Vladimir Putin at his inauguration ceremony in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Russia on May 7, 2018. | Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo/Politico
Opinion by ALEXANDER J. MOTYL
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.
Would Mikhail Gorbachev have invaded Ukraine if he, and not Vladimir Putin, were president of Russia? Most Kremlin-watchers would probably say no. It’s hard to imagine that the architect of perestroika would have embarked on the wholesale destruction of a country of 40 million.
It’s equally hard to imagine independent Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, attempting genocide. Russian forces committed numerous atrocities on Yeltsin’s watch in two Chechen Wars, but they stopped short of exterminating the population and claiming it had no right to exist. Indeed, even Soviet Party boss Leonid Brezhnev, who launched invasions into Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia, did not pursue the kind of scorched-earth strategy Putin has unleashed on Ukraine.
