Ukraine and the question of nationalism

One of the pretexts that Russian President Vladimir Putin used to justify the military invasion of Ukraine was the presence of “Ukrainian nationalists” who hate Russian speakers and carry out “genocide” against them, especially in the east of the country. Although this pretext is part of Putin's lying machine, it is based on what is real, that is, the presence of nationalists in Ukraine. The difference here is between nationalists whom Putin makes “neo-Nazis” and “drug users” and nationalists who are present in every country, and more clearly, between nationalists whose role is to be exaggerated as part of political propaganda, and nationalists who are in fact part of an ideological and political combination that ruled the country in the past period , and can be governed by any other country.

Putin's politicized conception of the issue of nationalism in Ukraine was invested in, before the invasion, by encouraging the residents of some eastern regions to secede, not based on the right to self-determination, but rather to use them as influence and a base for the invasion later. The issue of these residents did not develop in an internal context as much as it was controlled by Russia. In the sense that the Ukrainian contradictions were not allowed to be resolved democratically, based on the transformation that took place in 2014, but Moscow rushed to invest in them to undermine the new anti-Kremlin authority.

Here, exaggerating the role of the "Ukrainian nationalists" is paralleled by investing in the cause of Ukrainians classified as close to Moscow, and making them a tool in the hands of Putin's authoritarianism. The latter manipulated the demographics in its favour, and widened the gap between the two parties, and this manipulation is often ignored when a number of researchers address the issue of divisions in Ukraine, where the focus is on the conflict between the Russians and these militants of their Ukrainian identity, as an entry point for analysis, which draws an intersection Unintentional with the false propaganda of Putinism, seeking to politicize the divisions in its favor. The basis of the hypothesis that these researchers follow is the isolation of divisions from politicization, economic transformations and forms of government.

Nationalism in Ukraine, according to them, is a fixed issue that does not change, despite the existence of a nascent democracy, which could have been an opportunity to form an inclusion space, open, deliberative and flexible, accompanied by a free economy linked to Europe, so that nationalism would dissolve in the broad formation of the country, instead of hardening and turning towards extremism.

The opportunity to control nationalism, through the form of governance, economy, and integration into Europe, is equivalent in a negative sense to the Putinist model, which wants to invest in the issue of nationalism for authoritarian goals, not only in Ukraine, but in Russia itself, as nationalism is part of the regime’s propaganda about “recovery.” The glories of the Soviet Union are more than an element in the formation of the Russian political community. A good number of press reports said that Putin's invading army is facing fierce resistance in the eastern regions of the country, which Russia considers its incubator, and it is inferred that there is a division in Ukraine. One of these reports explained the resistance in these regions, despite the presence of a Russian-speaking majority, by saying that “the last three decades have produced a national figure that unites most Ukrainians, betting on the European option and heading west.”

Apart from the report’s exaggeration of the impact of the “universal identity,” the transfer of nationalism from the political horizon that mitigates its extremism, to the war horizon that hardens it, as Putin did, is not guaranteed results. Moscow’s arming of the population of the east of the country, who defines themselves against “nationalism” will further harden this tendency, and make even the regions of eastern Ukraine inaccessible to the “tsar” who deals with nationalism as a guaranteed element in his expansionist agenda, and not as a feeling that moves according to external threats and the nature of The political system and its accommodating institutions become stronger and defensive in the first case and weaken and become more willing to integrate with other elements in the second case.