Ukraine and Russia exchange prisoners of war
“I am in shock,” he said, “just like two years ago, on February 24, when the war began.”
It is a collection of drama, bloodshed and tragedy. The war brought death and destruction to Ukraine. And the Russian military also suffered major losses:
February 24, 2022 was a turning point.
But looking back, the direction was clear. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea and intervened militarily in the Donbass region for the first time. Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020 and arrested in 2021. Domestic repression in Russia existed before the invasion of Ukraine, but has intensified since then.
As for Vladimir Putin, two years into the war, he appears increasingly confident and determined to defeat his enemies at home and abroad. He criticizes the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union and portrays Russia's war in Ukraine as a war against Russia for the “collective West,” an existential struggle for his country's survival.
How and when will this end? I can't predict the future. However, I can remember the past.
I recently found a dusty folder in a closet at home with copies of my reports on Russia from more than 20 years ago: Putin's first years in power.
Consulting them was like reading about another galaxy, light years away.
“According to a recent poll, 59% of Russians support the idea of Russia joining the European Union…” I wrote on May 17, 2001.
“NATO and Russia are actively seeking closer cooperation: a signal to both sides that the real threat to world peace does not lie with each other…” reads a text dated November 20, 2001.
1 of 2 Russian President Vladimir Putin during his annual address to the population on December 14, 2023 — Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Russian President Vladimir Putin during his annual address to the population on December 14, 2023 — Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/ AP
But when did it all fall apart? I'm not the only one wondering this.
“The Putin with whom I met, with whom I did good business, with whom I founded a NATORussia Council, is very, very different from this almost megalomaniacal moment,” said former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson recently when we met in London.
“The man who stood right next to me in May 2002 and said Ukraine was a sovereign, independent nationstate that would make its own security decisions is now the man saying that.” [a Ucrânia] is not a nation state.”
Robertson even remembers that Putin was considering Russia joining NATO.
“In my second meeting with Putin, he specifically said, 'When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?' I said, 'We're not inviting countries to join NATO, they're demanding it.' And he said, 'We're not going to stand in line next to a bunch of countries that don't matter.'”
However, he does not believe that Putin really wanted to apply for NATO membership.
“He wanted it to be offered to him because, in my opinion, he always thought and thinks more and more that Russia is a great nation on the world stage and needs the respect that the Soviet Union had,” he says.
“He would never feel comfortable in an alliance of equal nations all sitting at the same table discussing and debating common political interests.”
Robertson emphasizes that the Soviet Union was once recognized as the world's secondlargest superpower, but Russia cannot make such a claim today.
“I think it kind of gnawed at the ego [de Putin]. Added to this is the West's temporary weakness and the provocations it has experienced in many ways, as well as its own growing ego. I think it turned the individual who wanted to work with NATO into someone who now sees NATO as a major threat.”
But Moscow sees it differently. Russian officials say it was NATO's eastward expansion that undermined European security and led to war. They accuse NATO of breaking a promise allegedly made to the Kremlin in the last days of the Soviet Union that the alliance would not accept countries that were previously in Moscow's sphere of influence.
“There was certainly nothing on paper,” says Robertson.
“Nothing was agreed upon, there was no corresponding contract. But it was Vladimir Putin himself who signed the Rome Declaration on May 28, 2002 interference in other countries. He signed it. He can’t blame anyone else.”
2 of 2 Wagner Group mercenaries pose for a photo in Rostov, Russia, June 24, 2023 Photo: Stringer/Portal Wagner Group mercenaries pose for a photo in Rostov, Russia, June 24, 2023 Photo: Stringer/Portal
In the city of Solnechnogorsk, 64 kilometers from Moscow, the last two years of Russian history are “on display” in the park.
I see graffiti in support of the Wagner mercenary group.
There are also flowers in honor of Alexei Navalny.
And there is a large mural depicting two local men, Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine, being greeted by a Young Army cadet.
In the city center, a new section has been added to a memorial to those killed in the Second World War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan:
“To the soldiers who were killed in the special military operation.”
46 names are engraved on a stone.
I ask Lidiya Petrovna, who comes over with her grandson, how life has changed in two years.
“Our factories are now producing things that we used to buy abroad. That’s good,” says Lidiya.
“But I’m sad for the boys, for everyone who was killed. Without a doubt, we do not need war with the West. Our people have seen nothing but war, war, war all their lives.”
When I speak to Marina, she praises the Russian soldiers who, in her opinion, are “doing their duty” in Ukraine. Then she looks at her 17yearold son Andrei.
“But as a mother, I am afraid that my son will be called up to fight. I want peace as soon as possible so that we are not afraid of what will happen tomorrow.”