By Scott Ritter
Back in March, I had the opportunity to participate in an on-line forum where a well-known Russian expert provided a briefing on the “ground truth” as he saw it from Moscow.
Following the briefing, the floor was opened for questions. I had noted that the briefer, the moderator, and indeed the audience made repetitive use of the term “invasion” to describe what Russia has called a “Special Military Operation.”
I brought up the limited objectives of the Russian military effort at the time of its initiation, namely the goal of compelling Ukraine to agree to a negotiated settlement and asked if the term “Special Military Operation” was not a more accurate description of reality.
The expert understood my question and agreed that the term “Special Military Operation” carried with it a specific connotation which distinguished it from a classic military invasion. However, in the group chat, where participants were able to comment on the proceedings, one individual offered the following observation: “‘Special Military Operation?’ What’s that? I don’t speak Putin.”
[Related: SCOTT RITTER: On Horseradish & Nuclear War]
This forum was intended as a way to better inform the participants about one of the most pressing issues of the day — the conflict between Russia and Ukraine — and to better prepare them for assessing the consequences of this conflict globally.
Given the failure of the collective West to impose its will on Russia through what is widely considered a proxy conflict, one would think that some form of retrospective analysis would be in order. However, to engage in such an activity constructively, an agreed-upon lexicon would be needed to communicate effectively.
Since Russia is prevailing in the conflict, one would also think that a modicum of interest should be given to how Russia defines the conflict. In short, anyone who is interested in learning the lessons of the collective West’s failure in Ukraine should learn “to speak Putin.”
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Worn-Out Cold War Thinking
The problem is, those in the West who should be preparing a proper lexicon from which the Russian-Ukraine conflict could be more accurately assessed are instead operating from an outdated lexicon rooted in the language and mindset of a time that no longer exists, born of a Cold War mentality that prevents any deep-seated and relevant analysis of the true situation between Russia and the West.
Both the United States and NATO have described the Russia-Ukraine conflict as possessing existential consequences for Europe and the world, with the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, going so far as to declare in October 2022 that “Russia’s victory in the war against Ukraine will be a defeat of NATO,” adding ominously, “This cannot be allowed.”
Bad news, Mr. Stoltenberg — Russia has won. While the “Special Military Operation” has yet to be concluded, Russia has seized the strategic initiative across the board when it comes to conflict with Ukraine, forcing the Ukrainian military to terminate a counteroffensive, which the government of Ukraine and its NATO allies had invested tens of billions of dollars in military resources, and tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in hopes of achieving a decisive victory over the Russian military on the battlefield.
Today, Ukraine finds its military decimated by the fighting and unable to sustain itself as a cohesive combat force on the field of battle. The U.S. and NATO likewise find themselves unable and/or unwilling to continue supplying Ukraine with the money and material needed to continue to maintain a viable military presence on the battlefield.
Russia is in the process of transitioning away from a posture of flexible defense, and instead initiating offensive operations along the length of the line of contact designed to exploit opportunities presented by an increasingly depleted, and defeated, Ukrainian army.
U.S. President Joe Biden has likewise argued that a Russian victory was unacceptable.
“We can’t let Putin win,” Biden said earlier this month to put pressure on a U.S. Congress that has allowed the Ukrainian conflict to become wrapped up in domestic American politics, with key Republicans in both the Senate and House refusing to support a funding bill that lumps some $60 billion in Ukraine assistance together with money for Israel and immigration reform.
“Any disruption in our ability to supply Ukraine clearly strengthens Putin’s position,” Biden concluded.
Biden’s articulation of the quandary faced by his administration underscores the extent to which the U.S. and its European allies have personalized the Russian-Ukraine conflict. In their eyes, this is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war.
Indeed, Russia itself has been reduced to being a mere appendage of the Russian president. In this, Biden is not alone. An entire class of erstwhile Russian “experts” — including the likes of former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum; and a host of so-called national security experts, including former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia Andrea Kendall-Taylor and the former Russia Director for the National Security Council Fiona Hill — have all made the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia all about Putin.
In a recent interview with Politico, Hill, the co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin, published in 2015, mirrored the statements by Stoltenberg and Biden that defined the Russia-Ukraine conflict as an existential crisis.
Kendall-Taylor, who in 2022 co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Beginning of the End for Putin?” likewise views the conflict as an extension of Putin’s needs as an individual, more than Russia’s needs as a nation.
“Putin,” Kendall-Taylor told NPR in January 2022, before the start of the Special Military Operation,
“really is looking to keep Ukraine in Russia’s orbit. After 20 years of him being in power, he’s thinking about his legacy, and he wants to be the leader who returned Russia to greatness. And to do that, he has to restore Russian influence in Ukraine.
And for him, I think it’s really personal. Putin, over his 20 years — 22 years now in power, has tried and failed repeatedly to bring Ukraine back into the fold. And I think he senses that now is this — his time to take care of this unfinished business.”
Such an outcome, of course, is unacceptable, according to Kendall-Taylor. “I don’t think it’s overstating it to highlight how important the U.S. assistance is,” she recently told The New York Times. “If the assistance doesn’t continue, then this war takes on a radically different nature moving forward.”
Applebaum in November penned an article in The Atlantic titled “The Russian Empire Must Die,” wherein she argued that “a better future requires Putin’s defeat — and the end to imperial aspirations.” She recently gave her opinion of Putin’s legacy in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict.
“I don’t think there’s any question that Putin will be remembered as the man who really set out to destroy his own country,” Applebaum told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview last August. Putin, Applebaum declared,
“is somebody who has worsened the living standards, and freedom, and culture of Russia itself. He doesn’t seem to care about the well-being or prosperity of ordinary Russians. They’re just cannon fodder to him. He’s not interested in, you know, Russian achievements in infrastructure or art or in literature and in anything else. He has impoverished Russians. And he’s also brought back a form of dictatorship that I think most Russians had thought they’d left behind.”
What the Russian president is doing, Applebaum said, “is really destroying modern Russia. And I think that’s what he’ll be remembered for overall.”
‘Russia Is the Problem Because it Empowers Putin’
McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote a memoir, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador to Putin’s Russia. In a recent interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, McFaul stated that, “I changed my views as a result of this horrific, barbaric war in Ukraine, because Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine.” Russia, McFaul now claims, is the problem because Russia has empowered Putin.
McFaul backs up his assessment with a bit of revisionist history.
Calling Putin “a completely accidental leader of Russia,” McFaul labeled Putin “a creature of the existing regime” appointed by Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, and lacking in any meaningful political constituency.
Putin, McFaul claims, “wants to create this myth that ‘there was the chaos of the ‘90s, and I came in as the hero.’ That’s complete and utter nonsense,” McFaul asserts. “That’s not the history the way it was in real time.”
Given Putin’s lack of political pedigree, McFaul says, “we don’t necessarily know if Russians support him. How do you know when there’s not real free and fair elections, when there’s no real media? You can’t know if he’s popular or not in those conditions.”
McFaul says that “I changed my views” about the culpability of the Russian people for Putin
“as a result of this horrific, barbaric war in Ukraine, because Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine. There was no vote; there’s no referendum. We don’t know what Russians actually thought about that decision. There is public-opinion polling before it to suggest that they didn’t want that fight, including by independent organizations, even Western organizations.
But once he went in, there was support — as there usually is when countries go to war — and now there are Russians that are raping Ukrainian women and children; there are Russians that are committing massive atrocities inside Ukraine. So Putin can’t do those things without the support of Russians. And therefore, this excuse that Russians are not guilty and they shouldn’t be treated badly, and they shouldn’t be sanctioned because of autocracy, I disagree with that.”
Putin’s war, McFaul concludes, is now Russia’s war.
McFaul’s unsubstantiated allegations of Russian atrocities provide a clear picture of the fact-free foundation used by the former ambassador to shape his narrative of Putin’s Russia.
McFaul’s assertion of rape is particularly egregious, considering that, at the time of his interview — July 2023 — these allegations had been quashed by Ukraine itself following the revelations that Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament’s commissioner for human rights, had issued official statements using unverified information.
In a letter to the Parliament, Ukrainian journalists said Denisova’s reports were harmful to Ukraine, noting that the information put out by Denisova’s office was regarded as factual by the media, and was “then used in articles and in speeches by public figures.”
Denisova was fired in May 2022 — more than a year before McFaul echoed her discredited allegations in a living manifestation of the caution set forth by the Ukrainian journalists.
[See: Caitlin Johnstone: Official Behind Media Reports of Russian Atrocities Fired by Ukrainian Parliament]
McFaul premised much of his altered view regarding the co-responsibility of the Russian people for the conflict with Ukraine on his understanding of the events of the 1990’s, and how these events shaped the rise to political prominence of Vladimir Putin.
Curiously, McFaul asserts that any notion of the decade of the 1990s as being one of “chaos” for Russia is a myth. What makes this assertion particularly curious is that McFaul himself was personally involved with the Russia of the 1990s, and should know better.
McFaul arrived in Moscow in 1990 as a visiting scholar at Moscow State University. He later took a position as a consultant with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), self-described as “a nonprofit, nonpartisan, nongovernmental organization that has supported democratic institutions and practices in every region of the world,” blurring the line between academic and activist.
The NDI was founded in 1983 to promote “public diplomacy” operations in furtherance of U.S. national security interests. As the NDI’s representative in Moscow, McFaul actively supported “Democratic Russia,” a coalition of Russian politicians led by Yeltsin, whom McFaul later dubbed the “catalyst for the Cold War’s end.”
In his 2001 book, Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin, McFaul openly espoused the concept of “democracy” as it was manifested in the form of Yeltsin, even though McFaul knew only too well that Yeltsin was little more than the hand-picked puppet of the United States.
McFaul took umbrage at Putin’s rise to prominence and power, proffering instead an alternative reality which had Yeltsin, who resigned from the Russian presidency on New Years Eve 1999, appointing Boris Nemtsov (whom McFaul describes as the “heir apparent”) instead of Putin as his replacement.
McFaul never forgave Russia the sin of Putin’s appointment — in Russia’s Unfinished Revolution, he declared that the former KGB officer had “inflicted considerable damage to democratic institutions” in Russia, a remarkable example of personal prejudice, given that Putin took power in 2000, and McFaul’s book was published in 2001.
Moreover, McFaul engaged in a good deal of historical revisionism, given that there were no “democratic institutions” in Russia under Yeltsin — Russian tanks firing on the Russian Parliament in October 1993 on the orders of Yeltsin, combined with the open rigging of the 1996 election with the support of the United States, guaranteed that.
McFaul was more than familiar with this history — he helped shape the conditions that produced it — making his present-day amnesia suspect.
Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press. Via Consortium News
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Comments
13 responses to “Scott Ritter: On Speaking Plain ‘Putin’”
Repetitive use of the word invasion is pure propaganda . It clouds the reality to con the easily manipulated. Russia was asked to intervene by the Russian spesking people of the 2 areas in ukraine thst chose to secede from the corrupt western backed kiev govt.they chose independence, which the corrupt Kiev refused to allow.and suffered 4 years of attacks by kiev.of course,the u.s.ia not accused of invasion in iraq or Afghanistan are they?its always the recipient of American propaganda that is the big bad guy.the war mongering u.s.a. has never been asked to free anyone,it just barrels in and tends to twist facts to gain sympathy. Anyone see the u.s.a invade isn’treal to stop Palestinian genicide? Of course not.
Semantics and ignorance rule my congressmen. Scott is right about the words used to describe Russia and its intentions. Think back to the Cuban missile problem. Reality is that it was Russia that saved the world then and are doing it again today. The US declared war on Russia/Soviet Union by stopping a Russian ship on the high seas during the Cuban missile problem and a Russian naval commander refused his order to nuke the US thus saved the US. Today Russia is holding the line and not annihilating Ukraine even though they could. Russia wants the Nazis out of Ukraine, weapons off its borders, and the ethnic cleansing of Russians stopped. The US has refused peace two or three times, encouraging war at every turn. My congressmen believe that Russia is trying to take the EU by force because they are being fed words from the past by New American Century and other “lie tanks”. Today’s Ukrainian problem could easily be solved but the US refuses. The Cuban missile problem was solved when Kennedy agreed to remove nukes from Turkey and Russia agreed to remove nukes from Cuba. Today the US is totally controlled by Zio-Nazis who are genocidal whackos. Anything can happen.
McFaul’s a gigantic lying lunatic propagandist who could get us all killed.
His below quote fits another area somewhat well. It definitely doesn’t fit with Russia’s liberating SMO, but if I tweak his stupid quote pertaining to Russia and just, well, there, there, here we go, a bit more accurate:
“and now there are Israelis that are raping Palestinian women and children; there are Israelis that are committing massive atrocities inside Gaza. So Netanyahu can’t do those things without the support of Israeli citizens. And therefore, this excuse that Israelis are not guilty and they shouldn’t be treated badly, and they shouldn’t be sanctioned because of autocracy, I disagree with that.”
There, it’s fixed.
The ugly truth is that 99% of the Israeli citizens, support any and all of the policies implemented by Netanyahu. Additionally, another ugly truth is the fact that no matter who runs the affairs of the Zionist entity is inconsequential, since the ideology behind the government will never change.
We must pray the this malevolent country is erased from the map as the only possible solution.
I wouldn’t trust Russia. Russia is full of empty rhetoric when it comes to defending what Russia calls “allies”. In truth, Russia has been part of the U.S.-Israel terrorism enterprise and wish to be back where it was in 2020. What have Russia done to end the illegal U.S. occupation of Syria and the ongoing Israel’s terror? Zilch. Russia is a Zionist stooge scared to upset the U.S. and Israel. Despite the mass murder of unarmed innocent Palestinian women and children, Russia continues to support the Fascist-Barbaric Jewish regime. Remember, Russia has big leverage over Netanyahu and his Fascistic regime. Listen to Lavrov recent Q & A. He was begging the U.S. and the West, as if nothing happened in the last two years. It is a Slavic mentality. Only recently, Putin has acknowledged his “naivety” toward the West and his long illusion of being part of the “West Family”.
The mass murder of Palestinian women and children by Israeli Jews continues because the U.S. and Russia support it. Whether it is Russia or the Arab League, Turkey or Iran, the sign of cowardice to stop the ongoing Palestinian holocaust by Jews is visible to everyone and Russia bears as much responsibility as Israel and the U.S.-led collective West. The Russian regime calls HAMAS legitimate resistance operations against the Jewish Nazis as “terrorist”, but it calls Jewish Nazis attacks on Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children as “disproportionate reaction”. There hasn’t been a single pro-Palestinian demonstration in Russia by Russians. Furthermore, the Russian regime and the Russian media have no qualms describing the Afghan Resistance (Taliban) “terrorists” and is refusing to establish diplomatic relation with Afghanistan. Please, read RT (Russia Today) to see how despicable and racist Russia and Russians are. RT is a despicable racist Zionist propaganda. It is extremist propaganda outlet and should be banned in civilised nations. Finally,empty rhetoric aside, Russia is extremist and anti-non-European.
I agree with you; as you already know from my past comments exposing Putin and his political background. He is a man who owes everything to the Jewish mafia running the country’s affairs. In fact he’s being pushed against the wall by America, and forced to defend the motherland from utter destruction, despite concessions and an appeasing attitude in the recent past. Therefore we must be grateful to the last three Democratic administrations for breaking many links between Russia and the West. From now on there is no return to the past or face the rebellion of its own people who have learned very well the danger that they’re in.
I’m not disagreeing with you but wonder what is racist and Zionist about RT? I view BBC, CNN, and others as much worse particularly BBC. Most of the US news outlets such as the state department, New American Century etc. are feeders for US news. US need outlets have gotten so ridiculous that I stopped listening to them.
First of all, America falls into another category in itself, and its case is unequal to any other in history. My opinion on the Russian elites as being mostly Jews that are to a very good extent connected to Israel and world Zionism is a matter of record and not an allegation. But Russian society has cultural, political and religious roots that are not in any way associated with Zionism. It so happened that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia by measures taken by traitor Boris Yeltsin was delivered free of charge to this newly created Jewish Mafia that today runs the affairs of state in the country. One day obviously they will have to be disposed of their ill gotten riches that by right belong to the Russian people, and thrown out or liquidated if necessary. These Jewish characters are not related in any way shape or form to Russian revolutionaries of Jewish ancestry, but are connected to world Jewish centers of power in America, Europe and everywhere else. Jews by their nature can be either the best that can humanity has to offer, or the very unsurpassed worst.
Typical of this group of people throughout history. RT good or bad is pure Russian.
Putin is still an ‘enigma’ to the greedy and avaricious in Switzerland or London or Washington, i.e. wherever the thuggish, banksters are domiciled. The GREEDY ahve made it more than obvious that ‘they’ are desperate to get their hands back on Russia’s resource-wealth. Putin is the an annoyance, because for decades he gave the impression that he is ‘part-of-the-CLUB’ and certainly appeared, and still appears. to be doing the bidding/s of the DS/swamp-creatures via their big-pharma and banker mobsters, as he and his bureaucrats have demonstrated with their nod-and-a-wink for the ‘vaccination’ and CBDC kabuki. Albeit, he is a master at subtly distancing himself from the stench of past oligarchical-avarice.
When all is said-and-done … if I were a Russian, I would still rather have him, ‘inside the tent’ … especially when he decides to ‘take-a-leak’.
The United States has not won a war since WW 2. Biden works for Israel, and more nations are seeing the unfairness in this. Sadly, as more and more Americans are being laid off—and in all kinds of jobs–this seems like the time Biden/Blinken to drop funding Israel/ Ukraine and work for the benefit of all Americans.
Russia knocked out about Three forth of the Russian military so it’s a stretch saying that the US won that war.
Russia knocked out about 3/4 of the German military (correction)
There are no good guys in this world, just the winners and the losers. Putin just wins more often than the more frequent losers like Joe Biden. The Russians happen to be shrewder than NATO. As Macron said “NATO is braindead.” NATO, EU, US have drank their own koolaid for so long they’ve lost touch with reality. They are really good at getting their pictures taken in a room full of flags and declaring unity, at the same time waffling on commitments and letting the US shoulder most of the cost while sending hapless Ukrainians to the front to commit patriotic suicide.