WIREDGOV

Russian industrial magnate Melnichenko, writing in the Economist, shares an incoherent worldview and shows how Russia’s business elite rationalise the Ukraine war.

In July, Russian oligarch Andrey Melnichenko wrote an essay in The Economist that the publication presented as a brave vision of change for Russia. Yet apart from several allusions to the harm the war on Ukraine has had on Russia’s prosperity and development, Melnichenko’s piece nonetheless attempts to advance common Russian tropes justifying Moscow’s naked aggression against Ukraine.

Melnichenko’s argument centres on the claim that the West’s involvement in Ukraine should be viewed at its core as a violation of Russia’s ‘sovereignty,’ which is ‘perceived as a threat’ by the international community that supports Ukraine. According to him, Ukraine’s security will not be resilient if it is ‘built on the permanent negation of Russia’s sovereign agency.’ This reframing of sovereign rights does not reflect any realistic definition of what any nation may do as an expression of its agency. The multinational support Ukraine receives is first and foremost a result of the violation of the country’s sovereignty by a regime in Moscow intent on remaking the country in its image. In 1945, when the Crime of Aggression was first prosecuted in Nuremberg, armed attack against another state was described by the tribunal as the ‘supreme international crime’ as it ‘[contained] within itself the accumulated evil’ of all of war’s injustices and offenses. Unprovoked assault is the reason why aid to Ukraine continues to flow, not fanciful notions of subduing Russia’s legitimate sovereignty. Moreover, Ukraine’s sovereignty, unlike Russia’s, has not posed a threat to its neighbours; it has only demanded that its political and territorial integrity be respected.

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