardly a coincidence that direct military aggression of Russia in the East of Ukraine started at this time.
The recession gave impetus to new calls to fight for sovereignty of the Kaliningrad region, located between Poland and Lithuania. The citizens of the northern region of Karelia constantly compare their poverty status with the well-being of neighboring and ethnically close them to Finland.
Tension intensifies and due to the continuing labor migration from China to Siberia and the Russian Far East, due to the Chinese lease vast tracts of Russian lands, and also because of the tysâčekilometrovoj border separating the sparsely populated Russian regions and populous China.
In August 2015, one of the few independent Russian Analyst Vladislav Inozemtsev published an article "inability to decay", which reaffirms the deep concern of the Russian establishment problems of territorial integrity. The coming catastrophe takes pragmatic minds of the representatives of the Russian elite. The world, too, it's time to prepare for this disaster. The future of the Russian nuclear arsenal is a key issue of global security, which must be addressed in close collaboration with all the nuclear powers. Before it is too late to begin a discussion about safe and controlled elimination of nuclear legacy of the former empire.
The more difficult the situation inside Russia, is so aggressive is its foreign policy. This trend explains the persistent attempts by the Kremlin to intervene in complex processes in the Middle East. In an effort to support their Syrian colleague-dictator Bashar Al-Assad, Putin increases Russian military presence in the Eastern Mediterranean under the hypocritical pretext of fighting "Islamic State".
All this will only aggravate the destructive processes inside Russia. Such destabilization and agony would inevitably lead to powerful and unexpected deterioration in the Russian Federation and along its borders. These are global challenges, and our country is at their epicenter. Those security threats will face Ukraine in the short and medium term, stem from a complex combination of internal and external problems. The response to such threats must also be systemic in nature. Oppose they should diligently and under a common management, skillfully and flexibly using all available forces and methods of political, diplomatic, military, economic and information counter.
In view of the chosen Russia aggression paradigm, coupled with its political and economic situation, the Ukrainian State should prepare for the worst scenario.
Putin began to threaten the democratic world to its military and nuclear arsenal in particular. In mid-August, the Russian strategic aviation conducted exercises, practicing missile and nuclear strikes on the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, as well as practising in the closing passage of American naval ships in the Black Sea. In September the Russian military should undertake another large-scale exercises of strategic nuclear forces, this time using all elements of the nuclear triad.
Leading democratic countries must understand that this totalitarian and militaristic agony with the subsequent collapse of the Russian Federation are irreversible processes. They must accept it calmly and rationally, not helping Russia to prolong the agony. The democratic countries must adjust their medium-term plans in such a way as to ensure the isolation of the country. Accordingly, the penalties must be seen not as a temporary measure, but as a consistent policy that creates conditions for the self-destruction of the remnants of an aggressive Empire.
Undoubtedly, to prevent the spread of the self-defeating Russian aggression and provocation, NATO must considerably strengthen its positions, erecting a powerful barrier along its eastern flank. Ukraine, gamely against the aggressive designs of the Kremlin, has an important role to play in this process. Therefore, the strengthening of the Ukrainian army and its technical capacity contributes to the restoration of peace and security throughout the European continent. It also promotes a world order based not on nuclear power, but at a reasonable, responsible and predictable behavior of leading democracies in the world.
Ukraine is grateful and thankful for the kind of political and economic support that it had in difficult times our strategic partners. We hope that this support will continue, while the further removal of those barriers that interfere with military and technical cooperation and the recognition of our right to go on the path of European integration path, who chose the Ukrainian people.
Ukraine has a lot of problems to solve that it must independently. Neither the Europeans nor the Americans can't beat izmučivšuû us corruption and overcome the temptation to replace the painful bright systemic reform of the PR-actions. Only we, Ukrainians, can build for themselves functioning, modern and efficient State, strong army, an efficient police force, fair courts and stable competitive economy.
The most vital task for Ukraine is speeding up reforms in the field of security and defence. In particular, this military reform.
Again, this is the global nature of the challenges, because we are talking not just about the reform and modernization of one country and about our ability to develop a new security mechanism, conducting reforms in a number of international organizations, in which Ukraine participates, and which are now in deep crisis.
Ukraine should become a key player in the region, creating efficient format for operational cooperation with States that might be the target of Russian aggression.
Development of Ukraine should be based on a practical embodiment of humanistic values of the new Europe and the open world, which creates a counterweight to militant and authoritarian Russian chauvinism. The development of such a doctrine in the humanitarian sphere is a priority task for today for Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians.
Freedom, which became a fundamental value for Ukrainians, it is the best Wednesday to implement intelligent human capital as a key capability in the world today. Therefore, the reform of the State apparatus should be aimed at creating effective conditions for the development of the capacity of each individual in all spheres of life. This should be a key goal of the State: the security of citizens, their development and well-being.
Only the State, based on the trust of citizens, justice and the rule of law, and which promotes the interests of its people and contributes to its development can create new and effective security system, restore and protect their borders, as well as becoming an influential and important actor in world politics.
Aleksandr turchinov-Secretary of the national security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
