Putin’s war draws on his vision of exceptionalism

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine represents his version of what a U.S. official calls “Russian exceptionalism” — the idea that Russia is a unique Eurasian imperial system, historically sprawled across two continents, that can play by its own rules.

The official, who specializes in Russia, says Putin is riding the tiger — unleashing an extreme brand of Russian nationalism in taking his nation to war while simultaneously trying to unite the scores of non-Russian ethnic groups that make up the Russian Federation. Some analysts describe his approach as “Russian fascism.” The U.S. official noted that Putin has embraced the militarism of European fascist states of the 1930s, but not the ethnic hatred.

Putin’s dilemma is that he’s using nonRussian troops to suppress a Ukraine that he claims is part of Mother Russia. According to a study of the names of dead or captured Russians early in the war, about 30% were from non-Russian groups. Chechens and Dagestanis are dying, but it’s not their fight — unless Putin can wave a Eurasian imperial banner.

Putin tried to do just that on March 3, when he awarded a “Hero of Russia” title to an officer from Dagestan who had died in Ukraine. “I am a Russian person,” Putin said. “But when I see such examples of heroism . . . I am Dagestani, I am Chechen, Ingush, Russian, Tatar, Jew . . . . I am proud of being part of this world, part of the strong, powerful multiethnic people of Russia.”

One irony of this war is that Putin is mired in the same sort of destabilizing, no-win conflict for which he has often derided the United States. What’s more, he is justifying his “special military operation” with the same passion for regime change that he has mocked in U.S. foreign policy.

The echoes are striking when you look back to Putin’s 2013 op-ed in the New York Times, in which he blasted American military interventions in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem, Putin said, was that America thought it could play by its own rules. “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional,” he wrote.

Russian nationalism has always been a double-edged sword for Putin: He likes the raw passion of its patriotism, but he appears wary of its sometimes uncontrollable ethnic extremism.

An assessment by intelligence analysts at Poland’s Center for Eastern Studies explained: “The authorities’ reaction to the Biriulevo incident indicates that they are aware of the scale of social tensions regarding immigration in the city, and want to prevent social unrest from spreading.”

Putin’s regime similarly cracked down on an extreme Russian nationalist named Alexander Potkin, who was known to his followers as “Belov.” He led an ultranationalist group called the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, which was banned in 2011. Potkin was convicted for extremism by a Moscow court in 2016.

One inspiration for Putin’s dream of an exceptional Eurasian empire is the late Russian

historian Lev Gumilev, according to the U.S. official. In Putin’s 2016 annual speech to the Russian Federal Assembly, he lauded what Gumilev had called passionarnost, which could be translated as “passionism.” Rather than trying to become Western and bourgeois, Gumilev argued, Russia should recognize that it “owed its heritage more to the fierce nomads and steppe tribes of Eurasia,” as the Financial Times explained in 2016 essay about the Russian historian.

It would be comforting to think that the Ukraine war and its assault on the European order are simply products of Putin’s fevered imagination. But they have deep roots in the history and culture of the sprawling Russian federation. This truly is a battle of East vs. West — and of two versions of exceptionalism.