There is no way to know the mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But the bombing of a maternity ward in the city of Mariupol, whether a strategic mistake or a hyperbolic media narrative, outraged almost every well-meaning individual. Of course, here we must not lose sight of the old Greek wisdom that “in every war the first victim is the truth”.

Media around the world presents this war (call it aggression or a special military operation) in every way, from pure pedestrian stuff to deep geopolitical history. The prolonged duration and type of resistance Russians face (if true) prompts me to add another dimension, “War of Memories”, about contested legacy and contested victimization.

If one carefully observes Putin’s policies since he was appointed president of Russia, one senses a strong undercurrent of memory politics, a deep sense of loss of empire and the status of a world power of his homeland. . I wonder if Putin, having grown up in the 70s, no longer appreciates Bolshevik ideals. Rather, he idolizes leaders like Brezhnev, whose state goals were no longer the Leninist “increasing fusion of nationality into a New Soviet Man,” but Tsarist Russia, the consolidation and centralization of Soviet state power burying once and for all the question of the autonomy of minorities (24th Congress of the Communist Party). Therefore, Putin considers the Bolsheviks’ treatment of Ukraine as separate from Russia and their generous barter of Russian land to appease non-Russian (mainly Ukrainian) minorities to be a historical mistake.

In today’s realpolitik, what needs to be seriously debated is this denial of Ukraine and of distinct Ukrainian identity, no matter how closely intertwined the two have been over the centuries.

For some, it is the overt version of the neoconservative foreign policy of democratization and forced integration of nations into the new economic order. When the peaceful Euromaidan protesters refused to calm down, the government used heavy-handed and cruel police tactics. Then suddenly a large group of well-built and well-armed black-clad fascist groups descended and turned an event into a violent clash with armed police, and the state apparatus crumbled. Readers may recall a similar sequence of events in the unrest in Kazakhstan, which was quickly brought under control, and an alleged exercise in regime change failed.

The point here is that President Putin’s goal of denazification is not a figment of the imagination, but a few other statements are. And that adds a dimension of memory warfare, making the anticipated resistance tougher than expected.

On July 12, 2021, Putin published an essay “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. More than a historical essay, his position paper argued that an independent Ukraine is a brainchild of the Soviet era and was, to a large extent, created at the expense of Russian land. A more important part was that “true Ukrainian sovereignty is possible only in partnership with the Russian state”.

It would be unwise to enter into the causality of events in centuries-old relationships. The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine all claim “kyiv Rus,” the kingdom of Ukraine’s 9th-century predecessors, as their cultural ancestor.

The Ukrainian nationalism project began in the late 19th century and accelerated at the end of World War I with other Slavic communities under the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires calling for nationalism. Having started as a pan-Slavic movement, it quickly turned into an ethno-Slavic project. Then, under Russian nationalism, the third project developed the project of Ukraine as a “little Russian” identity both derived from the Kievan Rus of the Middle Ages and sharing a common religion (Orthodox Christianity) and one language (Old Church Slavonic).

However, due to the aggressions, the territory of Ukraine was constantly divided and changed hands. Galician Ukrainians under the Austrian Empire experienced “the emergence of modern democratic culture”. Despite ethnic differences, there was limited accountability and a semblance of the rule of law. So a Slavic plaintiff with a motley appearance was granted a hearing and justice was due. There was a free labor market for the craftsman. Working abroad was possible, and many Ukrainians could travel west and work in the industrializing west. Interestingly, remittances to Galician Ukraine amounted to USD 9 billion at their peak.

Even in memories of World War II, the occupation under German and Russian rule in Ukrainian memory was largely outweighed by the Russians, and the experiences of the Soviet authorities during the withdrawal – acting not as a native government but as a conqueror, who employs a scorched-earth policy so that the invader finds the area totally unsuitable for habitation – leaving a deep sense of antagonism.

The two years of German occupation were devoid of the paranoia of being watched, of being drafted into the army against their will, and of no looting during the retreat.

Ukrainian nationalist movements have cleverly helped these individual memories coalesce into a strong Ukrainian identity. Discrimination by the Moscow elite and attempts at Russification have further increased the otherness of Russians and Russia. Memory adapts over time. Older, more general memories lose their specificities and become simplified and blend into the larger narrative that prevails.

Ukraine’s elite cleverly used their memories to make the newly formed nation a ploy in Global Dominance’s Neo-Con game plan. And the most painful historical irony has been to appropriate without appreciating the non-negligible benefit in terms of social and industrial development during its 70 years as part of the socialist experiment. Two glaring examples are the energy infrastructure of Fifteen Nuclear Reactors which helps the country to export energy, and the many quality educational institutes where thousands of international students study.

Such a politics of memory could proliferate in today’s unipolar world. A close look at the 35 countries absent from the UN General Assembly may give clues to future trouble spots.