“Non-Allied” Countries and Russian War in Ukraine: An (im)Possible Engagement
After a series of minor but painful military defeats, largely caused by the lack of much-needed ammunitions, Ukraine also experienced several diplomatic setbacks on various fronts, even though Ukrainian officials still try to put on a brave face. Some were predictable – like a declarative “membership bridge” (“Ukraine Compact”) instead of the much coveted roadmap to the North Atlantic alliance, offered Ukrainians at the NATO summit in Washington, or the six-month Hungarian presidency of the EU from July, that enables a small but quite naughty country to undermine even more effectively Ukraine’s international position and chances for a just and reliable peace.
But the meager results of the international conference in Switzerland, long prepared and vehemently promoted by Kyiv as the arguably first step toward a peace settlement, came largely as a surprise. Shortly before the conference, President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed his high expectations related to the event seen as a means to attain more international solidarity and support, in particular in the Global South: “The more such countries we have on our side… the more Russia will have to deal with this,” he said in an interview with AFP.
To placate the reluctant participants, hesitating between normative UN principles and practical interests in relations with Russia, conference organizers picked up for discussion only three issues, the least controversial, from Volodymyr Zelensky’s ten-point “peace formula”, announced in 2022. This did not help much, however.
Less than half of UN members accepted the invitation, and even fewer (80) signed the final document, that addressed the problems of nuclear powers’ safety, food security and the exchange of prisoners. China was glaringly absent, and several other international “heavyweights” like India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates were represented by lower-level diplomats who, notably, did not sign the final declaration. It was probably the reference to the UN Charter and “respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty… as a basis for achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine” that made the document unpalatable for some Russia-friendly or Russia-aware governments. The regress was obvious: in March 2022, as many as 141 states (out of 193 UN members) supported the UNGA resolution that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the country (only 5 countries voted against, 35 abstained, and 12 did not vote).
There are probably many reasons for such a shift, from apparent frustration with the protracted war and desire to end it as fast as possible at any cost (the cost of Ukraine, in practice, by sacrificing nice but remote justice for bad but immediate peace) to all kinds of pragmatic – one may say opportunistic and cynical – interests in relations with Moscow and reluctance to harm them by an “inappropriate” vote. Israel’s brutal response to Hamas’ terrorist attack, condoned by Western governments, seems to have contributed to the negative attitude of the Global South countries to the “collective West” and, collaterally, to Ukraine as the alleged Western ally (or client) even though Ukraine had never had anything to do with Western colonial adventures in the past or current neocolonial policies.
Paradoxically, the same states who accuse the West of racism and double standards, apply the same double standards and a kind of racism à rebours to Ukraine. Some, like South Africa, denounce Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians in the International Criminal Court but will not condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine – as if Ukrainian children and civilians in general deserve less empathy just because they are white, or because they are murdered by “Africa-friendly” Russians rather than America-friendly Israelis.
The salient lack of empathy for Ukraine in the Global South came as surprise to many observers, Ukrainians in particular, since the entire situation for them looked crystal clear: Russian aggression left little doubt as to who was a victim and who was an offender, whose cause was just and whose deeds were deplorable. There was an absence of ambiguity that often accompanies international, let alone domestic, conflicts: Russia apparently waged a neo-imperial war against its former colony, scrapping numerous international documents it had signed – from the 1945 UN Charter and 1975 Helsinki Act to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 Russia-Ukraine Friendship and Cooperation Treaty. All stipulated inviolability of the internationally recognized borders and proscribed their arbitrary unilateral changes.
The fact that virtually no states except for a few Moscow clients and kin dictatorships took Russia’s side in the UN indicates rather clearly that there was no confusion as to who is who in this war, and that the abstention of so many states in the UN vote against Russia did not result from their misunderstanding of the unfolding events or any confusion of moral principles at the normative level but, rather, from some pragmatic (one may say opportunistic and cynical) considerations. This make us scrutinize these considerations and address, wherever possible, underlying concerns.
The primary reason for non-engagement (not taking sides) in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict stems rather clearly from practical interests that each state duly pursues in the international arena. In most cases it is a national interest related to economic benefits from trade and other forms of cooperation with Russia (as well as with Russia-friendly China) and reluctance to harm those relations by an “inappropriate” vote in the UN, let alone by joining the international sanctions against the specific state. The relative poverty of (many) Global South countries makes them vulnerable vis-à-vis any external economic pressure and rather unwilling (or unable even) to undertake any steps that may undermine their economic conditions. And since many of these states are ruled by autocrats, it is easier for them to cooperate with similar regimes in Moscow and Beijing. The national interests in these cases might be secondary, while the ruling group’s personal interests in security and survival are usually prioritized.
Whatever the true motives of the national rulers, they need some ideological justification for their dubious, essentially immoral international politics. The easiest way to avoid any moral responsibility is to pretend complete ignorance or fully rely on Russian “alternative truth”. But in open societies with free flow of information it becomes increasingly difficult, especially under the mounting evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Then, more whimsical (and perfidious) strategies of “blame games” and “whataboutism” are applied, helping to relativize, obfuscate, and attenuate everything, making thereby any objective judgement, moral in particular, rather impossible. Whataboutism is really unbeatable since it makes it possible to dismiss any accusation, however serious and concrete, with a counter-accusation, usually irrelevant to the matter at hand. Any reminder that Russia violates international law and commit war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere is rebuffed by a simple switch of topic of conversation and by diverting attention to somebody else’s wrongdoings. “And what about the Americans (or Brits, or French)?” they usually say, as if one crime metaphysically offsets the other, and Israelis who kill Palestinians make Russian killings of Ukrainians less abominable.
The ultimate result of these discursive manipulations is that Ukraine is removed from the screen, ceases to be a part of the ongoing debate, falls out from the stage where millenarian struggle between the demonized West and dignified Russia unfolds. They deprive Ukrainians of agency, downgrade them to the position of pawns, passive objects, without any will, dignity, and sovereignty of their own. Ukraine, ironically, becomes a collateral victim of international blame games, even though it had nothing to do with past Western colonial enterprises, nor bears any responsibility for Western alleged misdeeds in Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, or elsewhere.
Ukrainians, whether they like it or not, are perceived by the “southerners” as a part of the “Global North”, actual or prospective, – firmly embraced by Western allies and put on track toward the full-fledged, institutionalized membership in the “collective West” (which means also ascending to the core of the “world economy” from the current periphery). Ukrainians are included, and this makes their position in southerners’ eyes fundamentally different, essentially incomparable with their own – regardless of all the Ukrainian arguments about their colonial past, Russian imperial dominance and still unfinished national liberation struggle. Poor, if any, knowledge of Ukraine’s national history and today’s social reality (often mediated by Moscow), and an overblown, artificial image of Russia (and the Soviet Union) as a beacon of global anticolonial struggle certainly influence perception of both countries in the Global South, facilitating the spread of Moscow-backed propaganda.
But the real problem that puts tough constraints on any counter-propagandistic or educational measures that Ukrainians would like to initiate, dwells in an apparent asymmetry of their historical, cultural-anthropological, and geopolitical position vis-à-vis postcolonial nations of the Global South. The structural inequalities of the essentially neocolonial “world-economy” and the perceived or, worse, actual double standards of the “first-world” states reinvigorate old colonial traumas and amplify old grudges. It is a structural problem beyond Ukraine’s reach that creates a different regime of truth in the Global South and determines its epistemic and emotional predisposition to all kinds of Russian propaganda and pro-Russian arguments.
“The situation,” as a French scholar observed (in the article on South Africa but with far broader implications for the entire Global South), “is “pre-formed”: existing frameworks and historical legacies define the scope of possibilities and influence policy and strategy formulation.”
Changes are very unlikely in a foreseeable future, since Western policies remain incoherent, mutual trust is low, and experts’ policy recommendations strikingly lack specificity, resembling a list of good wishes rather than practical steps: to treat southern states “as new sovereign subjects of world history rather than as objects to be dragooned onto the right side of history;” to avoid “finger wagging and lecturing”; to “engage with leaders and societal players as equal partners,” and to “focus on areas of common interest.” All this “is of course easier said than done,” as one of the experts ultimately summed up his own proposals.
There are two important points, however, in these recommendations that Ukrainians should consider. First, to refrain from a too forceful framing of their struggle as a crusade of global democracies against global autocracies. Such a slogan is not appealing to the autocratic majority in the Global South nor is it attractive to the democratic minority who feel no inferiority vis-à-vis allegedly more “mature” Western democracies (e.g., India) and certainly are not very happy with their leadership. It would be more reasonable to frame Ukraine’s anti-colonial struggle as defense of national dignity, identity, and sovereignty. And secondly, in its communication with the Global South, Ukraine should emphasize “the importance of defending the territorial integrity norm as a fundamental principle of international order.” In a region where too many borders were drawn arbitrarily by colonizers’ whim, the norm protection might be a more successful argument than calls to contain Russia, which is far away and is not perceived as an immediate threat in the Global South.
Ukraine’s advance in the region is an uphill struggle that does not promise fast and easy success. Both political and cultural legacies of colonial past and neocolonial pathologies of today’s “world-economy” and Western-managed globalization work in the Global South against Ukraine. So far, its footprint in the region, especially in Africa, is negligible. Ukraine still lacks resources and skilled professionals to advance its interests in the South, let alone compete there with the formidable Russian diplomatic and propagandistic machine. But to succeed in any endeavor, one should start. For Ukrainians, it might be too late but it is certainly better to do it late than never.
Mykola Ryabchuk is a research director at the Institute of Political and Nationality Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and a lecturer at the University of Warsaw. He has written extensively on civil society, nation-state building, national identity, and post-communist transition. One of his books has been translated into French: De la 'Petite-Russie' à l'Ukraine, published in Paris by L'Harmattan in 2003.
