If Putin’s Actions in Ukraine Aren’t an Invasion, Then What Is?

In 1949, George Orwell published Nineteen Eighty-Four, his famous portrait of a totalitarian regime whose “Ministry of Truth” spews rank propaganda called “Newspeak” that turns historical facts on their head.

Newspeak has been alive and well these past weeks in Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin flatly denied any Russian presence in Ukraine, even as thousands of Russian troops and heavy weapons invaded that country.

What’s more disturbing is that NATO leaders meeting in Wales last week to discuss Ukraine refusal to denounce Putin’s aggression as an “invasion.”

This failure ensured that the Russian leader emerged as the winner at the Wales summit, even though he wasn’t present. And it almost guarantees that the temporary cease-fire reached last week between Kiev and Ukrainian “rebels” won’t last.

As Orwell knew, language plays a critical role in warfare. Putin’s propaganda machine has been crucial in rallying support for his Ukraine policy at home, as well as in the ethnic Russian provinces of eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the West’s reluctance to challenge Putin’s narrative has crippled NATO’s efforts to stop him from dismembering Ukraine.

When Russians were captured in Ukraine or sent home in body bags, the Kremlin insisted they had been “volunteers” or crossed the border by accident. Mothers of the dead men were silenced, soldiers’ graves left unmarked, and the few brave Russian journalists who reported the story were physically attacked.

The Kremlin blatantly denied what the world could see — the satellite photos and physical sightings of columns of Russians crossing the border.

Within Russia, the Kremlin has taken total control of all national television stations from which most Russians get their news. In eastern Ukraine, Putin’s proxies cut the signal to Ukrainian stations, so Russian-speakers’ sole news source is [media] propaganda from Moscow.

That means a steady diet of made-up stories and falsified video, depicting the Kiev government as Nazi fascists eager to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Such agitprop has whipped up Russian support for Putin at home while terrifying ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, and enabled Putin to sell the annexation of Crimea as a rescue operation to save ethnic Russians.

But polls show that the Russian public has no appetite for an invasion, so Russian [media] steadfastly denies that Russian troops have invaded Ukraine.

Meantime, President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders have also refused to call the invasion by its rightful name.

Western officials have fulminated against Russian aggression but — with the notable exception of leaders from the Baltics and Poland — have studiously avoided the I-word. The reason, as Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told The New York Times, is obvious: “If you call something less than an invasion you can feel that you don’t have to react.”

Indeed, at the summit in Wales, it was clear that — when it came to stopping the Russian dismemberment of Ukraine — NATO leaders couldn’t agree on anything harsher than expanding current economic sanctions. They certainly didn’t agree to send desperately needed defensive weapons to Ukraine.

Sanctions have had some impact —without them, Putin might have sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, rather than 1,000 to 3,000. But the Russian leader has clearly developed a new form of hybrid warfare: using subterfuge to confuse Western countries. Additional sanctions won’t deter him.

The so-called rebellion in eastern Ukraine was stage-managed by Russian intelligence agents, backed with Kremlin funds and arms, from the start. This was clearly evident when I visited Donetsk

This article appeared in print on page 10 of the September 9th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.