In a January 28 interview with the Russian media about the Ukraine crisis, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said, “if it depends on the Russian Federation, there will not be a war.” He also suggested that there were “kernels of rationality” in the formal responses to Russia’s demands that the United States and NATO had delivered a few days earlier. To some Western commentators, Lavrov’s comments were a hopeful sign that the Kremlin had achieved its intermediate aims and might be shifting course. According to this analysis, Russian President Vladimir Putin had the West exactly where he wanted it: by moving more than a hundred thousand troops to the Ukrainian border and issuing an ultimatum, he had forced the United States and NATO to enter into a dialogue with Moscow. All along, then, the Russian government had been acting with calculated brinkmanship, pursuing an approach that has left the United States and its NATO allies with few choices other than to negotiate on an equal footing.
For much of the Russian public, however, the Kremlin’s actions have looked very different. Amid widespread popular anxiety about the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic and growing fears of a large-scale war, the Russian government has seemingly raced headlong into an unnecessary and possibly reckless confrontation with the West. To Russian ears, even Lavrov’s recent conciliatory language has an unsettling ring. As the foreign minister continued, “We don’t want war, but we won’t allow anyone to trample on our interests or ignore them, either.” The words are familiar in Russia. According to the lyrics of “If Tomorrow Brings War,” a popular Soviet song from the World War II era, “We don’t want war, but we’ll defend ourselves / we’re rightfully strengthening our defense. / We’ll rout our enemy on hostile land / with little bloodshed and a mighty blow!” Shortly after the song seized the country’s imagination, the Soviet Union invaded Finland.
