Roman Popadiuk, left, and U.S. Rep. Roger Williams field questions on the conflict in Ukraine.
Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has largely failed to achieve any modicum of success largely because an underdog Ukrainian military has overachieved through Western adaptations, training and supplies, as well as a nationalistic vim and vigor that has blown Russian forces off their feet.
“The Ukrainians are very motivated, fighting for their own territory,” said Roman Popadiuk, the United States’ first ambassador to Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and guest of the Fort Worth Club on Monday.
“They are also fighting against an historic enemy, one that over the centuries has tried to destroy their language and culture and ruled them for centuries. They have a cause to fight for. The Russians don’t have a cause. Their troops don’t know why they’re in this conflict at all. You have motivation, skill on the Ukrainian part. On the Russian side, they don’t have that.”
Popadiuk, today president of the Diplomacy Center Foundation in Washington, D.C., and U.S. Rep. Roger Williams, a Republican and Fort Worth native whose district stretches from Austin north to the very southern reaches of Greater Fort Worth, took part in a midday conversation during a luncheon put on by High Water Strategies. Kasey Pipes of High Water Strategies was the moderator.
Yet, the conflict likely can't last much longer and in all probability will end in a stalemate that will see Ukraine give up some territory, Popadiuk said.
To fully understand the conflict requires a lesson in history.
Most Ukrainian ethnographic territory was absorbed by the czarist Russian empire in the late 18th century after generations of Muscovite pressure. After the collapse of Czar Nicholas II in the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Ukraine achieved a period of independence, but it was short-lived. Ukrainians lived a brutal existence under the Soviet hand, including two forced famines in 1921-22 and Stalin’s collectivization program in 1932-33. Between them, at least eight million Ukrainians died. During WWII, German and Soviet armies were responsible for the deaths of up to eight million more.
Since 1991, the new Russia under Putin has continually tried to undermine Ukraine’s right to self-determination, its efforts in democracy and an economic shift to the West, including aspirations to join the NATO alliance, as a number of former Soviet republics have done.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, 14 former republics or others under the shadow of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe have joined NATO, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
Talk of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was intolerable to Putin, who has never conceded that Ukraine has ever been an independent country from Mother Russia, that it was historically part of the culture and territory of Russia.
He used NATO expansion as a pretext to the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well as this year’s invasion, though he is also psychologically clearly Russian, whose leaders have always desired geographic buffers against invasion and the paranoia of invasions and survival of state over the centuries. It is seen in Victory Day, a commemoration of the end of WWII held annually in May. It is like a civic religion, according to Greg Carleton, a professor of Russian studies at Tufts. "It's a way to never let the Second World War go. But even more than that, it's almost that the war itself is never seen as being over."
“NATO was not a threat to Russia,” Popadiuk said. “Putin knows NATO was not a threat.”
NATO expansion and its Article 5 war guarantees — that is, an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all — has been widely debated in the U.S. among pundits, policy makers, and academia.
It is clear why, say, Montenegro, would want the U.S. to fight on its behalf, but why would the U.S. risk a collision, possibly a nuclear collision, with Russia where a vital U.S. interest is not at stake?
“We can’t live in isolation,” Popadiuk said. “We are a global power. We have global interests, and our economy depends on the free flow of markets and open trade. We all benefit from the regional stability and the stabilizing factor that a [democratic] Ukraine can be in that part of the world.”
Popadiuk believes Putin’s Plan B war aims include sealing off Ukraine from ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azoz, which would have a dramatic impact on exports in grain and steel. Even cause in the well-documented baby formula shortage can be partly found in the war and interruptions in trade, he said.
Patrick Sly, president of global nutrition at Reckitt, which produces Enfamil, told CBS News recently that production has been hindered because of an interruption of sunflower oil from Ukraine.
Popadiuk also cautioned that China and Russia are out to change the pillars of international order as it concerns human rights, democracy, the free market economy, and the will of international law.
As it concerns Putin’s immediate future, Popadiuk threw cold water on the widespread expectation (hope?) that the despot might be ripe for coup, another element in Russian history that has been deployed a number of times. (The speculation about his health is anybody’s guess.)
Putin’s two sources of power are the oligarchs, who owe an allegiance to him because of the wealth he generated for them, and the general population, which, through Putin’s control of the media, has accepted his narrative that the fight is a reliving of World War II with the Nazis of Ukraine, despite it having a democratically elected Jewish president. Furthermore, the invasion is a fight against an encroaching West, which seeks to destroy Russia.
“He seems to be in a fairly good position right now,” said Popadiuk. “The only way that could change is if the cost-benefit analysis [money and casualties versus actual benefit] changes.”
Or, if the threats of the use of nuclear arms, which he issues metaphorically, become more than saber rattling, the Russian president could be in trouble with his own.
“If Putin were to use a tactical nuclear weapon it would happen in one of two ways,” Popadiuk said. “He would detonate something in a very low yield in an isolated area just to show his strength. If he were to use a tactical nuclear weapon in a [highly populated] city, I think the inner circles around Putin would say, ‘Timeout. You can be Slim Pickens riding that missile down in “Dr. Strangelove.” But I’ve got news for you, Vlad: We want to live, we want our children to live, we want our grandchildren to live. We’re not going to escalate this into a nuclear catastrophe with Russia being the one who started it.’”