Russia has changed little over the past 400 years. Yes, Russians now drive cars instead of oxcarts, but from a political, cultural, military, and geopolitical standpoint, Russia and how it behaves has changed remarkably little. In fact, the run-up to and trajectory of the war in Ukraine is very much a repeat of Russian history. Yet Western governments have completely ignored this, and their obliviousness is proving costly.
The Russian nation is more dependent on an autocrat and security state than any other European nation, and it has been for centuries — even before the Soviet era — whether it was the streltsy, Preobrazhensky Guard, Okhrana, Cheka, KGB, or siloviki. The wealthy aristocrats, now called oligarchs (previously boyars) never made a serious bid to circumscribe the autocrats’ power, unlike in most European nations; the Russian Orthodox Church has been dependent on the state since at least 1700; and, as for the masses, they have always been viewed as an instrument of the state or a resource to be exploited.
Russia Has Always Paved Its Own Way
Russia has been expansionist since its days as Muscovy, with only military defeat stunting its growth. Russian expansionism (or imperialism) has always been opportunistic and has primarily involved feasting on smaller, weaker nations. Russia has never defeated a modern great power except in coalition with another great power, not to mention that its tactics — the use of mass, brute force — have meant extraordinarily high casualty rates going back to Napoleon. (READ MORE: G20 New Delhi Summit: A Win for the Global South)
Through the mid-19th century, Russia expanded in all directions, defeating the decaying Ottoman Empire and seizing Polish and Swedish territories with considerable assistance from Austria and Prussia. Its sweep east toward the Pacific faced weak opposition from feudal khanates and primitive Siberian peoples. Only when Russia finally faced a significant foe in China’s Qing dynasty (1689) did it stop. Russia’s great coup de grâce was ejecting Napoleon (1812), but the final defeat (1813) only happened with a British-Austrian-Prussian coalition.
Russia’s westward expansion ended with the Crimean defeat (1856), at which point it pivoted east. From 1864 to 1884, Russia crushed the central Asian khanates (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan). In 1860, Russia took advantage of China’s weakness after the Opium Wars to grab what is now the Russian Far East.
In the wake of French and Austrian defeats and in tacit support of German unification, Russia attacked the Ottomans (1877). Yet British and Austrian opposition combined with German neutrality forced Russia to surrender much of its gain. Russian expansion in northeast Asia only ended when defeated by Japan (1905). Defeated in the east and hemmed in central Asia by Britain, Russia turned its focus to the Balkans, which contributed mightily to the outbreak of World War I.
The Soviet Union continued Russia’s expansionist, opportunistic policy, using victory in 1945 to create an Eastern European empire and dependencies in Mongolia and North Korea. Only American military commitments prevented further Russian expansion west, south, and through the Korean peninsula.
That’s a long trip to make the point that Putin’s aggression in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014 and 2022) are entirely normal within the sweep of Russian history. Also normal are civilian massacres, co-option of local elites, mistreatment of POWs, and efforts to “Russify” the population — all tactics exercised in tandem with Russian expansion since the 16th century and completely unappreciated by the West.
And this is the fatal error by the West. The Ukraine war does not stem from some contrived grievance over alleged NATO aggression but from the failure of the Western foreign policy cognoscenti to understand that Russia is different from the West. Russia follows its own history and interests. The sacred “rules-based order” cuts no ice with the Russian security state. It is not the addition of NATO members that invites Russian aggression; it is the strange combination of Western intellectual arrogance, cultural/historical ignorance, and shrinking at the use of force that encourages aggression.
Also normal for Russian nationalists is the idea that Ukrainians are really Russian. As historian Dominic Lieven notes, in the 19th century, Ukrainians were considered “Little Russians” — more a regional group rather than a truly separate ethnicity. The rise of nationalism was always incomplete in Ukraine, and considering Ukrainians “Russian” adds considerably to a Russian ethnic population in demographic decline. Again, Western conceptions of the nation-state and its legitimacy are not accepted by Russia.
Predictions Guided by History
Based on Russian history, the Russo-Ukraine war has proceeded in a predictable manner. An opportunistic Russian invasion of a weaker borderland featuring mass brute force, repression, and looting has turned into a grinding war with an utter refusal to concede anything. The costs of the war have been transferred to the Russian populace, who have stoically and unhappily trudged along. Incompetence, corruption, and technological inferiority result in high casualties. Like several attempts before, a rebellion was easily suppressed with the ringleader executed.
What century is this again?
If historic precedent continues, what could be expected going forward? How could this war conclude? A few thoughts:
Russia will not break up. This idea is more fanfiction than reality. No nation annexed by Russia has ever been permitted independence without acquiescence by Moscow. The various ethnic enclaves are too isolated to gain any foreign assistance and would surely be swallowed back, just as they were after the Russian Civil War (1917–23) and Chechnya (1999–2009). (RELATED: Prigozhin Dead in a Plane Crash — How Russian, How Putin)
Putin’s demise precedes any settlement. Since the 1850s, every Russian defeat or stalemate but one has been preceded by the death or dethronement of the autocrat who started the war. The one exception was the Russo-Japanese War, where the only nationwide rebellion in Russian history nearly toppled the Romanovs. But Crimea, World War I, Korea, and Afghanistan were not settled until Nicholas I, Kerensky, Stalin, and the Brezhnev-Andropov-Chernenko gerontocracy all fell.
Western peace feelers are utterly useless. Russian wars end either in the capitulation of its opponent or when the Russian state decides it cannot continue and “taps out.” At no time — going back to Napoleon — have proposed negotiations from external agents initiated a settlement. Thus, any proactive efforts by the West to seek a peace deal will fail and are likely to be viewed as weaknesses, encouraging more aggression by Russia. Only when Russia decides the war is hopeless will it come to the table.
An endless, frozen conflict is not foreordained. If Ukraine is properly armed and has credible security guarantees, Russia is more likely to direct its attention elsewhere. There will still be hostility, but opportunistic Russia will be more likely to move on. That’s bad news for Georgia and Kazakhstan but good for Ukraine.
Times Do Change
There is no evidence that Russia has broken away from its historic roots and behavior. But times do change. Never has the technological and training difference been bigger. Undermanned Ukraine is beating the Russians with limited aid and second-hand American weapons. The United States is not fighting with one hand tied behind its back — it is fighting with the tip of its pinkie finger.
Russia is experiencing a demographic meltdown. Its time-worn strategy of attrition, heedless of costs to its own populace, may have run its course. Russia must maintain a domestic security force and needs labor for its extractive industries. That leaves it scraping the bottom of the barrel for troops. After emptying its prisons, Russia is now press-ganging immigrants and recruiting from as far away as Cuba. (READ MORE: A Lesson From the War in Ukraine: Don’t Rely on ‘the Kindness of Strangers’)
It may well be that Ukraine can turn the tables and make attritional war work for it. That would mean conserving its own troops as much as possible and primarily seeking to wreak maximum casualties, even if that means limited territorial gains in the short term.
The old saw from George Santayana that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat may not be exactly accurate, but there is a lot of truth to it. A large nation like Russia does not engage in the same pattern of behavior for centuries for no reason. The failure of the West to seriously consider Russian history and past behavior has contributed mightily to the morass in Ukraine — and this applies not to just the supporters of Ukraine.
It seems every self-styled expert on all sides of the conflict with Russia is really just pushing his or her own pre-conceived agenda and hammering away at whatever round peg in a square hole. Instead of falling in love with their own prejudices, personal values, and intelligence, perhaps it is time to drop the blinders and understand history and reality.
Keith Naughton, PhD, is a principal at Silent Majority Strategies, a regulatory and public affairs firm. He is the author of Washington Gold Rush: The Competition for Congressional Earmarks. He is a politics and public policy contributor.