Russia and Ukraine have been involved in a low-intensity war for eight years now, with Moscow and separatists backed by it nibbling away bits and pieces of Ukrainian territory. The war started in February 2014 soon after pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed.
New Delhi: One major justification given by Russian President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine is the latter’s desire to join NATO. In January 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged his US counterpart Joe Biden to let his country join the military alliance. Russia objected to it and demanded that the West give a legally binding guarantee that NATO will not hold any military activity in Ukraine.
Incidentally, out of the 14 countries with which Russia shares a boundary, five are NATO members. These are Norway, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – the last three being former USSR states. The borders with Poland and Lithuania are through the tiny exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast.
But if Putin takes over entire Ukraine as many fear, Russia will then additionally share huge borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, all of which are NATO members. Putin will have NATO/US troops on his doorsteps regardless.
So why did the Russian President choose to invade Ukraine?
Unification’ of Russia
Russia and Ukraine have been involved in a low-intensity war for eight years now, with Moscow and separatists backed by it nibbling away bits and pieces of Ukrainian territory. The war started in February 2014 soon after pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed.
Ukraine was the second-most-populous and second-richest Soviet republic, and with the deepest cultural links to Russia. At present, it is also the second largest country in Europe in terms of area, and its overtures towards the West did not go down well with Putin, who considers Ukraine to be a part of Russia.
Last year, he’d written a long piece describing Russians and Ukrainians as “one Russia”, he said Ukraine is now merely a puppet of the West. Putin argued that if Ukraine joined NATO, the alliance might try to recapture Crimea.
This time, however, Putin seems to have set his eyes far beyond Ukraine. He has demanded that NATO return to its pre-1997 borders, meaning vacating central and eastern Europe and the Baltics. For Putin, the current standoff is a chance to overturn what he sees as an unjust post-Cold War order.
Geopolitical advantage
Ukraine presents an opportunity for Russia to reassert its geopolitical relevance. Issues such as NATO’s eastward expansion and an underlying sense that USSR lost the Cold War pinch Putin hard, according to experts. And keeping Ukraine away from NATO, even if by force, would be seen as a victory for Russia, while the West watched helplessly.
But what unnerved Kremlin most was the slow creep of NATO arsenal into Ukraine.
“Since 2018, the US has sold hundreds of anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine. Turkey has supplied Ukraine with the same armed drones that proved decisive in Azerbaijan’s victory over Armenia; in October 2021, Ukraine used such a drone to destroy rebel artillery in the Donbass,” wrote The New Yorker journalist Joshua Yaffa.
And these, apart from several military deals that Ukraine had sealed with NATO members. “At a certain point, Russia came to fear that Ukraine, in its accumulation of NATO weapons, was becoming equivalent of an unofficial member state. Given that weaponry, what would keep NATO armies from establishing bases? And with bases in place, why couldn’t they host NATO missiles, including nuclear ones, that would directly threaten Russia and undermine its deterrence capabilities?” Yaffa added.
