The Russian Federation’s Military Aggression Against Ukraine as a Stage in the Implementation of the Kremlin’s USSR 2.0 Concept

Abstract

This article analyzes the full-scale military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine as a key stage in the implementation of the Kremlin’s “USSR 2.0” concept — a neo-imperial project aimed at restoring the influence, power structure, and ideological models of the former Soviet Union in a modernized form. A central component of this concept is the destruction of the sovereignty of post-Soviet states, primarily Ukraine, and their forced reintegration into Russia’s sphere of control. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has repeatedly referred to the collapse of the USSR as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” thus openly articulating the Kremlin’s revanchist political course.

Special attention is given to the political and legal mechanisms of this strategy, particularly the creation in 1999 of the supranational entity known as the Union State of Russia and Belarus. This institutional framework has served as a basis for the gradual reassembly of the former Soviet space under Moscow’s leadership. In every military conflict orchestrated by Russia across the post-Soviet region, the Kremlin has consistently imposed ideological narratives aimed at reviving Soviet identity. This includes the temporarily occupied territories of Georgia — Abkhazia and South Ossetia — Transnistria in Moldova, and the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine.

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the rhetoric of Russian politicians, ideologues, and state figures has become increasingly explicit, with official calls to “recreate the USSR” in a new form. The culmination of this ideological and political trend occurred in September 2022, when the Russian Federation signed documents on the annexation of the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions of Ukraine. These documents not only proclaimed their inclusion into the Russian Federation but also their integration into the legal framework of the Union State of Russia and Belarus.

The article argues that the war against Ukraine is not an isolated act of aggression, but a systemic implementation of the Kremlin’s long-term strategy to revise the post-Soviet order and construct a new neo-imperial project.