OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ) — A UW-Oshkosh professor says we now live in a different world following the invasion of Ukraine by Russian military forces.
“I think it’s the biggest event in world politics since 9/11, right now,” said Dr. Michael Jasinski, an expert in Eastern European politics. “We have woken up to a new international environment.”
Jasinski grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Poland. His family fled to America as refugees when he was 13, and he served in the US Military as a Russian language specialist. He says Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motivations are no secret: he wants to stop Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treating Organization, a military alliance of which the US and many European nations are a part.
“It’s said that countries don’t have permanent threats, they have permanent interests, and for Russia, the permanent interest is not to have enemies on its borders,” Jasinski explained. “The idea is that any country bordering Russia cannot be part of an alliance aimed against Russia. That’s been a long-standing Russian foreign policy objective. That was true when [former Soviet Premier Mikhail] Gorbachev was in power, that was true with [Boris] Yeltsin, and that is true with Putin, and it will probably be the same way after Putin.”
It’s that motivation, Jasinski says, that led to Russia supporting pro-Russian breakway republics in the Eastern part of Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Neither entity is recognize by any nation other than Russia as a legitimate state. Russia says the separatists, along with Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, are popular in those regions, and that the people genuinely want to leave Ukraine. NATO messaging, on the other hand, paints a different story. Jasinski says the truth is somewhere in the middle.
“Whenever you have a foreign army that is perceived as an occupying army, you have what you had in Northern Ireland during the Troubles,” Jasinski said, referring to the 30-year-long conflict between Irish republicans and British unionists that ended in the late 90s. “You have a counter-insurgency that lasts for decades. But in Crimea, it’s been peaceful. You don’t have that. It’s been largely that way in eastern Ukraine.”
As for how the current conflict will end, Jasinski says the outcome is already clear. He believes that the Ukrainian military forces will not be able to hold off the Russian offensive, and will eventually surrender.
“There will be two options, either Ukraine becomes federalized, and the individual regions of the country will be granted greater autonomy, or it will be split into two countries,” said Jasinski.
US Military involvement, Jasinski says, is extremely unlikely. Both Russia and the United States possess nuclear weapons, and Jasinski says any conflict between the two countries has the potential to escalate, which neither side wants.
The invasion signals a sea change in international politics. Jasinski says the invasion of Ukraine, against US demands, has challenged the notion of the United States being the worlds only extant superpower.
“One of the things that was said by Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin is that the United States does not recognize a Russian sphere of [international] influence,” Jasinski said. “What Putin just did, is assert it.”
