How We Can Help Ukraine — In the Long Run

This article is about what we can do to support the people of Ukraine. Still, I will start with a short background story to explain why I believe it’s so important to take action with a long term perspective.

When Putin‘s army marched into Ukraine, I was as shocked as most of the world. And I felt horribly reminded of the time when I first started researching on Vladimir Putin more than fifteen years ago.

At that time, I was doing research on the second Chechnya war, Putin‘s first war. In Chechnya, he pushed on for ten years, until the capital Grozny and many other towns were completely flattened and more than 80,000 civilians were killed (of a total population of a little more than 1 million). If we would calculate the same proportion for Ukraine’s population of over 40 million, this would mean more than 3 million people killed. Not counting soldiers.

A Person Challenging Putin

Through my research, I had the chance to meet Anna Z. (name altered), a Chechen journalist who had just finished her book about how the war had destroyed her home and her youth. She gave me the manuscript to read. This and the following discussions with her changed my life.

It motivated me to mobilize other European students in Paris to organize a protest, when Russia was to take over the presidency of the Council of Europe in 2006 (an institution with the mission to defend human rights). We also wrote a petition, translated it into seven languages, and sent it to our governments in a dozen European countries. We didn’t receive a single response.

Meanwhile, Anna had put me in touch with the French NGO Études Sans Frontières (Studies Without Borders). They had concluded that trying to raise political awareness would not help, given the interest of European governments in embracing Putin. Instead, they focused on helping young Chechens to get high quality education — so that they would be prepared to implement projects for their home when conditions got more favorable.

Back in Germany half a year later, I motivated other students to join me in founding the German version of the organization. In collaboration with our French partners we created a scholarship program and invited young people from Chechnya to study at German universities.

What does this tell us about the situation in Ukraine?

Of course, the situation in Chechnya was different from that in Ukraine today. But there is an alarming parallel: Vladimir Putin.

Looking back at what my research at the time revealed, almost none of Putin’s actions today come at a surprise. The widespread view that Putin has lost touch with reality only makes sense, if we ignore that he has successfully applied very similar tactics more than 20 years ago. Rather, it’s plausible that he staged his image of having turned into a “madman“ very carefully, in order to increase the credibility of his threat to use nuclear weapons, if only he felt like it.

From this point of view, all of his actions in Ukraine seem absolutely rational, tactically smart, and absolutely ruthless.

My analysis is based on three assumptions:

1. Putin will not lose.

It’s highly unlikely that he would accept defeat at any price. His uncompromising strong-man image in Russia is his biggest asset. It’s also his life-line that ensures his personal survival in the system of fear he has created.

He cannot afford to lose and he will not let it happen. He has all the means he needs to push this war on for as long as necessary to achieve his goal (strengthening his grasp of power in Russia).

This is also the reason why he will NOT attack NATO. Or start a nuclear war. He simply knows that would risk his own survival in such a war.

2. Putin does not care about people.

The tactics Putin applied in Chechnya and other wars suggest that the lives of Russian soldiers and civilians mean as little to him as those of Ukrainians (or Syrians, Americans, Germans etc…).

The only thing he cares about is their strategic value. Russian soldiers might be used to display his power. Or they might be used as victims in his propaganda, where every dead Russian soldier tends to increase his support in the Russian population (which was the case in Chechnya and now seems to be the case in Ukraine).

In 1999, as director of the FSB (the Russian secret service) and later as prime minister, Putin allegedly staged terrorist bombings of civilian buildings in Moscow and other cities. These bombs killed hundreds of Russian civilians. An FSB agent who spoke out in support of the allegations, as well as the members of the Russian parliament who tried to investigate them, were killed.

Whatever the truth, Putin used these terrorist attacks to justify the start of a brutal war in Chechnya as one of his first actions in office as prime minister in 1999. And his hard hand on the “terrorists” helped him to secure his grasp of the presidency less than a year later. As president, he continued the war for altogether ten years. Meanwhile, European governments tried to embrace him as a democratic leader.

Now, in Ukraine, he is using similar tactics of sending in young, inexperienced soldiers first. He needed pictures of dead Russian soldiers to use their fate in his propaganda for mobilizing public support for himself in Russia. It works. Once again.

3. Words and stories are mere instruments to Putin.

Nikolai Swanidse, a former journalist who knew Putin personally over many years said that “the president uses language to hide his thoughts, not to express them.” I would add that he chooses his words and stories exclusively based on the effects he intends to make on his target-audience.

Anything he says should be read with this in mind:

It says absolutely NOTHING about what he thinks or believes. But it may allow some conclusions about what he wants his target-audience to think or feel.

No matter if he talks about democracy or Russian history — his words and stories are exclusively chosen for the effect they have on his specific audience. And bear in mind that his priority target-audience might not be us (liberal-minded observers or foreign politicians), but, for example, his supporters in Russia.

In sum: The outlook for Ukraine is difficult

Based on these assumptions, I could imagine three rough scenarios of where things could lead:

The Chechnya scenario

As pointed out in the beginning: In Chechnya, Putin has pushed on for ten years with ruthless brutality until all resistance was broken.

After the first year of bombing towns and sending ground forces, Putin outsourced much of the atrocities to Chechen warlords. The most brutal of them was Ramzhan Kadyrov, a full scale psychopath known for torturing people with his own hands in the basement of his private house. In 2007, Putin officially installed Kadyrov as the Chechen president. All opposition leaders were killed. Today, Kadyrov‘s autocratic regime continues to rule at Putin‘s goodwill, taking credits for rebuilding Grozny and other towns with Russian money.

With all my heart I wish for the Ukrainians that they will not share this fate.

The Belarus scenario

In this scenario Putin achieves his goal to unseat the Ukrainian government without completely devastating the country and installs another Lukashenko-type of marionette regime. Ukraine would fall back to an oppressive, stagnating post-soviet state, where the opposition is in prison or in exile and protests are brutally suppressed. This is what happened in Belarus, under the eyes of the EU and NATO.

The military coup scenario

As many observers argued, this seems to be the only scenario with a positive short- or mid-term outcome for Ukraine. Possibly, the harms that Putin‘s war brings to Russia, in combination with the sanctions by the US, the EU, and other free countries, could motivate a sufficient group within the Russian military leadership to risk a coup.

Still, it must be clear that everyone in this leadership knows that a failed coup attempt means certain death and probably torture. And they know that Putin is a trained secret service veteran, who had two decades to build up a system for spying on his “friends” and ensure their “loyalty”.

In any case, given the consistency of Putin’s tactics since Chechnya and during the first weeks of the war in Ukraine, I believe it’s best to prepare for a prolonged war in Ukraine. We should therefore use the current momentum in terms of public attention and support to initiate long term projects.

Part II: What we can do

The following suggestions are not a wish-list to our governments, but about what we can do as social entrepreneurs, conscious consumers, social media users, etc.

1. Continue the economic transformation — and invite the Ukrainians to join

The most important thing is: Let’s keep going. Let Putin not discourage us. Instead, let’s translate our solidarity with the Ukrainian people into motivation for building a better, more fair, less corrupt global economy even faster.

And let’s find smart ways for enabling as many people from Ukraine as possible to join us in our work.

Offer work opportunities

In a similar spirit, it is a good moment to invite people from Ukraine to become co-workers or co-founders in social businesses. In the mid and long term, many might be in need of a reliable income. May it be for rebuilding their life in Ukraine, or for building up a new life somewhere else.

Moreover, it can be especially motivating to work in companies that actively seek to be part of a new economic system, and don’t play by the old economic rules. It can also be helpful for people from Ukraine to learn the skills for building up sustainable, future oriented companies themselves.

Consume more consciously

In general, this is the right moment to reconsider our own consumption habits. Using less fossil fuels and plastics, helps overcome the old economy, which enabled autocrats like Putin to get as powerful as they are today (Point 4. below provides details on this argument).

Similarly, it is all the more important to help alternative producers and companies that systematically avoid the old way of doing business. For example, wherever possible shop at co-operative companies rather than at corporations.

2. Involve the people from Russia

Possibly the biggest mistake we can make in this situation is stigmatizing “the Russians”. The more we do that, the more we help Putin achieve his real goal with this war: Strengthening his grasp on power in Russia.

Putin knows from twenty years of his rule and the many wars he participated in, the more the people in Russia suffer, the more he can blame others for their suffering, which increases the support he gets.

The more people from Russia feel hated or judged, the more will unite behind the strongman who promises to defend them. We have seen this mechanism at work so many times, with many dictators around the world.

This is also a question of solidarity: We should not forget that the people in Russia suffer much more from this war than any of us observers from external nations. Not only are they the ones hit by the sanctions. They are also the victims of Putin’s intensified repression and brainwashing propaganda.

There is no question that the largest part of our solidarity and support should go with the people of Ukraine. But if we want the possibility for a peaceful outcome, we should also show support and solidarity for the people of Russia, who have suffered from Putin’s oppressive regime, its corruption, and its manipulation methods for two decades.

3. Mind our language

For the same reason, it’s super important to be clear and mindful in our language.

Putin’s war

The most obvious point is that we should not talk about a “Russian war” or an invasion “by Russia”, but a war and invasion by Putin and his regime. Many people in Russia do not even know that there is a war, and they go to jail for calling it one. This is Putin’s war, and it should always be called so.

No more “the West”

The concept of “the West” is a relic from the 20th century that we should get rid of ASAP. It is exclusive, divisive, and factually wrong. Ukraine itself can hardly be counted as part of a geographic West, neither can Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Australia etc. Drawing any type of geographical line just leads to exclusion, detachment, and potential mistrust.

Instead, we should talk about free countries — the countries with governments that are actually accountable to the people they govern. And we should always emphasize that the people of Russia, China, Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia etc. are warmly invited to join this group, as soon as they have governments that actually represent them.

Democracy is not a “Western concept”

In the same notion, it is overdue to deculturalize the concept of democracy. The idea that people should decide for themselves what they want, is no more American, French, or German, than it is Russian or Chinese.

Autocratic regimes and populists everywhere have used lies and propaganda to mobilize mass support and to picture themselves as “benign shepherds”, who know what is best for their nation. This hypocrisy isn’t an invention of any specific culture either.

Democratic institutions are simply technical tools for ensuring accountability and sovereignty. There is nothing cultural about this.

4. It’s time to put an end to the hypocrisy

This war is not a terrible surprise born in the head of one random madman. It’s a predictable consequence of the corrupt, hypocritical global economy that our democratic governments have fueled for decades. Had they been sincere about democratic values twenty years ago, they could have avoided to strengthen a ruthless war criminal, who, since his first day in office, used any means to pursue his goals.

Of course, this is a general issue. In doing business with autocratic regimes — more precisely, in enabling our corporations to do business in countries that are held captive by autocratic regimes — we have helped these regimes to grow strong. And now the Ukrainians pay the bill. Like many other innocent people before.

If we really want to get out of the vicious circle, we have to face this reality at its full scale:

We already know it from climate change, now we know it from geopolitics. Our hypocritical economic activities have served our corporations well, but our societies badly.

The search for cheap oil and gas, but also for cheap production sites and consumer goods, came at a horrible price: War in Ukraine, possibly soon war in Taiwan, forest fires, floods, droughts — just to name a few of the costs we do not see when we buy a 5 Dollar t-shirt.

It is time to put an end to this hypocrisy. We need to build a free world where democratic politics are not captured by unaccountable corporations.

Fortunately, it all can be done in one swing. We can reduce our need for fossil fuels, cheap plastics, and endless iterations of consumer electronics, while building an economy that is more healthy for us and less supportive for autocrats.

Instead of growth-craving corporations that do business wherever it helps them grow turnover and cut costs, we can build companies that are designed to be incorruptible and to do sustainable business based on honest values.

We have all the necessary organizational and legal models for this, plus all the necessary examples and best practices. Now it’s time to build truly responsible companies at global scale.

At the bottom of this article, there are also some links to relevant movements and organizations, which have developed and tested tools and models for building sustainable, incorruptible companies.

A fourth scenario

If we manage to move ahead with these points, there might be a fourth scenario:

More and more people take the Ukraine crisis as a wake up call and become more conscious about their consumption. Instead of buying more oil from other autocratic regimes like Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, we accept higher fuel prices and take measures to reduce our needs.

We shift our consumption more and more to goods that are produced sustainably, without supporting regimes like Putin’s. We start looking for quality and fair origin instead of running blindly after cheap, fake prices. And we build companies that make it easy for everyone to join this path.

Anna spoke out publicly for Chechnya at a time when Chechens were regularly “vanishing”, even in European countries. She went on to work for the promotion of human rights in Russia, knowing that her activities and her origin would put her into permanent danger.

The war in Chechnya received practically no public attention outside Russia. Now, Ukraine receives full international attention, at least for the moment. And the governments of most democratic states have taken at least some action.

Let’s see how long this lasts. But let’s use this momentum to push on for sustainable change. This is the best thing we can do for the people of Ukraine. And for anyone who wants to live a free and peaceful life on a healthy planet.

Relevant links for building and supporting responsible companies:

The platform coop movement unites responsible alternatives to the big corporate web platforms.

Zebras Unite is a network of entrepreneurs that explore new models of business.

The Purpose Foundation offers a specific model to avoid wrong incentives in a company.

The Economy for the Common Good movement offers tools for measuring business success in terms of sustainability.

In another article I wrote about the Co-operative 2.0 and how this model can help to build corruption-resiliant companies.