War in Ukraine and Russian strategic culture: In search of lost greatness?

Russian aggression against Ukraine underscores the importance of understanding the strategic culture of states whose revisionist behavior challenges the world order. This paper focuses on the causes of war in Ukraine through the prism of Russian strategic culture rooted in Russia’s national identity premised on the "imperialism-nationalism" nexus. In particular, three key pillars of Russian strategic culture are identified and analyzed. The first is a sense of vulnerability grounded in the perception of threat from "the West" which was especially aggravated after the reassessment of the fact of collapse of the Soviet Union as a kind of betrayal and "Russian humiliation". The second pillar is a feeling of belonging to the great powers club the members of which in the Russian view have a privileged role in defining and reformulating the rules of conduct in the international system including the right to possess spheres of influence. Finally, the warp and woof of Russian strategic culture are "great myths" encompassing those stemming from the Eurosianism movement and the victory in World War II or the Great Patriotic War as it is referred to in Russia. The paper argues that Russia perceives Ukraine’s choice of the Western way of development as a menace to Russia’s national interests and its great power status claims which resulted in the Kremlin's decision to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine.