How Putin has rebranded Ukraine
Ukraine is now a global superstar, and President Zelensky is world famous. Neither will disappear in the fog of Putin’s war.
The colours blue and yellow will never be the same again. Today I innocently posted a photo of some daffodils against a blue sky, thinking my social feed could do with a break from war posts. It immediately got liked by someone who viewed it as a pro-Ukraine gesture.
Vladimir Putin has thrust Ukraine into international fame. President Zelensky has gone from being a politician mainly known as a comedian to becoming a world leader who makes cowards like Putin look pathetically last century, and with whom every budding world leader wants to be associated.
Everyone now knows Ukraine. We know the city names, the history, the culture. Ironically, in Putin’s attempt destroy Ukraine and wipe out its presence on his border he has made Ukraine famous, loved, heroic and a force on his border that is stronger than it ever was before.
Putin is trying to do what he and his colleagues did in the Soviet Union. There was a science behind how the Soviet invaders tried to eradicate the culture and identity of the countries they occupied after the war. They deported intellectuals and leaders to Siberia, with many dying on the journey or at the destination. They moved Russians into the occupied countries. They banned the culture and language. In every case they failed. Even countries like Estonia, with a tiny ethnic population, survived this attempt at genocide, emerging and flourishing again once the Russians left. Russia has never invaded a country and made it better than it was, or what it was to become afterwards.
Putin’s failure with Ukraine is on a different scale. The last time he was involved in attempted genocides, when he worked for the KGB, it happened over decades, and the countries recovered over years and decades. With Ukraine it’s been weeks and he has already failed.
Ukraine is now a global superstar, and President Zelensky is world famous. Neither will disappear in the fog of Putin’s war. Putin hoped Zelensky would vanish into obscurity, in exile or in a ditch. Instead, kids will have his face on their t-shirts for decades, long after Putin is consigned to the trash bin of history.
And by contrast, Putin has totally destroyed brand-Russia. Within just a matter of weeks, Russia has become so toxic that no credible Western company can be seen to be doing business with or in Russia. Putin has returned his country to the depths of the Soviet era, when Western visitors would take Biro pens and Western cigarettes to bribe officials or thank hosts.
While national sanctions have been harsh, the popular boycotts have been sweeping and far-reaching. Putin is now evil in the popular consciousness. He is a war criminal who has sent an army in to bomb women and children. Regardless of the military outcome, Putin has lost this war. The more he tries to crush Ukraine, the stronger it will grow. He’s forced the whole world to pick a side, and most of the world has picked Ukraine.
Putin’s invasion is being heralded as a massive miscalculation militarily and politically, but it goes much further. He has achieved the exact opposite of all his aims; he has united NATO and the EU, boosted Western military spending, and he has strengthened Ukraine more than any Ukrainian politician in recent years, and by the time this war ends, Ukraine will be in the EU, and Finland and Sweden will have joined NATO.
Rarely has a country become a pariah so fast. Russia is arguably now in the same brand space as North Korea and Myanmar. It will take generations for Russia to recover from what it is doing to Ukraine. Putin’s reputation, dreadful as it already was, now sits alongside as Hitler and Stalin, and like them he is destroying his own country as well as those he invades.