The geopolitical background of the conflict in Ukraine

06.03.2022

I started to develop geopolitics 30 years ago. When Russia only started to feel itself the part of the Global Civilization, Global West, and everybody was optimistic becoming the part of this Humanity: Civil Rights Theory, Human Rights Theory, the Global World. We entered in this process we accepted the Western Identity, we have abandoned Soviet Identity, we have totally forgotten the Tzarist pre-Soviet identity and we try to be like everybody else. And in that moment not being too much engaged in this Soviet system, neither in Liberal System, I have discovered the geopolitics formulated by British authors like Halford Mackinder, who tried to explain the Great Game between British Empire and Russian Empire in the terms of Sea Power and Land Power.

Maybe it was in his time just a part of the British Imperialist agenda, their manner of thinking the world, but in my eyes that was explosion of the real and profound everlasting truth. From then on I followed Mackinder and I have discovered that we had Eurasian Movement in the 1920s in the in the West among White emegration with similar positions. There was German school of geopolitics too. So geopolitics in my eyes has become the tool to decipher the world. We were in the beginning of the 1990s then. From that moment I’ve started to develop Eurasian School of Geopolitics, the main and only Russian Geopolitical School. From this point of view basing on the British Anglo-Saxon vision of the of the world where the main principles were Sea Power Against Land Power, I’ve formulated symmetric strategy: Land Power against Sea Power. The Land Power, Heartland, Eurasia in that theory was regarded as Subject, not the Object.

What is Sea Power according to Mackinder? it is not just the West, it is Modernity, it is unchained technology, it is Capitalism,  it is market society it is a Carthage against Rome or Athens against the Spata or Venice against Byzantine Empire. So that was one Civilization (Carthage) basing on the materialist economic market approach,and strategically on the dominance over Seas, on the colonial attitudes against the other  Civilization (Rome) whith totally different values. In the Land Power the dignity, the military power, the tradition, the conservatism, the national interests, the family, the religion (from certain moment Christianity) were put in the center of the life. The geopolitics is about that pair: the Modernity against the Tradition inscribed in the space. So after discovery of Geopolitics I applyed this methodology to Russia. Thus I came to the conclusion that Geopolitics explains everything that we have now and everything thet will come. So from that moment applying this method to analysis of Russian Federation in the early stage I deduced from this application that there will be the Great War of Continents, unavoidable confrontation between Sea Power and Land Power. Land Power represented by Russia, by the Heartland, Sea Power represented by Modern Globalist or Postmodern Liberal West.

It went radically against all the everything that Russian Government in the 1990s thought but I was heard by Russian military from the beginning of the 1990s I started to make lessons on Geopolitics in the Russian General Staff institution and for them that was absolutely necessary because they have lost explanation of what is going on in the ideological terms and they badly needed something as alternative. They could not understand, why the NATO was going more and more closer to our borders with us abandoning our communist ideology. They sincerely could not understand why.  But with geopolitics introduced to the General Staff everything was theoretically at least logically, put in the in the context. That was beginning of the secret rise of Mr Putin to power.  Putin tried to accomplish reaffirmation of the sovereignty of the Land Power and Heartland and Eurasia in the peaceful way for 20 years, nobody cared. He said that nobody listened, he had tried to put that into some geo-economical steps, nobody had understood what he has been doing.

Finally there is only one explanation of what was going on in Maidan in Ukraine on the post-Soviet space in general: the Sea Power took the momentum of the fall of the Soviet Union - and now we're approaching to our President's discourse, but in the context - the Sea Power took the momentum of the fall of the Soviet Union in order to take the seas, to control the liberated space. It is not about ideology, race, ethnicity or religion it was just that geopolitical game, Great Game renewed once again. In that situation Putin when he came to power started to reverse the fall of the Soviet Union. Clearly for him it was the Geopolitical Catastrophe. "Geopolitical" - is the key word: "Geopolitical Catastrophe" not ideological neither national nor ideological nor racial or religious, Geopolitical Catastrophe. This catastrophe consisted in the brute or rude fact: imposing the control of the Sea Power on the territories around Russia that logically belonged to the Land Power.  There is no neutrality in Geopolitics and Putin started to regain the control over post-Soviet space following Brzezinski line.

Brzezinski had said: Russia will not return to sovereignty without re-acquiring the influence over post-Soviet space and first of all over Ukraine. So the battle for Ukraine was approaching from that moment from the election of Putin as historical leader of Russia trying to defend our geopolitical interests. That is a explanation of what is going on, but the Sea Power proceeded, they continued to try to take away from us the part of post-Soviet space. And when a neutral leader or  a pro-Russian leader or not so anti-Russian is as it was necessary for the West came to power - as Yanukovych for example - they started to overthrow him and put them down by means in regime change operation, called Maidan. Putin has responded to Maidan by re-acquiring Crimea and the part of Eastern Ukraine, but that was not enough, that was just defensive action of Heartland against the Sea Power, but the borders were so critical for Russia, that next stage of the conflict was inevitable absolutely by the geopolitical logic