( RFE/RL ) – Vladimir Putin “has driven Russia into a trap” by invading Ukraine, the former Polish dissident Adam Michnik has said, predicting ultimate defeat for the Russian leader and a chance for much-needed liberal reforms afterward.

“In Russia, changes took place after wars were lost — after the Finnish war, the Japanese war, the Afghan war, and now Ukraine,” Michnik recently told RFE/RL’s Echo of the Caucasus in an interview.

Michnik, a leading intellectual of the Cold War era and longtime critic of Russian domination of Eastern Europe, is now, at age 75, the editor in chief of the liberal Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

Adam Michnik is a Polish historian and editor in chief of Gazeta Wyborcza. “We must say it loud and clear,” he says. “We are all Ukrainians now.”

In a column for the paper, Michnik placed the struggle of Ukrainians as just the latest chapter in the historical repression by the Soviet Union and Russia. “We must say it loud and clear,” he wrote. “We are all Ukrainians now.”

In his interview with RFE/RL, Michnik said Putin was likely deluded into thinking events during his latest invasion of Ukraine would largely mirror those in Crimea in February 2014, when Russian soldiers without insignia on their green uniforms seized control of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula.

[Putin] did not think that there would be such a heroic response from the Ukrainian Army and Ukrainian society. It’s fantastic.”

“His hope that there would be a repeat of what happened in Crimea. The enthusiasm, as there was during Crimea, did not occur,” Michnik explained.

A month after illegally annexing Crimea in March 2014, Putin sent arms, funds, and other aid to separatists in southeastern Ukraine, sparking a conflict that has left at least 13,200 dead.

In his calculus to go to war, Putin was driven by a belief — held by many Russians — that Ukrainians aren’t a separate people, said Michnik.

“He thinks, as probably some of our common Russian friends do, that Ukraine is not Ukrainians, they are little Russians, one nation. This is a big mistake, not only for Putin but also for many absolutely honest and intelligent people in Russia,” he said.

Exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky recently told CNN that Putin became “literally insane” when his invasion of Ukraine wasn’t met with a friendly reception from its citizens.

Putin also got the West’s response wrong, Michnik said, hoping what many have criticized as the hasty retreat from Afghanistan by the United States and its NATO allies was a sign of cracks among the allies.

“[Putin] thought the United States was dead after Kabul, that [Joe] Biden didn’t have a [Donald] Trump illusion, that Biden didn’t think like Trump did, that Putin was a benevolent genius. Biden is a calm, normal person who knows that [Putin] is a bandit, how to behave with a bandit,” said Michnik.

Putin also likely brushed off the capabilities of the Ukrainians, Michnik said, admitting he was himself among the initial skeptics.

“[Putin] did not think that there would be such a heroic response from the Ukrainian Army and Ukrainian society,” he said. “It’s fantastic. No one thought it would happen, and I didn’t think it would either. The Ukrainians told me that this would happen, but I did not believe them.”

Ukraine has estimated as of April 13 that 19,800 Russian soldiers have died since the beginning of the war, citing its own recovery of bodies and intercepted Russian communications. Russia has called the Ukrainian numbers inflated and only twice announced its own figures, a fraction of those tabulated by Kyiv.

The war with the Poles was not a war with the Poles — no, they were the white Poles…. When there was a winter war with Finland, they were white Finns. Now, not Ukrainians, but fascists, Nazis….”

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said on April 7 that the country had “significant losses of troops and it’s a huge tragedy for us” during an interview on Sky News, a rare official admission of the scale of the Russian losses.

What support Putin has among average Russians is difficult to gauge, said Michnik, amid worsening repression and the muzzling of any opposition media.

Ordinary Russians can face up to 15 years in prison for questioning or contradicting the Kremlin’s war narrative, with thousands detained so far by police nationwide for speaking out.

“I don’t believe Russians are 100 percent supportive of Putin; 200,000 Russians have gone abroad. In 1968, during the intervention in Czechoslovakia, seven people took to Red Square in Moscow. Today, 8,000 have already been arrested for taking to the streets with the slogan, ‘No To War,'” said Michnik, referring to estimates of how many Russians have left the country since the Russian invasion started on February 24.

Russia has adopted many Soviet tactics in defining those opposed to them, Michnik explained, with Ukrainians dehumanized as “just Nazis, fascists,” in a never-ending barrage on state-run media.

“Even during the time of the Bolsheviks, the war with the Poles was not a war with the Poles — no, they were the white Poles,” Michnik said, noting the term used by the Bolsheviks and later the Soviet authorities to designate “enemies” of its communist rule.

“When there was a winter war with Finland, they were white Finns. Now, not Ukrainians, but fascists, Nazis…. But if they tell you so in the morning, after dinner, in the evening, one day, another day, a third day, after all, you think there is something to it,” Michnik said.

“I remember it well, how in Poland in Soviet times there was anti-German propaganda that all Germans were Nazis. But not these Germans, not ours from East Germany — they were good Germans. Ukrainians from Luhansk and Donetsk who support the Kremlin’s policy are good, but they are not Ukrainians either. They are little Russians.”

Ultimately Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will end with defeat for Putin, Michnik said, and judging by previous Russian military defeats in the past, an opportunity for change may emerge.

“I am sure that Ukraine will become for Putin what Afghanistan became for [Leonid] Brezhnev,” Michnik said, referring to the former Soviet leader who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979.

That conflict would lead to the death of some 15,000 troops and 2 million Afghans before its end in 1989, hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Now, Michnik holds out hope that a Russian defeat in Ukraine could be the spark to ignite democratic change in Russia.

“Russia made a bad choice. But we still have hope that it is still possible. I will not live to see it, but my son will live, [and] a new wave will come…”

With additional reporting by Tony Wesolowsky

Vadim Dubnov is a correspondent for RFE/RL’s Echo of the Caucasus, which broadcasts in Russian to Georgia.

Via RFE/RL

Copyright (c)2020 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Following the controversial presidential election in August 2020 and the crackdown on anti-government protesters, the European Union started imposing sanctions on Belarus and its President Alexander Lukashenko. Relations between Brussels and Minsk went from bad to worse. In May, after Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair plane, flying from Athens to Vilnius, to land in the Belarusian capital, which resulted in the imprisonment of a dissident activist Roman Protasevich, the EU announced additional package of sanctions against the Eastern European nation.

Lukashenko, for his part, threatened to allow migrants and drugs to pour into Western Europe if sanctions are imposed on his country. In short order, he really allowed thousands of Middle Eastern asylum seekers to illegally cross the border between Belarus and EU member Lithuania. And that was the beginning of the migrant crisis.

Given that most migrants were from Iraq, the EU pressured Iraqi leaders to suspend direct flights between their country and Belarus, but that did not prevent Lukashenko from keep providing “asymmetric response” to Western sanctions. Migrants are now arriving to the former Soviet republic mostly via Istanbul and Dubai, and Minsk reportedly plans to increase number of flights from the Middle East to Belarus. Moreover, it is entirely possible that migrants will soon have the opportunity to fly not only to Minsk, but to other Belarusian cities as well. But who are the migrants and where do they come from?

According to reports, most of the illegal migrants trying to get to the European Union through Belarus are Iraqi citizens – Kurds and Arabs. There are also residents of Syria, Congo and Cameroon. They arrive to the capital of Belarus mainly from three cities on the territory of Iraqi Kurdistan: Erbil, Shiladze and Sulaimaniya.

“Many of us have brought families. I have six kids. All of them are little. There is no food, milk, diapers for them. We have no firewood to warm us up, no tents to shelter us from rain and they don’t let us into Europe”, Belarus’ state-owned BelTA News Agency quoted an unnamed migrant on the Belarusian-Polish border.

In neighboring Lithuania migrants have staged a protest in a refugee reception center demanding to be allowed to leave for Germany and other countries of the European Union. Brussels has, however, accused Lukashenko of facilitating the influx of migrants in retaliation against sanctions, while German special services reportedly claim that about 800-1000 illegal migrants arrive to Belarus from the Middle East on a daily basis.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Kurdistan Regional Government, most likely under another EU pressure, recently ordered Belarus to shut down its consulates in Baghdad and Erbil. Such a move will, however, unlikely stop mass migrations of Iraqis to Belarus – a country they see as a route toward Western Europe in quest for a better life. Although for them Poland is merely a transit nation on their way to Germany, Warsaw has deployed 12,000 troops to the Belarusian border in order to prevent migrants from entering the EU. Some Belarusian analysts claim that Poland is trying to increase its importance in the region, and draw more attention to itself, especially from its ally, the United States.

“In the name of human rights NATO countries bombed Libya, Iraq, and Syria, and arranged the Arab Spring. In the name of human rights they killed local people, destroyed their nations, peace and stability. Now local people are migrating from the states the West has destroyed to the countries that talk so much about human rights and liberalism”, said Piotr Petrovsky, analyst with the Belarusian public association Belaya Rus.

Some Western analysts, in contrast, claim that the mastermind of the migrant crisis is Russian President Vladimir Putin, rather than Belarusian leader. They believe that Putin uses thousands of desperate migrants to drive a wedge between the EU. Indeed, it is very probable that Lukashenko got the green light from the Kremlin to stage a migrant crisis on the EU borders, but it is wrong see Belarusian President through the prism of Vladimir Putin, or to think of him as Putin’s puppet. The two leaders have a history of disputes and odds, and even though sanction-hit Belarus is heavily dependent on Russia, Lukashenko still struggles to preserve as much sovereignty as possible.

Thus, if the West eventually pressures Putin to stop Lukashenko’s actions on Belarus – EU border, the Belarusian leader – quite aware that Brussels will not lift any sanctions, since that would be a clear demonstration of weakness – will likely seek certain concessions from Moscow in order to end the influx of migrants. Meanwhile, he is expected to continue using refugees as a political weapon against the EU, which is a model that has already been applied by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and that has proved to be very efficient.

According to the migrants’ estimates, about 3,000 asylum seekers from the Middle East remain concentrated on Belarusian-Polish border. There are many children in the crowd, and the number of asylum seekers is expected to grow. Some reports suggest that Minsk is trying to strengthen political ties with various Middle Eastern countries in an attempt to destabilize eastern EU members. For instance, on November 3, Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Nikolai Borisevich met with the Syrian Ambassador to Minsk Mohammad al-Umrani, and they discussed further mutual support in the international arena.

The Ambassador expressed gratitude for the humanitarian assistance provided by the Republic of Belarus to the Syrian people. Indeed, Belarus is actively assisting the Syrian people who are trying to reach the EU, while the United States calls on Belarusian leader to “immediately halt his campaign of orchestrating and coercing the illegal flow of migrants across his country’s border into Europe.”

The US call will, however, have very little affect on Lukashenko’s policy, unless the CIA Director Bill Burns, who recently met with Putin in Moscow, urged Russian leader to demand Belarusian President to end the border crisis. Migrants may arrive to the EU from Belarus, but politically, the West is quite aware that the road to Minsk may well run through Moscow.

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Bonus Vidoe added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “Poland steps up patrols as migrants attempt to cross border with Belarus”

The western military bloc has been increasing its presence and activity around Russian borders.

Polish President Andrzej Duda welcomed on Friday the decision of NATO to station a U.S. battalion in Poland to bolster the eastern flank of the military alliance, increasing troop numbers by up to 4,000.

“We are pleased that the United States is providing such a decisive support to the reinforcement of the military potential of the North Atlantic alliance in our part of Europe,” Duda said as he delivered joint statements with U.S. President Barack Obama.

The 28-member NATO alliance will formally agree to deploy four battalions totaling 3,000 to 4,000 troops in the Baltic states and Poland on a rotating basis to reassure eastern members. According to NATO, the troop increase is to defend them against any “Russian aggression.”

“Poland is going to be seeing an increase in NATO and American personnel and the most modern, capable military equipment because we will meet our Article 5 obligations to our common defense,” Obama said.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – all NATO members – have requested a permanent NATO presence, citing fears that Moscow will seek to destabilize their pro-Western governments through cyber attacks, stirring up Russian speakers, hostile broadcasting and even territorial incursions.

Russia cites the same concerns regarding the United States and its allies, who contibute millions of dollars per year for these type of activities against Russia’s government through U.S.-funded bodies such as the National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Europe.

The Kremlin said it was absurd for NATO to talk of any threat from Russia and it hoped “common sense” would prevail at the Warsaw summit. Moscow remained open to dialogue with NATO and was ready to cooperate with it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a conference call with journalists.

Since the Ukraine Crisis and Crimea reunification in 2014, NATO broke off ties with Russia. The U.S. has had more of a presence in the region in an attempt to reassure its allies in Eastern Europe as well as to deter Russia.

Russia has said NATO is an aggressor given recent movement of troops and military hardware further into Eastern and Central Europe, as well as continued recruitment of these states into NATO’s sphere of influence.

In May, Russia called a U.S. missile defense site in Romania a security threat. The United States said the US$800 million shield will help defend Europe from attacks.

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

AFP: “US to deploy 1,000 troops for NATO battalion in Poland”