The author is a contributing editor of the FT, chair of the Center for Liberal Strategy, Sofia, and fellow at IWM Vienna.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA, American experts will ask: “Why do they hate us?” A year into Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, a variation of the question has begun: “Why don’t they hate it?” equal?”
“He”, of course, refers to Putin’s Russia. The reluctance of non-western governments to impose sanctions on Moscow can easily be explained by economic interests. But how do we explain why the non-western public does not feel moral outrage at the Kremlin’s aggression?
A new study, United West, Divided by the Rest, shows that the war and Russia’s military decline have not forced people in many non-western countries to lower their opinion of Russia or question its power. Russia is seen as an “ally” or “partner” by 79 percent of people in China (no surprise). But the same is true for 80 percent of Indians and 69 percent of Turks. In addition, about three-quarters of respondents in each of these countries believe that Russia is stronger, or at least as strong, as they thought before the war.
And while the majority of Americans and Europeans want Ukraine to win even if it means a longer war and economic difficulties for themselves, most Chinese, Indians and Turks say they prefer the war to stop as soon as possible – even if it means Ukraine giving up part of its territory. They see western support for Kyiv as motivated by reasons other than the protection of Ukraine’s territorial integrity or its democracy.
Western support for Ukraine, especially the delivery of advanced weapons, has made it easier for non-western countries to accept the Kremlin’s conflict narrative as a proxy for confrontation between Russia and the west. This explains why Moscow’s military retreat at the hands of Ukrainian forces hardly registers with many people in the so-called global south. If Russia is facing the west as a whole, it is not surprising that it cannot succeed.
Faced with such a public attitude, western analysts usually lament the corrosive effects of Russian propaganda and the legacy of colonialism. But more importantly, Europeans see the war as a return to cold war-style polarization between two antagonistic blocs, while others tend to believe that the world is fragmenting into multiple power centers. In the words of a former senior Indian diplomat, for many outside the west “the war in Ukraine is about the future of Europe, not the future of world order”.
Speaking recently with journalists, writers and politicians in Colombia, I also discovered resentment about European geographic privilege. What exasperates the non-western “way” is when something that happens in Europe is immediately considered a global concern; while if it takes place in Africa or Latin America, this is almost never small. By ignoring the war in Ukraine, many outside the west, consciously or not, are questioning the centrality of Europe in global politics.
Although Putin and his propagandists may be relieved by the way non-western society sees what is happening in Ukraine, the question, “why don’t they hate him” also has a less than satisfactory answer for Moscow. Developing countries are not outraged by Putin’s aggression because Russia is no longer seen as a global superpower. For countries such as India and Turkey, Russia has become like them, so there is no need to fear. The prerogative of a territorial power is not to be hated outside its territory; Moscow now has this privilege.
The Soviet Union was an ideological superpower. Soviet advisers from the so-called third world in the 1970s and 1980s were there to nurse the revolution. Putin, on the other hand, has no transformative agenda outside of his imperial project in the post-Soviet space. The Wagner Group in Africa is a mercenary fighting for money, not ideas. Paradoxically, it is Russia’s lack of soft power that makes the non-western world immune to what Moscow is doing in Ukraine.
Now just one “great central power” among many, Russia’s war joins all other conflicts around the world – they take place alongside violence in Syria, Libya, Ethiopia and Myanmar. The war in Ukraine is not a turning point in the non-western imagination. So the answer to the question, “why don’t they hate him?” it’s simple. It’s because Russia is no longer important enough to hate.