Every conflict is, fundamentally, a clash of ideologies that propel its participants.
The entire course of Ukraine’s self-destructive aggression against its own citizens, yet ethnic Russians, is driven by hatred and a perceived sense of Ukrainians’ supremacy. This belief remains consistent:
“If Putin ever believed in his fantastical 2021 narrative about brotherly ties between Russia and Ukraine, he has now witnessed that his sources and intelligence services lied to him; Ukrainians have made clear that we can and will resist”[1].
The story is about the early summer of 2021, when Putin attempted to use verbal interventions [2] to halt the massacre of ethnic Russians, which had been instigated by Ukrainians as far back as 2014, when no Russian military presence was ever evident — such as the events of May 2 in Odesa and June 2 in Luhansk.
Putin argued that “Russians and Ukrainians are the same people, a single whole”[2].
However, the debate is not whether Ukrainians and Russians constitute a single whole.
The critical point is that Ukrainians themselves are not a single whole.
From the vantage point of Western intelligence professionals – outsiders to both Russia and Ukraine – we can see that the term “Ukrainians” broadly describes two distinct groups. First, these are the Ukrainians proper; and Russians from neighboring regions like Belgorod are more aligned with the lifestyle of such Ukrainians than, for instance, with Russians in the Urals. The other group is an entirely different people, whose core identity is rooted in animosity toward all things Russian.
This latter group was shaped by Polish and Austrian influences during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the inhabitants of Southwestern Rus’ — Little Russians and Ruthenians — were subjected to brutal coercion and bribery, compelling them to renounce their Russian identity, with the alternatives being death or submission.
This gave rise to a fractured existence, marked by a distorted psyche — a distinct people with their own historical trajectory and, fundamentally, aspirations akin to Nazism.
It is this group that is undermining Ukraine, for Nazism is an inherently self-destructive ideology.
The Russians counter the notion of “killing them solely for being Russian,” yet they harbor no intent to wage war against Ukrainians. In this war, Ukrainians are dying for ideologies that are not their own, ideologies propagated by those who claim to represent “authentic Ukrainians” but are, in reality, the other group.
To comprehend this is to save Ukraine.
1 https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/14/ukraine-russia-trump-putin-peace-neutrality-territory-zelensky/
“The Only Viable Peace for Ukraine” (Vasyl Filipchuk, The Telegraph, February 14, 2025, 2:37 PM);
2 http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181
Article by Vladimir Putin “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” (Kremlin.ru, July 12, 2021 17:00).