1. Putin is a dictator who has attempted to assassinate and drive into exile meaningful political opposition.
2. Putin is ideologically invested in the idea of a Eurasian Empire legitimised through fear of America and NATO, the memory of the USSR, homophobia and anti-Semitism.
3. Putin believes that the Ukraine belongs to Russia despite just 5.5% of Ukrainian’s identifying themselves as ethnically Russian and parliamentary democracy since 1991.
4. Putin and his advisors legitimise Russian influence over nations like Ukraine through propagating lies that Democracy is a system manipulated and encouraged by Jews and Homosexuals to ‘enslave the homeland’. Resistance towards Putin’s Russia in both Ukraine and Russia is constantly described by Putin’s aids as being the influence of a global conspiracy organised by Jews and Homosexuals. A think tank very influential to Putin, writes that the EU ‘groans under the weight of the LGBT lobby’s domination’. In the past Marine La Penn has joined pro-Putin rallies that claim homosexuality is a liberal ideology used to destroy the family.
5. According to Anne Applebaum Putin’s geopolitical goals aim to ‘reinforce his autocracy, undermine democracies… break up NATO. Destroy the European Union. Remove American influence from Europe and everywhere else, forever.’
6. In the past ten years Russia has been conducting the worst cyberwar in history. In 2014 Russia conducted the ‘most brazen attempt to manipulate a national election in history’. In 2015 Russian hackers targeted the power grid ‘meticulously shutting off one circuit breaker after another until hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were without power’. In 2017 Russian hackers enacted ‘the most destructive and costly cyberattacks in world history’ in which Ukrainians could ‘not take money from ATMs, pay for gas at stations, send or receive mail, pay for a train ticket, buy groceries, get paid, or – perhaps most terrifying of all – monitor radiation levels at Chernobyl’. If Putin’s dictatorship invaded the Ukraine on the grounds of defeating Homosexuals and Jews, or fictional excuses like preventing NATO, what would stop Putin annexing more countries bordering the Ukraine using the exact same ideologies and military strategies?
7. Putin’s brand of fascism can find genuine allies in the West like Donald Trump, Marine La Penn and Viktor Orban that. If Hungary were to border Russia would they still support NATO protocol? Since the Refugee crises in 2014 we’ve seen the rise of the far-right throughout the European Union. Russian proximity and military intervention may serve to embolden these movements and act as existential threats towards the EU and NATO.
8. Warfare is the worst thing for the environment and Putin’s Russia are not concerned with keeping global warming below 2 degrees. The New York Times and David Wallace Wells suggest that Putin’s Russia are likely to benefit from global warming.
9. A refugee crises of over 1.5 million Ukrainian’s that might build support for the anti-environmental anti-EU far-right throughout the European Union.
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