Why Ukraine is not a proxy war, just read Putins own words

Mar 7, 2025, 2:58 PM

Recent history is often muddy, full of distortions and attempts at revision via dialectical malware. I see it paraded on a daily basis here and everywhere else, even polluting the minds of our various leaders, so I thought I would share some meaningful words from Vladimir Putin himself on the matter to see if it might illuminate some things for you.

In 2021, Putin wrote this essay for both Russian and Ukrainian audiences to lay out his pov on the history of Russia and Ukraine, and he went into some detail about the anti-Russia “project” and its negative consequences for his vision of a unified Russia and Ukraine. He clearly saw the influence of Western capitalists attempting to plant roots in Ukraine and the competitive landscape that Russia would be forced into in the future. When you read it, you might notice that the way he lays out the challenges and motivations characterizes a nationalist and colonial mindset, where Ukraine’s natural resources and people solely exist to serve Mother Russia. Note that of the 7,000 words he wrote, NATO is only mentioned once.

As a side quest, you can also read what his deputies in Russia have had to say about Ukraine and it becomes even clearer. The Russian equivalent of Stephen Miller is Vladislav Surkov who is Putin’s deputy. He suggested that Russian leaders never believed Ukraine was a nation, and that even the idea was a “disorder of the mind”. Surkov has said “there is no Ukraine, only a brochure.” Read some 1930s German nationalists, and you’ll find the exact same rhetoric. Like German nationalists who wanted to right the wrongs of the Treaty of Versailles. Likewise, it was a colonial ideology that motivated Putin to invade.

Marco Rubio’s suggestion that we are engaged in a proxy war ignores these points, and it completely dismisses the agency and will of Ukrainian people who have stood up against overwhelming odds. If they were interested in joining Russia at all, surely they would have capitulated in the first week or month of the conflict. Nothing of the sort has happened. Ukrainians will to fight has demonstrated the opposite.

Calling it a proxy war completely rewrites the evolution of American foreign policy over the last thirteen years.

The fact is that Obama attempted to reset the American Russian relationship in 2010. He and Russian President Medvedev signed a deal on nukes and they had also tried to improve relations via increased trade. What was going on in Russia at the time was a rebirth of Russian nationalism. For example, the Russian Duma passed several laws attempting to rehabilitate Stalin as a great Russian figure to be revered, and rewrote a version of Soviet history that completely denied the facts of Soviet Unions invasion of Poland. It was a terrible sign about where they were headed as a nation.

Russian nationalism during these years was bolstered by the countries economic success vis-a-vis the energy markets, so they sought to push the envelope further to cement their sphere of influence in the Middle East with Syria, and then Ukraine in 2014.

With their invasion of Ukraine, first with the little Green men, then Russian paratroopers, Obama finally got the message and our policy stance shifted to containing Russia’s colonial ambitions, both economically via sanctions, and militarily in the Middle East and in Ukraine. Containment included support for Ukrainians who didn’t share Putin’s vision for their side of Eurasia. We were in Kiev on 2014 because we saw Russian nationalism as a threat to democratic principles around the world.

Rubio calling it a proxy war is not accurate in the least, because it gives Russia’s colonial ambitions and nationalist aggression a free pass at our expense. Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Trump, and now Rubio have tried to make this story one about American overreach via NATO expansion, which is problematic because it completely distorts the reality, and discounts the actions and rhetoric of Russian leadership as less consequential when it is the total opposite.

Putin admits it himself, if they care to understand what he writes.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181

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Re: Why Ukraine is not a proxy war, just read Putins own words

Putin has definitely been the leading force

Why Ukraine is not a proxy war, just read Putins own words

Re: Why Ukraine is not a proxy war, just read Putins own words

Putin has definitely been the leading force

Also, a reminder of where things stood in 2013

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