Russia's 200-year 'obsession' with destroying Ukraine

VIENNA — When Eugene Finkel set out to write a book covering two centuries of Russian imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe, it was, for him, more than just an academic endeavor. The Johns Hopkins University scholar was motivated by the 2022 full-scale invasion of the country where he was born, of course. But that wasn't the only reason why he chose to spend six months digging through archives to document Moscow's long-term "obsession" with his birthplace.

"It was also my personal revenge story," Finkel, who teaches at Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, explained at a Nov. 6 talk in central Vienna.

Four months after Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine three-and-a-half years ago, one of its spies was caught trying to secure an internship at the International Criminal Court. Sergey Vladimorovich Cherkasov had spent his entire adult life trying to infiltrate the upper echelons of Western power, assuming another identity — claiming to be a Brazilian named Viktor Muller Ferreira — and spending years diligently working his way through academia in hopes, it seems, of someday landing a job at The Hague.

Cherkasov got his bachelor's degree at Trinity College Dublin, according to a copy of his CV that's still available online, and worked as a "travel agent" in Rio de Janeiro. He also pursued a master's degree at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

"What pushed me to write this book was that when I was still teaching at my current school, but in Washington, I had a student who took several classes with me, worked pretty closely with me — and then asked for a recommendation for the International Criminal Court," Finkel recounted. "I wrote his recommendation. He got the job."

Finkel had unknowingly assisted the Kremlin's military intelligence agency, the GRU, and had learned that he had done so just weeks after the Bucha massacre, when Russian forces slaughtered hundreds of Ukrainian civilians who had failed to greet them as liberators. It was a multi-faceted betrayal, resulting in a livid scholar producing, "Intent to Destroy: Russia's Two-Hundred Year Quest to Dominate Ukraine."

History repeats

The thesis of Finkel's book, published in late 2024, is that Russia's latest war of conquest is the product of a centuries-long fixation on its neighbor.

"Over the last 200 years, with some brief exceptions and interruptions in the 1920s and 1990s, the project of dominating Ukraine was the key goal of Russian Imperial, Soviet and post-Soviet governments. And this desire to dominate Ukraine, I think, can be quite reasonably described as an obsession," Finkel said. "Russians are absolutely obsessed with Ukraine, and this obsession is driven by two factors: identity and security," he said, but of the two, "identity is far more important."

Since 2014, when Russia sent irregular forces across its borders and illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula, those trying to understand the Kremlin's motivations have often accepted its claimed security concerns at face value. Ukraine's aspirations to join NATO, the military alliance founded to counter the Soviet Union, were an embarrassment, if not an existential threat, at least from the perspective of Moscow; the whole conflict, however unjustified, might have been avoided had the West not been so intent on humiliating a fallen superpower.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin, both before the war in a bloated historical essay and in private conversations since, speaks about Ukraine not in terms of it being a NATO satellite, per se, but as if it were family — the shared blood justifying the attempt to conquer its soil. In that he's no different than his predecessors who spoke of Ukraine as if it were no more than a "little Russia."

Take the following quotes:

"Russians and Ukrainians are one people, a single one."

"Ukrainians are Russian brothers who are being freed and liberated."

"Military action is needed to protect brothers of the same blood: Ukrainians."

Only the first was uttered by Putin, Finkel pointed out in his Vienna talk. The second? Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, commander of the Imperial Russian Army in 1914; the third was Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister under Josef Stalin. All to various degrees viewed Ukrainians not as a separate people, with their own culture and history and right to exist, but as miniature and often inferior versions of themselves — as little brothers in need of protection (and, when little brothers act out: violent correction).

"A lot of Russian reactions to what Ukraine does simply boil down to: Who do you think you are and how dare you do something without asking us?" Finkel said.

This belief in Russian-Ukranian "brotherhood" is not always an affectation. Both nations trace their beginnings to the Kyivian Rus', an Eastern Slavic state founded in what is today the Ukrainian capital, hundreds of years before "Moscow" first appeared in historical records. But the rhetoric of "one people" should not be mistaken as progressive: this is not the language of peace and friendship, but of nationalism and empire — of an abuser who claims that they alone have the right to decide when a relationship ends.

Brothers become traitors

Under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine was moving toward a genuine divorce, breaking from the hold of Russian influence that had dominated the country since its formal independence in 1991. For many Russians, and not just at the elite level, that this could be the product of genuine Ukrainian democracy — as opposed to American scheming (a century earlier it was "German meddling") — was inconceivable. And if a break from Russia did enjoy mass Ukrainian support: that was an unforgivable betrayal.

"I think this story also explains the violence against civilians that we see. We still don't know much about what was going on in the heads of Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine, but we know enough to say that many of them actually, genuinely believed those identity stories about Ukrainians being 'Russian brothers' who are being liberated," Finkel noted. Once they realized Ukrainians did not welcome their "liberation," these brothers became traitors. "And the violence that follows is essentially a violence of revenge."

That Russians actually believe their own historical propaganda, at both the grunt and elite level, is evidenced not just in the historical records and quotes that Finkel uncovered while working on his book. The devotion to this constructed narrative — of Ukraine and Russia as one, meaning: the rightful property of the latter — is such that the Kremlin undermines its own negotiating position by refusing to let it go.

In an Oct. 17 report, the Financial Times shed light on the failure of U.S. President Donald Trump's summit with his Russian counterpart. Trump has appeared eager to end the war in Ukraine on pro-Russian terms, repeatedly declaring that the victim should be forced to cede territory to the aggressor. The August meeting in Alaska was intended to hammer out such a deal and a return to 19th-century-style imperial deal-making.

But Putin, offered a huge chunk of Ukrainian land, just couldn't stop being weird about Russia's claims to the whole thing.

According to the FT, Putin, "delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky — figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation."

No one should underestimate the American president's ability to get back on board the Russian side. Still, if the reporting is to be believed, even he was taken aback by the history lecture at what was supposed to be a real estate transaction.

Surprises and disappointments

Alexander Etkind, a professor of international relations at Central European University in Vienna, spoke alongside Finkel at the talk, which was organized by the Research Center for the History of Transformations. Speaking from the perspective of someone born in St. Petersburg, he agreed that Russians are indeed obsessed with their imperial history, so much so that he was not surprised that Putin would sacrifice so many of his countrymen to assert dominance over their intransigent neighbor.

That said, one thing has surprised him about the war: the overall complacency of the people whose family members are being used as cannon fodder.

"A total passivity and complicity in the events," Etkind said of the Russian population writ large. "There is no rebellion, no protest, no resistance."

No one has a say in where they were born, but, Etkind argued, too many Russians — even considering that they live under an authoritarian regime that prosecutes dissent — have made a choice to meekly accept the bad history they have been taught, even as its deadly consequences are made obvious.

"Being a Putinist is a political choice. Those who are complicit — they have made their choice," Etkind said, adding that only widespread suffering among the Russian populace, from sanctions and Ukrainian military victories, is likely to bring down Putin and his form of government.

But for Finkel, the disappointment is more than just with the Russian people. Early on, he saw Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a "genocide": an effort to eliminate an independent Ukrainian identity. And he was relieved to see U.S. President Joe Biden label it as such back in April 2022.

What changed as a result of this determination, in a world that had vowed to "never again" stand by and watch an extermination transpire?

"Nothing. There was absolutely no difference," Finkel said. "Calling something a 'genocide' will not manufacture policies; it will not manufacture support," he said, noting it's a lesson for opponents of crimes against humanity elsewhere. The political will "does not exist to a sufficient degree in Ukraine, and it definitely does not exist in the Palestinian case."

"I was cynical — quite cynical — to begin with. I'm from Eastern Europe, we grew up with that. But I'm now not just cynical, but disillusioned, despondent, you name it. I now don't think those labels mean much."

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