The Soviet Union’s sunset years hardly felt like an innocent age to those who lived through them, but to recall the hopes and aspirations of that era is to rue the naiveties of those days. “A common European house” was how President Mikhail Gorbachev pictured the continent’s future; “a Europe whole and free”, in the words of George HW Bush, his American counterpart. But, as the tussle over Ukraine has shown, Russia and the west are rivals once again. The ceasefire signed on September 5 gives both sides a chance to overcome their own illusions. They should take it, lest the conflict become a direct military confrontation.
Western leaders seem to believe their own propaganda. A failed Ukraine, they suggest, could be cradled into western Europe and become democratic and prosperous – and maybe it could, if they waited 20 years and could count on energetic support from Russia. But Moscow, they are convinced, is hell-bent on grabbing land, a hunger from which it can be distracted only through the infliction of pain. Hence the sanctions, the war of disinformation and the reinvigoration of Nato as a military force.
It is a strategy that rests on misunderstanding and miscalculation. The misunderstanding is that this is, at root, a stand-off over Ukraine. To Russians, it is something far more important: a struggle to stop others expanding their sphere of control into territories they believe are vital to Russia’s survival.