Why did the West take so long to notice Putin's atrocities?

As Clinton handed Lavrov a red button, the world's attention was drawn to the funny fact that Americans had misspelled "reset" in Russian, which made Lavrov giggle. The region, on the other hand, gasped for air: everyone who has lived under Russian rule knows that what thrilled Lavrov the most was that Moscow got away with murder.

Mar 1, 2022 - 13:50 Updated: Mar 1, 2022 - 13:53

Why did the West take so long to notice Putin's atrocities?

Ukraine's horrific, world-changing conflict did not begin in 2022. It didn't start in 2014, either. It all started when Russia invaded Georgia and got away with it a decade and a half ago.

When the first Russian bombs hit Kyiv, a friend texted, "Remember the red button?" Everyone remembers the red "reset" button in the region that has been subjugated and tormented by Russia for centuries: Hillary Clinton's gift of an illusory fresh start to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their meeting in Geneva in 2009.

The invasion of Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, had been averted by then, but the country's sovereignty had been severely harmed by Russia's occupation of 20% of its territory. The government of Georgia, America's closest non-NATO ally in the region, warned of a new hybrid war. However, the US was keen to move on after the pain of Bush's foreign escapades.

As Clinton handed Lavrov a red button, the world's attention was drawn to the funny fact that Americans had misspelled "reset" in Russian, which made Lavrov giggle. The region, on the other hand, gasped for air: everyone who has lived under Russian rule knows that what thrilled Lavrov the most was that Moscow got away with murder.

It would happen again and again over the next 14 years. Many of us, including myself, did not believe Putin would conduct such a large-scale attack against Ukraine. Millions of people, including Ukrainians, Moldovans, Georgians, Syrians, Armenians, and Azeris, have all taken part in dress rehearsals for the Kremlin's latest horror show. And we all know it didn't have to be this way.

Putin's strategy for rebuilding his empire has always been primitive. The ostensible adversaries were always a downtrodden population and a US-backed "fascist" regime.
Putin, on the other hand, changed the play after each rehearsal. Putin's army had filthy boots and rusted tanks when they invaded Georgia in 2008, but it was there that he first tested his now-famous cyber strikes. He got away with it.

By the time Russian troops arrived in Crimea six years later, they had shiny new boots and new uniforms modeled on US special forces. And Putin, fresh after his Olympics triumph in Sochi, was more confident than ever. He lied at a scale we had never seen before, telling the world that Russian soldiers were not Russian soldiers, and then he annexed Crimea. He got away with it.

Then came Donbas and Syria, interference in the US elections, the Salisbury killings, and the Navalny poisoning. And each time he got away with murder, we met a new Putin -- more brutal at home and more audacious abroad.

The United States and Europe spent millions countering Russian disinformation. But debunking his propaganda was not enough to counter the narratives Putin had pushed using powerful, multi-million dollar media networks that he kept building, at home and abroad.

This network, which included big names like RT and Sputnik, but also hundreds of small websites and social media channels, tapped masterfully into existing fears and legitimate grievances of each audience they addressed.

America's 2003 invasion of Iraq and the disaster that followed was a gift Putin used to turn any debate into another round of exhausting whataboutery, which in turn made Putin a hero for the European far-left.

He turned LGBTQ+ rights into a frontline of his domestic attack on the West, telling traditional Russians and their neighbors that their families and their values were under threat. It worked. "I am fighting because I do not want to be forced to marry a man," a pro-Russian fighter in Ukraine told me in 2014.

Eventually, this family values narrative caught up in the West, turning Putin into an unexpected hero for the far right. Authoritarian populists all around the world were suddenly reaching out for help: Kremlin-funded Sputnik was training state media workers from Georgia to the Philippines and India and by 2020, Brazilian president Bolsonaro was repeating a myth about a supposed Western plot to legalize pedophilia that I first heard on the Russian state TV back in 2012.

But it was not the narratives he created or the territories he seized that made Putin truly powerful. It was the collective West's complacent and obstinate refusal to accept that he was at war with them.
For years, Western media portrayed Ukraine as a country "at war with itself." But it never was. It was bewildering to me that after all these years, even before this latest, and possibly fatal for him, invasion, the debate in the West focused on rights and wrongs of the NATO enlargement and not the fact that a sovereign country has the right to choose its own path.

When I interviewed a Ukrainian soldier as a journalist in 2015 about Georgia and Ukraine's shared experience, he questioned, "What will it take for them to wake up?" We now know the answer, but we couldn't find it when we were sitting in a chilly, wet trench on the frontlines of Ukraine's battle.
Dima, the soldier, was like every other Ukrainian you've seen on your screen: stoic, determined, and composed. He was a 23-year-old Kyiv-based software engineer who had only lately quit his job to join the struggle. He told me that his partner was unhappy with him, but that fighting was not an option.
"They believe we are striving for NATO membership."

However, we are merely fighting for our own beliefs, which happen to be the same as those of Europe. We're also fighting for them. He added, "I hope they realized it."
They now do. The entire universe has suddenly become morally clear. This show of Western unity and the return of liberal ideals comes as a huge comfort to everyone who has lived on the frontlines of Putin's disdain for liberal democracy. But it won't last unless we acknowledge that for far too many people, it's already too late.

It is too late for Georgians who have never stopped losing lives and land, for the countless residents of Aleppo who have died as a result of Russian bombardment, for the 298 men, women, and children who perished when a civilian Boeing MH17 was shot down by a Russian BUK missile in 2015, for the thousands who have died in the Donbas in the last eight years, and for the countless others who will die in Ukraine.
It's too late for Dima, who was murdered in battle in eastern Ukraine a year after we spoke and long before Europeans realized he was fighting for them.

Millions of people living on the frontlines of Putin's hatred for liberal democracy around the world are still asking why it took the West so long to wake up. This is the question that should guide anything the West does in response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which will usher in the new world order.