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Interview
13 March 2022 2.00 h

Llibert Ferri

Journalist

“It’s Putin’s revenge”

In this interview, Russia expert Llibert Ferri discusses the open conflict between Russia and Ukraine, providing the historical insight of a journalist who experienced crucial times in the former Soviet Union first-hand

“Putin is trying to reverse everything that Gorbachev was forced to accept” “UKRAINE HAD ITS MOST PEACEFUL TIME IN DECEMBER 1991, WHEN THE SOVIET UNION WAS IN ITS DEATH THROES”

Llib­ert Ferri (Barcelona, 1948) is a jour­nal­ist with an in-depth knowl­edge of Rus­sia, hav­ing been the spe­cial envoy for Cata­lan tele­vi­sion at cru­cial mo­ments in the coun­try’s his­tory. Ferri cov­ered Russ­ian news on the ground from 1987 to 2007. With his ex­cep­tional knowl­edge of the So­viet Union’s dis­in­te­gra­tion, a few months ago he pre­sented a book: Putin trenta anys després del final de l’URSS (Putin Thirty Years After the End of the USSR). In this in­ter­view, he analy­ses the con­se­quences of the open con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine.

How do you as­sess the lat­est moves?
This at­tack by Rus­sia is a very strong move. I be­lieve there are two pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios: there is a pos­si­bil­ity of Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­sky and his gov­ern­ment being de­tained and Rus­sia putting in place a pup­pet gov­ern­ment aligned with Moscow’s in­ter­ests. The other sce­nario is talks, but it’s clear that this will be done under great pres­sure, and what Putin wants is to keep Ukraine de­mil­i­tarised. The Russ­ian in­ter­ven­tion has been quick. In fact, it’s a very strong blow that vir­tu­ally no one could have ex­pected.
What role does the EU play in all this?
As al­ways, the EU looks bad. It wants to use sanc­tions to pun­ish Rus­sia, but Putin is al­ready ne­go­ti­at­ing with China to sell it oil and wheat. In fact, Putin has taken ad­van­tage of the fact that Merkel has left the Ger­man chan­cellery. Putin had a lot of re­spect for Merkel; she knew how to deal with him. In light of re­cent events, he has felt forced to make this long-stand­ing tac­ti­cal move. He very likely thought that Don­ald Trump would be in the US pres­i­dency for an­other four years. I don’t want to com­pare it to the pact be­tween Hitler and Stalin, but with Trump and Putin it was one of those things in which you see the heir of com­mu­nism and some­how, not the heir of fas­cism, but a char­ac­ter who has united the most ex­treme sec­tors of the US. Putin has felt he’s had to bring for­ward all these moves be­cause what he’s look­ing for is, above all, a safety belt around Rus­sia. Be­cause even though the Ukraine issue was frozen, it could have thawed out. Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­sky, a man who came to power claim­ing that Putin was open to di­a­logue – he wasn’t pro-Putin, but he very much thought he could talk to him – was putting him­self in the po­si­tion that he had to re­quest not only the help of the EU but also of NATO. What could the EU’s re­sponse be? We don’t know what ca­pac­ity it has to react. I re­mem­ber as a child when Russ­ian tanks en­tered Hun­gary in 1956, and no one lifted a fin­ger. Noth­ing hap­pened when they en­tered Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1968 ei­ther. We’ll see what they do.
Putin feels strong enough to reap his re­venge?
Ex­actly. At the time of the col­lapse of the So­viet Union, China had not reached the level of in­dus­trial strength or po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence it has now. The US was in con­trol and the EU was not yet struc­tured as such. Gor­bachev had to ac­cept the re­uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many, de­mand­ing that it be­come neu­tral, and it didn’t. Putin is act­ing on every­thing he’s had in his head since be­fore he be­came pres­i­dent, since he was a city coun­cil­lor in St Pe­ters­burg. The demise of the USSR, the col­lapse of the USSR as it was with the stag­ing of a ter­ri­to­r­ial sur­ren­der was a geopo­lit­i­cal and human cat­a­stro­phe that no in­dus­tri­alised coun­try had ever ex­pe­ri­enced in peace­time. And for Putin that would have con­se­quences, which he is push­ing for­ward with. He’s try­ing to re­verse every­thing that Gor­bachev was forced to ac­cept.
Does Ukraine look too much to­wards Eu­rope for Rus­sia’s lik­ing?
De­mo­graphic stud­ies show that Ukraine is in­creas­ingly look­ing to Eu­rope. That’s why the Eu­ro­maidan protests hap­pened, be­cause pres­i­dent Yanukovych was sup­posed to go and sign a treaty, not to join the EU, but one of as­so­ci­a­tion with it, and fi­nally he said he wasn’t going to. That’s what sparked the Maidan up­ris­ing in De­cem­ber 2013, which lasted until 2014. Putin has been very harsh with Ukraine, to the point that he does not even recog­nise them as a peo­ple.
How have Rus­sia-Ukraine re­la­tions been his­tor­i­cally?
Ukraine has never had a de­mo­c­ra­tic regime. It was in­vaded by the So­viet Union a cen­tury ago, in 1922. Rus­sia feels Ukraine be­longs to it. Aside from that, it is a bor­der ter­ri­tory, an area to con­tain enemy tanks, and that’s sa­cred to Rus­sia. In fact, they do not con­sider it as a coun­try, they abuse it.
How?
By burn­ing their crops, for ex­am­ple. It’s es­ti­mated that three mil­lion peo­ple died of star­va­tion in the Holodomor, the Ukraine’s Holo­caust. It’s an abused na­tion. When the Nazis en­tered in 1941, peo­ple wel­comed them with open arms, cel­e­brat­ing, be­cause they saw them as lib­er­a­tors. And then they re­alised that they were just as crim­i­nal as Stalin. All this has also been used, over time, to say that Ukraine is a fas­cist coun­try. But all of this is heav­ily ma­nip­u­lated by the So­viet media, and by the far-left and far-right media. Out of ig­no­rance. Ukraine had its most peace­ful time from De­cem­ber 1, 1991, when the So­viet Union was al­ready in its death throes and Ukraine had a ref­er­en­dum on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, with the ma­jor­ity of the pop­u­la­tion, 80%, vot­ing. The then pres­i­dent, Leonid Kravchuk, was highly es­teemed be­cause he was in favour of Ukraine’s sov­er­eignty, de­spite being in the Com­mu­nist Party. It was a sov­er­eignty that did not last, how­ever; only until Kravchuk be­came pres­i­dent. When Leonid Kuchma ar­rived, who was a Ukrain­ian but of So­viet ori­gin, he had links to the en­tire aero­space in­dus­try, and the de­struc­tion of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ism began.
And what hap­pened? How did Ukrain­ian so­ci­ety react to this vi­o­lence?
In­tel­lec­tu­als and also jour­nal­ists were mur­dered. I re­mem­ber a jour­nal­ist who had ev­i­dence that all this was going on and he was mur­dered. It was later dis­cov­ered that the in­te­rior min­is­ter him­self had done it. Every­thing that hap­pened dur­ing those years was very harsh. And it is those events that pro­voked the re­volt, not the Eu­ro­maidan re­volt, but the so-called Or­ange Rev­o­lu­tion, which gave ex­pec­ta­tions to Ukrain­ian so­ci­ety that were never ful­filled. Aside from the fact that the politi­cians are not very strong, they are not used to ne­go­ti­at­ing, and end up suf­fer­ing the worst demises: Yulia Ty­moshenko ended up sick and paral­ysed, Vik­tor Yushchenko, with his face de­formed, was ad­min­is­tered a toxic liq­uid by KGB agents. Until Vik­tor Yanukovych ar­rived that is, as he was one of them, a pro-Russ­ian. Putin has been push­ing to dom­i­nate Ukraine ever since he came to power.

in­ter­view war in ukraine

“Russians have a strong patriotic side”

Ferri is well acquainted with Russian society, and he explains that there is a strong sense of patriotism in the country. “Most believe that Ukraine is part of Russia. That’s what Putin said in his speech. It’s not a neighbouring country: it’s a territory that forms part of our history. The fact that Ukraine might be independent and join the European Union is seen as a loss, or an amputation,” Ferri says. “Many Russians are also afraid of the consequences of a war. When they see there’s going to be a downturn and that financial sanctions may set them back 10 years, all of that scares them,” the journalist concludes.

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