Why Russia invaded Ukraine and how wars benefit autocrats: The domestic sources of the Russo-Ukrainian War

Abstract

Contrary to Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical arguments, there was little chance that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine would benefit Russia’s position in the European balance of power and enhance its overall security. Instead, I argue that Putin’s decision was based on domestic interests, mainly the regime’s legitimation, a major pillar of authoritarian stability. Using a multi-method research design, I demonstrate that the war has significant potential to boost Putin’s popularity, nationalism and authoritarian preferences in society, as well as to strengthen his image as the country’s heroic protector. As in several autocracies, the instrumentalization of security concerns and existential threats are a powerful source of regime cohesion. These arguments are corroborated by data from Russia’s current and previous conflicts, such as elites’ discourse, analysis of repressive policies, and public opinion polls on Putin’s rule and authoritarian preferences. The regime needs a hostile ‘West’ and a threatening Ukraine for self-legitimation.

Keywords

War in Ukraine Russo-Ukrainian war authoritarianism diversionary war securitization nationalism Vladimir Putin

Introduction

On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin officially ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, culminating in the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II. As it involved the interests of major nuclear powers and military alliances, the war in Ukraine revived the geopolitical tensions that marked the Cold War.

This study aims to shed light on the domestic sources of the Russo-Ukrainian war by addressing the following interrelated research questions:

Why did Russia invade Ukraine?

How did Putin’s personalist autocracy benefit from warfare in terms of gaining social support (legitimation) for its regime and repressive policies?

Grounded in compelling evidence, I argue that the main cause of Russia’s aggression was the regime’s legitimation strategy, which is a major pillar for autocrats to retain power. The securitization of the West, and Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, have been mobilized to boost Putin’s popularity and authoritarian preferences in society, strengthen his image as an efficient and heroic protector, bolster nationalism and ‘siege mentality’, and to revive historical memories and traumas. Furthermore, it has been instrumentalized to justify the crackdown on oppositionists, depicted as threatening traitors, and reinforce the regime’s ideological precepts, such as the supremacy of Russian ‘traditional’ values over ‘decadent’ western liberal values. In other words, Putin and his security establishment need the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and diversionary wars for self-legitimization; the regime’s survival is also a realpolitik goal.

The discussion of blame for the Russo-Ukrainian spiral of tensions revolves around several normative questions (D’Anieri, 2019: 264). It has been polarized between two fields: the ‘defensive’ war/state-level approach, majorly represented by scholars of the Realist School of International Relations (Mearsheimer, 2022; Walt, 2022), that portrays Russia as a victim of NATO’s expansionism and the invasion of Ukraine as a natural balance of power reaction against it. This external-oriented stance aligns with Moscow’s official rhetoric. Conversely, the ‘aggressive’ war/elite-level approach conceives domestic-oriented interests, authoritarianism and Putin’s imperial ambitions as the motor of the conflict (Khrushcheva, 2022; Kuzio, 2022; Person and McFaul, 2022).

Regardless of the legitimacy of Russian elites’ arguments against NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe (the main reason Putin pointed out for initiating the war), invading Ukraine, as expected, did not tip Europe’s balance of power in favor of Russia (Ferraro, 2023). In contrast, NATO is much more empowered, unified and closer to Russian borders than before the aggression (a prediction ignored by realists). Even an eventual major victory for Russia will hardly favor its overall security. The confrontation over Ukraine has not benefited Russia’s geopolitical position in Europe, but it may bring significant gains to Putin’s regime.

Additionally, I address a major component of the regime’s legitimation strategies: Putin’s securitization of Ukraine as an existential threat since the 2004 Orange Revolution, when historical stereotypes of Ukrainian identity as a western conspiratorial construct to divide a pan-Russian nation and undermine Russia’s state power were reinforced. This strategic move allowed the current aggressive war to be portrayed as a ‘defensive war’ to protect Russian territory. Since its early phases, Putin’s regime acquired significant knowledge on how to constantly mobilize internal and external threats for its own benefits. The domestic fight against ‘Chechen bandits’ at the very beginning gradually gave way to the external fight against ‘Ukrainian nationalists’, the ‘collective West’ and its allied ‘liberal traitors’ inside Russia.

The evidence for these arguments is based on a multi-method research design that applies discourse analysis, legislative content analysis, inferential statistics and analysis of public opinion polls. For the analytical purposes of this article, due to the high centralization of decision-making and the concentration of formal and informal powers in Russia’s autocratic leadership, I treat Vladimir Putin, his personalist regime and the Russian state as interchangeable categories.

Analytical framework

The concept of authoritarian legitimation is a central element in the article’s arguments. According to Gerschewski (2013), legitimation is one of the three pillars that sustain authoritarian regimes, along with co-optation and repression. Von Soest and Grauvogel (2017: 288–289) define legitimation as ‘the process of gaining support’. In their words, legitimation strategies, or ‘claims to legitimacy’, have political repercussions regarding elite cohesion, regime popularity and opposition activity, stimulating collective identification towards the regime and marginalizing anti-government actors. Empirical studies indicate that personalist regimes, such as Vladimir Putin’s autocracy, are more prone to violent breakdowns than military and single-party regimes (Geddes, 1999; Geddes et al., 2018). Therefore, legitimization strategies are of paramount importance to their survival. Below, I provide an overview of the literature on the mechanisms through which wars help autocrats obtain social and political support (legitimation).

The impact of authoritarianism on the probability of war

As Geddes et al. (2018: 1) remark, most political violence and civil/interstate wars since the early 20th century have involved dictatorships. Authoritarian legitimation strategies are major causes of warfare. Domestic conflicts against minorities (Gagnon, 1995; Tir and Jasinski, 2008) and interstate wars enhance the social and electoral support for the incumbent (Mueller, 1973) – the ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect. Leaders may perceive diversionary wars as attractive responses to internal instability, economic decline and growing domestic opposition (Oakes, 2012).

Some of the literature has examined which types of authoritarian regimes are more likely to use military force and under what conditions. Mansfield and Snyder (2002) hold that states that have undergone partial democratic transitions face legitimation concerns and are more prone to mobilizing conflicts to stimulate nationalism and popular support. Lai and Slater (2006) claim that propensity is contingent on the strength of the ‘institutional infrastructure’. Single-party regimes rely on effective authoritarian institutions (such as party structures) to ensure their legitimacy, manage elite factionalism and curb mass protests. In turn, military regimes are less effective at developing such institutions. Given the fear of domestic challenges and authoritarian breakdowns, they are more likely to engage in military conflicts aimed at unifying society and the military.

Weeks (2012) pointed out the role of domestic audiences in their decisions to initiate war. Political leaders are usually constrained by actors who punish them for making such decisions. However, when power is concentrated in their hands by eliminating elite and popular resistance, the propensity to initiate war is high. Advancing Weeks’ arguments, I further show that Putin’s personalist regime engages in conflicts not only because of the absence of domestic constraints, but also as a resource to undermine these constraints, hindering any vestige of institutional checks and balances.

The impact of wars on authoritarianism

Wars can boost autocrats by reinforcing their overall support, authoritarian attitudes, ideologies, nationalism and repressive policies. During periods of conflict and major threats, society is more prone to agree with limits on civil liberties in exchange for security measures, as noted after 11 September in the US (Davis and Silver, 2004). Political psychology scholars have pointed to a remarkable relationship between perceptions of societal threats and authoritarian attitudes (Duckitt and Fisher, 2003; Feldman and Stenner, 1997). Conflicts stimulate the so-called ‘siege mentality’ when society perceives itself surrounded by enemies and a hostile world. These beliefs may facilitate group solidarity, identity, unity and mobilization (Bar-Tal, 2011).

In addition to psychological effects, conflict may boost authoritarian ideological legitimacy. According to Slater (2010), elites and society may coalesce around the autocrat against a perceived threat in the so-called ‘protection pacts’, which provide a coalitional basis to extract resources from elites and organize cohesive parties and the military, prompting both a powerful state and a durable authoritarian regime. In some cases, they are more effective than patronage resources (‘provisional pacts’). Levitsky and Way (2012) emphasize that victory in violent conflicts enhances the durability of authoritarian single-party regimes by providing non-material sources of cohesion (e.g. ideology and elites’ solidarity bonds). Additionally, Ferraro (2022) asserts that autocrats mobilize their victories to justify that authoritarianism is more efficient than liberal democracy in fighting different threats and providing security.

The literature on securitization has contributed to the discussion on the relationship between wars and authoritarianism by outlining that perceptions of threat are not objective natural givens but social (intersubjective) constructions. In the process of securitization, a ‘securitizing agent’ (usually political leaders and state officials), by means of a speech act, socially establishes the existence of a threat to the survival of a unit (usually the state) and demands that ‘urgent measures’ should be taken to counterbalance these threats (Buzan et al., 1998; Wæver, 1995). Similarly, Krebs (2010) states that wars usually lead to security-driven restrictions, uncharged detentions, reduced government transparency, repression of opposition and expansion of executive authority, which may harm democracy. In the words of Centeno (2010):

Wars have the capacity to turn us all into lunatics and to convince us that only the state can protect us from the horrifying foe. [. . .] A variety of regimes justify the continuing limitation on individual freedoms by either claiming that the enemy remains undefeated, or by pulling ever-new terrors from the political magicians’ hat. (255–256).

Bearing in mind the aforementioned literature, my argument entails that the instrumentalization of warfare to enhance Putin’s legitimation is based on three assumptions:

I. Conflicts boost nationalist emotions and popular support for political leaders (the ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect), which facilitates the legitimation of their authoritarian regime and repressive policies. As Oakes (2012: 40) argues, ‘leaders instigate an armed international conflict to distract the public from its woes, whip up nationalist sentiment and rally the populace behind the government, shift blame for internal troubles to an external scapegoat, and/or demonstrate the government’s competence in foreign policy to improve its image’.

II. Conflicts stimulate perceptions of threats in society which, in turn, increases overall authoritarian preferences and facilitates both regime legitimation and consent for repressive ‘urgent measures’ to presumably address these threats. Political leaders, by means of speech acts/discourse, securitize specific issues as existential threats to the nation and present the ‘proper’ authoritarian solutions to fight them. The mobilization of internal and external threats, conceiving the political leader as a necessary, efficient and heroic protector of society, is a powerful legitimation strategy, especially for personalist autocracies (based on charismatic leadership).

III. Political leaders aware of the conflict’s legitimation effects and counting on significant military power resort to warfare as a recurrent strategy to divert attention from social dissatisfaction and to promote more authoritarian policies devoted to the regime’s sustainability.

Assumptions I and III are related to diversionary war theory, whereas assumption II is in line with both political psychology literature and the securitization theory. The diagram (Figure 1) synthetizes these mutually reinforcing effects.

Figure 1.

The relationship between conflicts and authoritarian legitimation.

Data and methods

Considering the conflict-legitimation effects introduced in the previous section, this study draws on a multi-method research design that combines survey analyses of political attitudes with quantitative and qualitative discourse analyses. The answer to the question ‘How does Putin’s personalist autocracy benefit from warfare?’ is linked to the problem ‘Why did Russia invade Ukraine?’ The following empirical strategies were implemented to address these questions.

First, as a test for the diversionary war mechanism (assumption I), I resort to the Levada Center opinion polls to assess the variation in Putin’s popular support. I verified the trends and dynamics of these variables before and after the onset of major conflicts. If the diversionary war effect is significant, political leaders are expected to have rational incentives to initiate new conflicts (assumption III). I also use data on major political protests in Russia and neighboring post-Soviet states as a proxy for the risk of regime instability.

Second, as a test for the relationship between conflicts, perceptions of social threats and authoritarian preferences (assumption II), I draw on data from the New Russia Barometer (NRB), a 2007 survey conducted a few months after Putin’s notoriously incisive speech against NATO at the Munich Security Conference that year. I performed a binomial logit regression to assess whether the perception of the US as a threat to Russia correlated with authoritarian preferences and Soviet nostalgia in society. The following variables were addressed: support for parliamentary suspension, dictatorship, military rule and the return of Soviet communism (as well as control variables for individuals’ characteristics and their interests in politics). To facilitate the interpretation of the results, I transformed these variables into dummies: the perception of the US as threat received the value 1 for ‘big’ or ‘some’ threat and 0 for ‘small’ or ‘none’; meanwhile, the authoritarian preferences received 1 for ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ approve and 0 for ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ disapprove. Even though the data cover an earlier period, political leaders’ past knowledge about these effects may influence the strategies and rationale for resorting to conflict at present. Furthermore, these data may be useful for verifying whether major findings on the relationship between social threat perceptions and authoritarianism (e.g. Duckitt and Fisher, 2003; Feldman and Stenner, 1997) are also confirmed by the Russian case.

Third, as a strategy to address Putin’s securitization strategies (the constructivist part of assumption II), I examine all the annual addresses of the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly from 1994 to 2023 and codify (in NVivo) every paragraph that mentions domestic and external threats. Then, I observed the variation in the percentage of mentions (codified paragraphs) by speech over time. I also conducted a qualitative analysis of Putin’s and regime propagandists’ statements about Ukraine and the 2022 invasion using major media sources.

Finally, to test the connection of the diversionary war (assumption I) and securitization (assumption II) strategies to authoritarian policies – that is, the legitimation of the adoption of ‘urgent measures’ to fight the threats – I collected data on repressive federal bills (such as laws on combating terrorism and extremism), as well as on the Ministry of Justice’s classification of ‘foreign agents’ – a major legal instrument to crack down on oppositionists. A qualitative discourse analysis shows how government officials link the securitization of existential threats to the adoption of such policies.

Analyzing the effects of an ongoing war on an authoritarian regime poses a significant methodological challenge. One cannot be confident that opinion polls will accurately reveal the population’s preferences and how long the effects of war will endure. Nevertheless, these risks can be reduced by addressing the effect of conflicts in other periods in which the regime allowed a higher degree of public contestation and by implementing a multi-method research design. Previous knowledge and experiences of the regime with conflicts are paramount to understanding the ongoing instrumentalization of diversionary wars and securitization.

The causes of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine

The instrumentalization of warfare as a major legitimation strategy

As previously mentioned, authoritarian regimes rely on three bases of sustenance: repression, co-optation (the distribution of economic gains at an appropriate level) and legitimation strategies (Gerschewski, 2013). During periods of economic growth, autocrats can reinforce their economic co-optation strategies and decrease the need for repression, presenting themselves as effective leaders (Guriev and Treisman, 2015). Conversely, periods of economic stagnation usually increase the demand for repressive policies (to counterbalance social dissatisfaction) and thus for ideological resources devoted to their legitimation.

The Russians faced highly turbulent political and economic transitions following the breakup of the USSR. There are vivid memories of the hardships of this period. In contrast, the early phase of Putin’s rule witnessed an accentuated economic boom, which contributed to enforcing authoritarian bargains in society and the perception that Putin’s personalist autocracy was more capable of providing economic gains and stability than the previous ‘liberalizing’ government.

After the turbulence in the commodities market in the 2010s, the regime could not provide the same levels of growth and underwent periods of economic downturn. These years presented increasing dissatisfaction with the regime, based not only on the weakening of authoritarian economic bargains but also on Putin’s grip on power after being elected for a third presidential term amidst allegations of electoral fraud. Table 1 shows how massive protests against the regime occurred in 2011. In 2017, they ceased to be concentrated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and spread to several regions. In 2021, after Alexei Navalny (the main opposition to the regime) was imprisoned, Russia saw one of its major protests. Additionally, Figure 2 shows the number of detainees in protests by year; the leap in 2021 is remarkable.

Table 1.

Major protests against Putin and the regime before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Date	Place	Estimated size	Reason
31 March 2001	Moscow	20	State interference on NTV Channel
4–6 December 2011	Moscow and more than 20 cities	100,000–150,000	Alleged electoral fraud
10 December 2011	Moscow	25,000–80,000	Alleged electoral fraud
24 December 2011	Moscow	29,000–120,000	Alleged electoral fraud
4 February 2012	Moscow	100	Alleged electoral fraud
6 May 2012	Moscow	8,000–more than 10,000	Alleged electoral fraud
12 June 2012 (several marches until June 2013)	Moscow	18,000–120,000	Alleged electoral fraud
1 March 2015	Moscow	21,000–50,000	Boris Nemtsov’s murder (mourning march)
26 March 2017	100 cities	7,000–30,000 in Moscow, up to 150,000 across Russia	Corruption dossier by Alexei Navalny’s organization FBK against prime-minister Dmitriy Medvedev
12 June 2017	154 cities	50,000–100,000	Corruption dossier by Alexei Navalny’s organization FBK against prime-minister Dmitriy Medvedev
7 October 2017	80 cities	25	Corruption scandals
28 January 2018	100 cities	At least 3500	Electoral Commission’s refusal to register Navalny as candidate for president
5 May 2018	Moscow and several cities	-	Putin’s rule (inspired by the Armenian Velvet Revolution)
20 and 27 July 2019	Moscow	3500–25,000	Barring of candidates from the Moscow regional parliament elections
10 August 2019	Moscow	20	Barring of candidates from the Moscow regional parliament elections
2020	More than 40 cities	(more than 700 detainees)	Constitutional reforms
2020–2021	Khabarovsk and other cities	Several thousands	Imprisonment of Khabarovsk’s governor Sergey Furgal
23 and 31 January 2021	Up to 190 cities	250,000–300,000	Imprisonment of Alexei Navalny
21 April 2021	30 cities	At least 30,000	Imprisonment of Alexei Navalny
September–October 2021	Several cities	-	Alleged electoral fraud

Source: compiled by the author, based mainly on Trofimov and Gavrilov (2021).

FBK (Fond bor’by s korruptsiyey): Anti-Corruption Foundation.

Figure 2.

Number of detainees in major protests.

Faced with increasing social dissatisfaction, the regime extended its repressive legitimation strategies in the 2010s. As found in several authoritarian regimes, its main ideological resource was the fight against domestic and foreign threats. The beneficial effects of conflicts for Putin’s rule were noticed from his early days in power: his hardline performance during the Second Chechen War (1999–2000) bolstered his approval and helped him get elected in the first round of the 2000 presidential elections. A dissident from the security service claimed that one of the main triggers of the conflict, the 1999 apartment bombings (presumably by Chechen separatists), was carried out by the security service to cause social commotion, justify the war and mobilize society for political purposes.¹ As one can see in Figure 3, the ‘rally ‘round the flag’ effect (assumption I) was impressive in all the conflicts that the Russian state got involved in. Just before the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin’s approval was at its lowest historical level, and the conflicts rapidly boosted it to record peaks, remaining stable for a long period. It should be noted that, owing to the risks associated with responding to surveys in an authoritarian context, these ratings are likely skewed in favor of Putin. Intense criticism surrounds reliability levels (see Pachikova and Kolobaeva, 2023). I contend that although their data may not be valuable for absolute figures, they can still serve as an estimator of the general trends in society (see also Volkov, 2023).

Figure 3.

Vladimir Putin’s approval rating in Russia.

In the first years of Putin’s presidency, the securitization focus was on internal threats – the Chechen question, indirectly associated with external threats (international terrorism and western ambitions to dismantle Russia). Putin was portrayed as a heroic guarantor of political and economic stability vis-à-vis the chaotic 1990s. Once the Chechen question lost saliency, the focus shifted to external threats – the ‘collective West’, NATO’s expansionism and ‘Ukrainian nationalists’. Despite the organization’s major enlargements in 1999 and 2004, it became a paramount securitization issue in the Russian elites’ discourses only after 2006. Figure 4 shows the variation in the mentions of domestic and external threats in the annual presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly as a constructivist element of assumption II. The decrease in mentions of internal threats seems to be compensated by an increase in mentions of external threats in a recurrent securitization process. By 2023, mentions of external threats has risen to almost 30%. Putin, like several Soviet leaders, has successfully promoted the ‘siege mentality’ in society – the perception that Russia is surrounded by enemies and a hostile world.

Figure 4.

Mentions of internal and external threats in the presidential addresses to the parliament.

In line with the aforementioned political-psychology literature, I found evidence that the perception of the US as a threat was strongly correlated with some authoritarian preferences. The regressions in Table 2, assessing a 2007 NRB survey conducted after Putin’s famous anti-NATO speech at the Munich Security Conference, provide evidence that perceiving the US as a threat puts the individual at 1.58 times greater odds of approving a dictatorship (for a log-odds of 0.458, model 3) and the return of Soviet communism at 1.67 times (for a log-odds of 0.515, model 7), while keeping the other variables constant. Analogous results were found in surveys conducted in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005 (see the attached R codes), suggesting that promoting threat perceptions in society can encourage greater consent (or less resistance) to authoritarian regimes and policies, which is evidence for assumption II. Some periods saw correlations including with the approval of the suspension of parliament and military rule. The results for the control variables followed patterns similar to those of previous studies (e.g. Davis and Silver, 2004).

Table 2.

The relationship between the perception of the US as a threat, different indicators of authoritarian preferences and nostalgia for USSR’s communism in 2007 (Logit binomial).

	Pref_Parliament_suspension		Pref_Dictatorship		Pref_Military_rule		Pref_Communism_return
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)
US_threat.binar	−0.220 (0.136)	−0.214 (0.122)	0.458 *** (0.138)	0.446 *** (0.124)	−0.080 (0.196)	−0.095 (0.175)	0.515 *** (0.139)	0.541 *** (0.125)
GenderFemale	−0.217 (0.138)	−0.232 (0.124)	−0.303 * (0.138)	−0.321 ** (0.124)	−0.835 *** (0.203)	−0.816 *** (0.181)	−0.053 (0.139)	−0.056 (0.125)
Age	0.001 (0.004)	0.001 (0.004)	0.024 *** (0.004)	0.023 *** (0.004)	0.012 (0.006)	0.012 * (0.006)	0.038 *** (0.005)	0.040 *** (0.004)
Income	−0.116 * (0.055)	−0.119 * (0.050)	−0.176 ** (0.055)	−0.197 *** (0.049)	−0.126 (0.080)	−0.115 (0.071)	−0.233 *** (0.054)	−0.234 *** (0.049)
Local_residenceRural	0.362 * (0.152)	0.389 ** (0.138)	0.443 ** (0.148)	0.389 ** (0.133)	0.038 (0.216)	0.099 (0.192)	0.250 (0.151)	0.276 * (0.135)
Interest_politics	−0.186 * (0.075)	−0.188 ** (0.067)	−0.031 (0.075)	−0.011 (0.067)	−0.221 * (0.108)	−0.221 * (0.097)	−0.342 *** (0.077)	−0.320 *** (0.068)
Constant	0.482 (0.353)	0.461 (0.317)	−1.634 *** (0.356)	−1.534 *** (0.318)	−1.421 ** (0.496)	−1.478 *** (0.442)	−1.326 *** (0.349)	−1.472 *** (0.314)
Weights	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes	No	Yes
Observations	955	955	1159	1159	1175	1175	1148	1148
Log Likelihood	−631.019	−676.035	−663.745	−714.066	−378.702	−411.138	−649.542	−703.172
AIC	1276.038	1366.071	1341.489	1442.132	771.404	836.276	1313.085	1420.345

AIC: Akaike information criterion.

Source: created by the author based on New Russia Barometer (1993–2009).

p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001.

The threat from the West is not limited to the enlargement of NATO or the Ukrainian battlefield. It provides coherence to nationalist ideologies, such as the relativist argument underlining an existential conflict between the Russian ‘sovereign democracy’ (based on Russia’s ‘own path’) and ‘western’ liberal democracy, marked by factionalisms and ‘inappropriate’ to the social, cultural and historical specificities of Russia. This cultural war is also tied to the notion of the supremacy of ‘traditional’ Russian values over ‘decadent’ western liberal values and is often associated with sexism and homophobic positions (Agadjanian, 2017; Foxall, 2019). The debate on Russia’s traditional values against western values and liberal democracy dates back to the 19th century, when the division between westernizers and Slavophiles gained resonance (Segrillo, 2020). In Figure 5 it is remarkable that the preferences for ‘western-style democracy’ dropped in moments of conflict vis-à-vis the increase in preferences for Putin’s system.

Figure 5.

‘Which political system do you think is best?’

The securitization of the ‘collective West’ as a paramount threat is often mobilized to reinforce executive powers and repressive measures and to crack down on opposition (the connection of assumptions I and II to the adoption of repressive policies, as ‘urgent measures’). Journalists, activists, politicians, celebrities and scholars who publicly contest Putin’s autocracy and human rights violations are regularly accused of being the West’s ‘fifth column’ – internal foes and traitors acting in the interest of external (western) enemies that aspire to destabilize Russia. Opposing Putin is equated with ‘Russophobia’. In 2012, the parliament adopted a bill establishing a category of ‘foreign agents’ for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that had ties with foreign governments or organizations. Subsequently, the legislation was expanded to cover media outlets and individuals and further regulate and restrict their activities. Throughout the 2010s, the Ministry of Justice labeled several organizations and personalities within this category, as shown in Figure 6. In 2021, there was a leap to more than 100 ‘agents’, indicating that the regime had already been intensifying the use of coercive instruments before the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the registry beat a new annual record with 188 new agents. It is noteworthy that from 2009 to January 2022, the human rights organization Memorial, also classified as a ‘foreign agent’ and liquidated by the Ministry of Justice, identified 1000 political prisoners throughout Russia (Memorial, 2022).

Figure 6.

Number of individuals and entities classified as ‘foreign agents’.

The ideological instrumentalization of the 2022 war to legitimize the regime and its ‘urgent’ security measures can be exemplified by Putin’s speech in March 2022, when he merged internal and externals threats aiming to prompt a ‘self-purification’ of Russian society and elites:

[B]ehind the hypocritical talk and current actions of the so-called collective West, there are hostile geopolitical goals. [. . .] We remember how they supported separatism and terrorism, encouraging terrorists and bandits in the North Caucasus [Chechnya]. As in the 1990s and early 2000s, they now again, once again, want to repeat their attempt to squeeze us [. . .] turn us into a weak, dependent country, violate territorial integrity, and dismember Russia in the best possible way for them. It did not work then and will not’ work now. Yes, of course, they will try to bet on the so-called fifth column on national traitors [. . .]. Any people, and even more so the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a mosquito that accidentally flew into their mouths [. . .]. I am convinced that such a natural and necessary self-purification of society will only strengthen our country our solidarity, cohesion, and readiness to respond to any challenges. (Putin, 2022).

Since the early phases of Putin’s rule, Russian central elites have ensured their monopoly over the securitization processes and discourses in society by strongly controlling media sources and even school programs. This trend was strengthened during the 2022 war. In March, the parliament adopted bills to fight ‘disinformation’ about the armed forces in the so-called ‘special military operation’, a mandatory euphemism for invasion. Several activists, journalists and nationally known oppositionists have been detained or are facing criminal charges. According to OVD-Info (2023), an NGO classified as a ‘foreign agent’, from February 2022 to April 2023 more than 19,600 people were detained for their anti-war stance at public protests and on social media; over 530 faced criminal charges; over 6560 underwent administrative procedures; and 32 suffered torture or violence. In 2022, around 210,450 online sources were blocked (OVD-Info, 2022) in an effort to hegemonize the regime’s official discourse on the internet.

The confrontation against the West has also impacted domestic politics by empowering sectors of the security establishment (the siloviki). Since 2014, military clans (the ‘party of war’) have gained greater preponderance over other elite clans. The siloviki may have had a significant influence on the regime’s ideological positions (including the confrontational foreign policy stance) and Putin’s measures to harden his grip on power, being an important mediator between authoritarian rule and the decision to initiate conflict (assumption III). Kryshtanovskaya and White (2003) defined the system built by Putin as a ‘militocracy’, given the remarkable presence of security officials in Russia’s power structures. Additionally, Stanovaya (2022) outlines the increasing preponderance of the siloviki over business elites and the enhancement of their control over civilian sectors during Russia’s growing confrontation against the West. According to Kuzio (2022), since the Soviet period, the siloviki have been marked by great power nationalism, chauvinism, xenophobia towards Ukraine, security paranoia and a conspiratorial worldview. Political changes and grassroots protests are often conceived as Russophobic conspiracies organized by western intelligence agencies to undermine Russia’s state powers. Pro-war and nationalist epistemic communities, integrated by the siloviki, popular politicians, co-opted scholars, journalists and other regime propagandists, have long gained a de facto monopolistic voice in the Russian media and society.

In Figure 7, as a proxy for the increasing attention that the siloviki have received since Putin’s declining rating in early 2010, I demonstrate the variation in the number of laws and amendments adopted in several segments related to the repression and security apparatuses. One can see that the peaks of the entire series occurred in 2014 and 2022, years that witnessed the highest tensions with Ukraine and the West. It is also remarkable that the number of laws after 2014 was much higher than before. In 2022, the institutions that led to confidence ratings among Russians were the president (80%), army (77%) and security organs (61%) (Levada Center, 2022).

Figure 7.

Number of laws and amendments related to repression and security institutions.

Finally, it is worth asking whether the Russian elites fear risk and instability vis-à-vis the regime. Before the war, the regime was not on the verge of collapse, but, judging by several factors, they had reasons to be concerned and continued to implement their fear-based legitimation strategies. First, the remarkable increase in the legislation of the repression and security sectors during the 2010s, after political protests took root, is evidence that the elites were apprehensive that their economic bases were no longer perceived as sufficient to guarantee ample support for the regime (co-optation). After the 2018 pension reform and COVID-19 pandemic, Putin’s approval ratings registered significant declines; opposition leaders, such as Alexei Navalny, managed to mobilize protests even in regions far from Moscow. In 2021, the regime faced massive protests (in spite of the pandemic risks) across Russia prompted by Navalny’s arrest, and over 23,000 protesters were detained (OVD-Info, 2022). Second, in 2020, the elites conducted the largest reform of the constitution since its adoption in 1993. Formal presidential powers, which were already strong and reinforced by informal institutions, were expanded, denoting concern for the political fate of Vladimir Putin. Finally, other personalist regimes (close allies of Russia) in the Post-Soviet Space that seemed highly stable, with characteristics similar to the Russian model, have been deeply shaken by popular unrests in recent years (see Table 3), such as those in Belarus (2020–2021) and Kazakhstan (2022). Had it not been for Putin’s political and military support, these regimes would possibly have fallen. Similarly, the Wagner Group rebellion in 2023 hints that Putin’s regime is much more vulnerable than it seems at first glance.

Table 3.

Mass protests in the Post-Soviet Space.

Event	Country	Year	Result
Rose Revolution	Georgia	2003	Alternation of power
Orange Revolution	Ukraine	2004	Alternation of power
Tulip Revolution	Kyrgyzstan	2005	Alternation of power
Jeans Revolution	Belarus	2006	Incumbent remained in power
Grape Revolution	Moldova	2009	Incumbent remained in power
Melon Revolution	Kyrgyzstan	2010	Alternation of power
Euromaidan	Ukraine	2014	Alternation of power
Velvet Revolution	Armenia	2018	Alternation of power
Slipper Revolution	Belarus	2020–2021	Incumbent remained in power with Russia’s support
Kazakhstan unrest	Kazakhstan	2022	Incumbent remained in power with Russia’s support

Source: compiled by the author.

The securitization of Ukraine as an existential threat

As a complement to the diversionary strategy presented in the previous section, I further address the discursive construction of existential threats in Russia as a major instrument to justify the adoption of ‘urgent measures’, a part of assumption II.

After the breakup of the USSR, Russia’s geopolitical influence declined sharply, including in its neighborhood. Several national movements in post-Soviet states began to depict connections to Russian culture, language and history as a colonial heritage (Annus, 2012; Kuzio, 2002). Particularly problematic for Russian hegemony were the so-called ‘colored revolutions’ (Table 3), which, in some cases, prompted the replacement of autocrats aligned with Moscow by political leaders more distant from the Russian orbit or even pro-West, favoring integration with the European Union (EU) and NATO. These social movements erupted because of a multiplicity of domestic factors not necessarily related to geopolitical preferences (Beissinger, 2013; Bunce and Wolchik, 2011). Nonetheless, Russian official discourses simplified their causes, conceiving them as puppets of the West, as part of a hybrid warfare strategy aimed at weakening Russian regional hegemony.

The foundation of the Russian state was preceded by the formation of the Kievan Rus in the 9th century, which encompassed territories that today belong to Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Russian nationalists usually mobilize this common past as evidence of the brotherhood between Russians (‘Great Russians’), Ukrainians (‘Little Russians’) and Belarussians (‘White Russians’), claiming that these nations constitute one single pan-Russian people. As Kuzio (2022: 14) remarks, the Tsarist Empire, White Russian émigrés (after the 1917 Revolution), Stalinists and other Russian nationalist groups denied the existence of Ukrainians by labeling them ‘Little Russians’ (malorosy). The formation of a Ukrainian identity separate from Russia is deemed to have been an artificial process stimulated by the West, other hostile powers and Western Ukrainians in a Russophobic conspiracy to divide the Russian people against the will of the majority of the ‘Little Russians’. D’Anieri (2019) emphasizes that since 1992 Russian nationalists (among them, the famous Russian writer and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn) have contested Ukrainian borders and there has been recurrent tension between both countries throughout the post-Soviet period, including in the terms of pro-Russia Ukrainian presidents. In his words, ‘Russia did not simply let Ukraine go its own way because most Russians felt Ukraine was an intrinsic part of Russia’ (D’Anieri, 2019: 19).

The change in the tone of Putin’s speeches towards historical revisionism and the securitization of NATO and Ukraine as existential threats began after the 2004 Orange Revolution, when the pro-Russia candidate was defeated. In the following year, echoing colonial stances, Putin made references to Russia’s ‘civilizing mission’ on the Eurasian continent and declared that he considers ‘the international support for the respect of the rights of Russians abroad an issue of major importance, one that cannot be the subject of political and diplomatic bargaining’ (2005). The doctrine of the ‘Russian World’ (Russkiy mir) gained consistency in Moscow’s foreign policy, which advocated that the Russian state had a moral obligation to protect ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking populations abroad, mainly in the former Soviet republics. Putin also pointed out that the end of the USSR was ‘one of the greatest geopolitical catastrophes of the 20th century’, and, in the 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, first openly questioned the ‘artificiality’ of contemporary Ukrainian borders. It should be mentioned that the Russian World concept was not Putin’s creation but dates back to Solzhenitsyn’s proposal of a ‘Russian Union’ of Eastern Slavs (Russia, Belarus and Ukraine) to replace the dismantled USSR (Kuzio, 2022). In 1993, Russian elites demanded recognition of the former Soviet Union as its exclusive sphere of influence. According to Kuzio (2022: 37), the Russian political and intellectual elites have failed to develop a vision for a post-imperial Russian nation-state. Instead, ‘they have aligned with Russian nationalists in supporting a Russian “imagined community” which is larger than the Russian Federation’.

Since the Euromaidan in 2014, Ukraine has increasingly gained space in Putin’s speeches. On several occasions, Putin questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent state and nation, criticizing the ethnic and administrative policies implemented by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution, which transformed the former Russian Empire into a quasi-ethno-federal Soviet state. From 2019 to 2021, he reiterated that Russians and Ukrainians are one single people. The regime’s propaganda claims that Putin is correcting a historical injustice and fighting the new western colonialism (Khrushcheva, 2022). In the article titled ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, Putin (2021) made some of his most contentious statements, underlining the neighboring country as a cardinal securitization issue:

Modern Ukraine is wholly and completely a legacy of the Soviet era. We know and remember that, to a large extent, it was created at the expense of historical Russia. [. . .] And the most disgusting thing is that Russians in Ukraine are forced not only to renounce their roots from generations of ancestors but also to believe that Russia is their enemy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the path to forced assimilation and to the formation of an ethnically pure Ukrainian state aggressive against Russia is comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.

In a highly controversial column titled ‘What Russia Should Do with Ukraine’, published by one of the country’s largest state-owned news agencies, a propagandist of the regime (and ideologue of the Russian World doctrine) argued that not only the Ukrainian elites but also a large part of the population are Nazis, who must be forcibly ‘re-educated’ by means of military intervention. Given the threat that Ukraine presumably presents to Russia, the author openly stands for its annihilation as a state and nation and even the punishment of its population with war, for having colluded with ‘Nazis’:

[I]n addition to the elites, a significant portion of the population, which is a passive Nazi, an accomplice of Nazism, is also guilty. [. . .] Ukronazism poses no lesser threat to the world and Russia than Hitler’s German Nazism. The name ‘Ukraine’ apparently cannot be preserved as the title of any fully denazified state formation in the territory liberated from the Nazi regime. [. . .] Denazification will inevitably be de-Ukrainianization — a rejection of the artificial stimulus, initiated on a large scale, by the Soviet government [. . .] Ukrainianism is an artificial anti-Russian construction that has no civilizational content of its own, a subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization. [. . .] The denazification of Ukraine is also its inevitable de-Europeanization. [. . .] The social ‘swamp,’ supporting [the ‘Nazi’ elites] actively and passively by action and inaction, must survive the pains of war and learn this experience as a historical lesson and a redemption of its guilt. (Sergeytsev, 2022).

The dissemination of such a chauvinist and Ukrainophobic article in one of the country’s largest media outlets reveals how the elites have sought to stimulate the perception of Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia (Ukraine as an ‘anti-Russia’ artificial project) to justify the adoption of ‘urgent measures’, as the literature on securitization predicts (Buzan et al., 1998). Russian elites distort and overstretch the concept of ‘Nazism’ to include all Ukrainians who stand for a political future outside the ‘Russian World’, including left-wing, or any supporter of the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan. By associating the Ukrainian population with Nazism, the regime aims to awaken historical memories and emotions of the collective trauma that the Soviet population experienced during World War II and, therefore, to promote both social hatred as a mobilization resource for its war, and nationalism as the regime’s legitimation source – another evidence of the connection between authoritarian rule and the decision to fight (assumption III). These strategies of ‘dehumanizing’ and ‘demonizing’ the opponent may lead to war atrocities (see EU vs Disinfo, 2022; Savage, 2013).

Several actions on the battlefield, such as forced cultural assimilation and territorial annexation (entitled ‘de-nazification’), suggest that behind the invasion there may indeed be an intention to extinguish Ukraine as a state or, as an alternative move, to obliterate Ukrainian national identity by transforming the country into a ‘Little Russian’ satellite state, like Alexander Lukashenko’s Belarus. In June 2022, revealing imperial ambitions (within the securitization discourse), Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, stating that, as the Russian Emperor, he is now ‘returning and strengthening’ Russian territories; additionally, he hinted that the current Ukraine is a colony and a ‘colony has no chance of survival in such a tough geopolitical struggle’ (RIA, 2022). Days later, former President Dmitry Medvedev claimed that Ukraine may no longer exist on the map in two years (RBK, 2022).

A real source of threat to Russian elites is that an eventual success in Ukrainian democratization could subsequently stimulate a spillover effect, especially given the sociocultural and geographic proximity, bringing political instability to allied autocrats across the region and to Russia itself (Person and McFaul, 2022). A statement by Vladimir Putin’s adviser, Sergey Glazyev (2015) exposed these elites’ concerns:

By organizing a coup d’état and establishing full control over Ukrainian state power structures, Washington is betting on turning this part of the Russian World into a springboard for military, informational, humanitarian, and political intervention in Russia with the aim of transferring a chaotic war to its territory, organizing a revolution, and its subsequent dismemberment. The calculation is based on the fact that the Russian public consciousness is not immune to the penetration of agents of influence from Ukraine, which is an integral part of the root of the Russian spiritual and cultural system.

Finally, an important question arises: why did Putin change his stance on Ukraine over time? The answer may be found in the prospects of successful securitization discourses. As Buzan et al. (1998: 25) argue, securitization occurs only when the audience accepts a specific issue as securitized. Thus, Putin cannot create an existential threat on his own; he must invest in securitizing moves based on a limited pool of issues with significant potential for acceptance by mass audiences. Great power nationalism, frustration with Russia’s declining power, nostalgia for the Soviet Union, historical resentment and fear of the West, and irreconciliation with Ukrainian independence were present in Russian society in the 1990s. The 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine provided the opportunity to merge these feelings and emotions into a powerful securitization discourse. Putin found fruitful soil to engage in a strategic move from a Soviet-inherited recognition of Ukrainians as a ‘close but different’ people to a pre-Soviet depiction of Ukrainians as an artificial construct promoted by the West to divide Russia – as mentioned before, a Tsarist-era ideology that was reinforced by Soviet security officials’ conspiratorial worldviews, still present in today’s siloviki’s mentality (Kuzio, 2022). Owing to this background, the current aggressive war against Ukraine could be discursively portrayed as a ‘defensive war’ to protect and reconquer a Russian territory. The securitization of Ukraine (and the Post-Soviet Space, in general) gradually became an efficient replacement for the Chechen ‘existential threat’.

Conclusion

In an effort to shed light on the motivations for the current war and its potential benefits to Vladimir Putin, I have addressed factors that have been recurrently ignored in geopolitics and international relations’ realist approaches, mainly its domestic source: the regime’s legitimation strategies to retain power. I have demonstrated how Putin’s regime sought to instrumentalize conflicts to boost nationalism, the leader’s approval (assumption I) and authoritarian preferences in society (assumption II). The fight against different ‘existential’ threats prompts social support for the regime and provides a rational justification for the necessity of repressive policies and an authoritarian leader, which is portrayed as effective and heroic protector of society. In turn, these legitimation gains reinforce autocrats’ incentives to recurrently initiate conflict (assumption III). Russia’s military power facilitates the prospects for diversionary wars to be mobilized as a fruitful regime strategy.

The multi-method analyses of the relationship between conflicts, securitization discourse, political attitudes/preferences and authoritarian policies indicate that a domestic-driven diversionary war explanation of the 2022 Ukraine invasion is much more plausible in terms of state officials’ rational behavior than flawed power-balancing strategies. The regime’s survival is also a realpolitik goal, perhaps with more tangible concerns than threats by foreign powers recklessly invading or attacking a nuclear superpower – something that did not happen even during the Cold War. I do not claim that geopolitical considerations were absent in Putin’s calculus, but question whether these factors were a major motivator for the invasion, since the war can hardly provide significant geopolitical benefits for Russia, but can certainly offer political dividends for Putin. His social rating increased during all periods of military conflict and remained stable for a relatively long period. As the political psychology literature argues, the perception of societal threats may stimulate authoritarian preferences in society. The Russian case provides evidence for this argument; the perception of the US as a major threat is correlated with such preferences.

The securitization of the ‘collective West’ and Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia has been one of the main ideological sources of Putin’s authoritarian legitimation. Since its onset, his personalist regime has mobilized internal and external foes (‘Chechen bandits’, ‘Ukrainian nationalists’, the ‘collective West’ and ‘liberal domestic traitors’) as a major basis for justifying repressive policies (‘urgent’ security measures) and the erosion of institutional checks and balances in the political system. Repressive measures were reinforced shortly before or during major conflicts. The regime developed consistent institutional knowledge on how to instrumentalize securitization, ‘siege’ mentality/emotions and diversionist resources for the benefit of its own sustainability. The 2004 Orange Revolution provided the opportunity to gradually merge old conspiratorial fears, resentment and great power nationalism of the society into a successful securitizing discourse. This strategic move enabled the current depiction of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine as a ‘defensive war’ to reconquer and protect a Russian territory.

According to the regime’s official discourse, Russians must come together around Putin against external foes that aim to subjugate Russia, drive it back to the chaotic 1990s and undermine its territorial integrity, state power and social harmony – a sensitive issue due to Russia’s multinational ‘exceptionalism’ and its history of recent separatism. These enemies rely on internal allies and puppets (the ‘fifth column’, any opposition to the regime), which must be urgently defeated.

Like numerous other autocrats in search for self-legitimation, Putin has effectively securitized domestic and foreign ‘enemies’ as existential threats to Russia, asserting that without his authoritarian rule the multinational country is doomed to break up, as happened to the USSR. However, as recent and past events have shown, the greatest threat to Russia and the Russian people today may well be Putin himself.

Supplemental Material

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Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ips-10.1177_01925121231215048 for Why Russia invaded Ukraine and how wars benefit autocrats: The domestic sources of the Russo-Ukrainian War by Vicente Ferraro in International Political Science Review

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Supplemental material, sj-xlsx-1-ips-10.1177_01925121231215048 for Why Russia invaded Ukraine and how wars benefit autocrats: The domestic sources of the Russo-Ukrainian War by Vicente Ferraro in International Political Science Review

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Angelo Segrillo, Claudia Marconi, Gustavo Menezes, Jonathan Phillips and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Vicente Ferraro

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author biography

Vicente Ferraro holds a PhD in political science from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a master’s degree from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE). His research focuses on the impact of conflicts on domestic politics, political regimes, states and identities, mainly in former Soviet states.

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