A statement by Vice-Rector Research Prof. Raj Kollmorgen with a view to our university.
On February 24, 2022, Russia's political elite and its - to this day - unchallenged leader Vladimir V. Putin launched a military invasion of neighbouring Ukraine. The aggression continues unabated and threatens to escalate further. Thousands of people have already been killed, including uninvolved civilians and children. Many more people have been injured; infrastructure has been destroyed and buildings and squares have been bombed.
What will happen in Ukraine and on the global political stage in the coming days and weeks, whether the fighting will escalate, what resistance the Ukrainian army and the volunteer units that are forming will be able to put up, whether the ceasefire negotiations can lead to success in the foreseeable future or whether mass protests against the war will form in Russia and force Putin to fall - nobody knows at the moment.
What we as informed citizens and university members can and should know, however, is ...
... that Putin presides over a facade-democratic-authoritarian regime that exercises its rule in the Russian Federation with state propaganda and control of the mass media, with bureaucratic and openly violent methods and pursues imperial goals aimed at restoring Great Russian power in the post-Soviet space of Eastern Europe and Central Asia as well as on a global political level.
... that the attack on Ukraine was justified with allegations of a threat to the Russian population in Ukraine (from "fascists" and "nationalists") and to Russia from the Ukrainian state, but above all with the claim that NATO poses a security threat to Russia - whereby the first claim is absurd and the second claim - even if it were justified, which is doubtful - has nothing to do with Ukraine and its invasion.
... that Ukraine, like every sovereign state in the world, can and may decide for itself whether or not it applies to join a military alliance, whether it commits to neutrality or concludes mutual assistance pacts with third parties. In no case does Russia have the right to decide and co-decide. It is irrelevant whether other states have claimed or done similar things. The injustice of third parties does not legitimize its own unjust actions.
... that in 1994 Russia solemnly promised Ukraine the inviolability of its borders and its full sovereignty in perpetuity in exchange for giving up Ukraine's nuclear weapons (Ukraine had over 1,200 nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the Soviet Union, which was dissolved at the end of 1991), which is of no interest to Putin and the Russian state today.
... that whatever the (geo-)political, economic, cultural or journalistic slights, disregards, rejections or ignorant treatment of Russia and its political elite over the last three decades, whatever formal and informal treaties between Russia and the West have been violated or broken since the end of the Soviet Union, whatever threats from "the West", NATO and the USA have been felt and perceived by the elites - none of this justifies a war of aggression against Ukraine (not against the USA or NATO): against the USA or NATO) can even begin to legitimize a war of aggression against Ukraine, or even make it plausible. Ukraine is being attacked because it is about Ukraine, its politics, its sovereignty, its role model for the Russian democracy movement in relation to Russian imperial consciousness and the authoritarian state.
... that this thesis is also not a hypothesis, but has been a fact since 2005 at the latest, and even more so since 2014, i.e. the occupation of Crimea and the offensive support of the breakaway, predominantly Russian-speaking areas ("republics") of eastern Ukraine. In this respect, it is hardly comprehensible to speak of a "turning point" brought about by the current war of aggression. If anything, the turning point is the brutal openness of military aggression. In this respect, this war of aggression - whatever other ideas and arguments, supposed proofs and chains of deduction Putin and his apparatus may present - has an obvious imperial character; in this sense, it is an imperialist war.
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Since my childhood - and the older I have become, the more self-motivated I have become - I have been interested in Russian culture, listening to Russian (but also Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, etc.) music, reading Russian literature - from Ivan Turgenev to Valam Shalamov, from Leo Tolstoy to Andrei Belyi, from Fyodor Dostoyevsky to Mikhail Bulgakov - and wrestling with Russian and (post)Soviet history and society. In many ways, Russian (and more broadly: [post]Soviet) art and culture is closer to me than any other (apart from parts of German). At the same time, and probably also because of this, it is and remains a struggle that knows distance alongside closeness, alienation alongside understanding, even incomprehension, and flight alongside longing. ... I am only noting this here for two reasons. Firstly, to show that I am not one of those who are distant from Russia and don't care about it, and who therefore only see this war as a final sign, a final proof of the "abhorrent", "Asian" or "pre-modern" Russia that they have always considered. As powerful as history may be, the future, every future, remains open. Secondly, and immediately afterwards, I am writing this down so as not to exclude and forget the 'other side' of Russia and its people. Russia is not just this war, the annexation of Crimea, the oligarchic economy or Putin and his ruling apparatus - it is also the many democrats, civil society actors, independent journalists and academics, courageous protesters and resisters - in the metropolises as well as in the medium-sized towns and the vast expanses of rural areas. I am thinking of and hoping for them now when it comes to stopping the war of aggression in Russia itself. That may not be likely in the coming days - but who knows. Here too, every resistance, every revolution has something flashy and unpredictable about it. ...
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In their name and in their support, as well as and especially in view of the terrible images of the war in Ukraine and with a view to our university partners in Ukraine, their students and staff, we as a democratic university community are therefore called upon to
The Rectorate and I personally are available to all students, staff and professors for questions or ideas and suggestions for actions and support services. Please contact me at the e-mail address provided.
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May this war of aggression end as soon as possible, may it be ended by Russia; every day of aggression, fighting and dying is one too many.
