Thread by @scharap

With all due respect for @IvoHDaalder, I find this line particularly unconvincing: "Putin worries that if any of these states becomes a successful and prosperous democracy, let alone fully integrates with the west, the Russian people will demand the same." Thread

https://twitter.com/DrRadchenko/status/1483900989203701763

To be clear, Ivo is far from the only one who makes this argument.

We address this in our recent @RANDCorporation report on the drivers behind Russia's military interventions. rand.org/pubs/research_…

In characteristically non-polemical RAND language, we make the case that a) there's no evidence to support this claim; and

b) there is evidence that the Russian leadership has an extremely low opinion of Ukrainian elites. Putin does not seem to believe they are capable of creating anything other than a semi-failed state, let alone a "successful and prosperous democracy."

If we want to draw conclusions about the drivers of Russian policy, we need to start by understanding how the Kremlin sees the world.

There is a good case for Russian fear of geopolitical diffusion rather than democratic diffusion. "Because many Russian elites view popular revolutions, particularly in post-Soviet Eurasia, as a tool of U.S. foreign policy to undermine Russia’s regional influence...

stopping those revolutions is more of a geopolitical imperative than a normative one." To quote our report. So these things do get conflated — but I doubt Putin is afraid of Ukrainian democratic success, because he doesn't seem to think it's possible. /END/