Written by Sara McClaran
The Russian Federation launched a full military invasion of its neighboring country Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24.
Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, but became its own sovereign country after its dissolution in 1991. Ukraine was recognized as a country by Russia on Aug. 28 of that year. Instructor of Bible and ministry Gary Jackson, who was living in Russia when Vladimir Putin was first elected as Russia’s president in 2000, said Putin never accepted that reality.
“Putin was very clear from the very beginning that he thought that was a serious mistake,” Jackson said. “He’s been kind of, like, making moves ever since he became president to kind of restore this idea of Russian influence.”
Jackson said part of the reason Russia made a military move now was the lack of response when Russia occupied part of Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014.
“There were little hand-slapping sanctions, but nothing happened, really nothing, and whether he’s misread the will of Western Europe or not is yet to be seen,” Jackson said. “He certainly probably wasn’t expecting that they were going to put on this unified front like they’re doing right now, and he was also not expecting, I believe, that the Ukrainian people were going to fight.”
Director of the criminal justice program Samuel Jeffrey said Putin has been trying to gain back territory for the last 20 years by influencing the government of Ukraine and by prompting small revolutions. The events now, Jeffrey said, are more an outflow of what has been happening over the past few years than something new.
“What’s happening is the largest land war in Europe since the end of World War II,” Jeffery said. “In a larger sense, what’s happening is a change of the global paradigm.”
Before, the paradigm was one of global terrorism, Jeffrey said, but that ended when U.S. President Joe Biden pulled troops out of Afghanistan.
“What [Putin]’s done has shifted it back to a paradigm in which state-on-state war … is much more likely than it was prior,” Jeffrey said.
Part of Putin’s reasoning and Russia’s propaganda, Jackson said, is that Ukraine is anti-Russian and anti-slavic. Putin has also tried to label Ukrainian society as neo-Nazi, as in his address on Feb. 21 where he states that Ukranian society “was faced with the rise of far-right nationalism, which rapidly developed into aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism.” Despite this, Jackson said not everyone is believing it — especially those who have a connection to Ukraine or who have high profile personalities who are more aware of what is going on in the world.
“I would say probably still the majority [in Russia] would support him, but there’s a growing, pretty vocal minority,” Jackson said.
Associate professor of communication Ginger Blackstone said much of the protesting stemmed from a lack of control. While China locked down on the internet for its citizens when it was first gaining popularity, Russia did not, and that has impacted the effect of their propaganda.
“Russians are able to look at alternate news sites and see a completely different story told from a different perspective,” Blackstone said. “They’re not able to really control the thought or the message and run their own population.”
Jeffery said Putin as an autocrat won’t be bothered by the protests until they reach a critical mass, but the fact that there are protests is important.
“It’s noteworthy that any protests are happening,” Jeffrey said. “Protests can land you in prison for 20 years in Russia.”
