What is Russia’s motivation for threatening to attack Ukraine?
Russian authorities consistently deny that the country has any intention of invading. This was also the case with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, when he met with French President Emmanuel Macron last week, as well as when he chatted on the phone with US President Joe Biden.
There are two issues with this approach. Because of Putin’s Johnsonian relationship with the truth, few western countries accept his denials, for a couple of reasons: For the second time, Putin has failed to explain why more than half of Russia’s military forces, including over 130,000 troops, are massed on the country’s borders with Ukraine if his objectives are peaceful.
It’s possible that everything is a ruse. On the other hand, who would put their money on that?
So, what is Putin’s motivation?
There are a plethora of hypotheses. Putin is said to want to reestablish a Russian sphere of influence in eastern Europe, primarily encompassing former Soviet republics such as now independent Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine, as well as former Soviet republics such as now independent Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine.
Following the demise of the Soviet Union, he has publicly lamented their “loss.” Putin may also seek to demonstrate to the west (and the Russian people) that the country is still a superpower, despite the fact that it is, by most standards (except nuclear weapons stockpiles and geography), a failing medium-sized power.
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What is it about Ukraine?
Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned that the militarily crucial Ukraine, which commands Russia’s south-western flank, is integrating into the west. He is concerned about the country’s expanding ties with NATO.
He also opposes Kyiv’s efforts to strengthen ties with the European Union. Even worse, from his perspective, Ukraine is a democracy with free speech and free media, and its leaders are elected in a free and fair election.
In actuality, Russians do not have such liberties – if they followed the example of Ukraine, Putin would not be in power for long. Putin, in a broader sense, is a nostalgic revisionist who sees Ukraine as an integral part of historical Russia and its loss as a symbol of Russia’s defeat in the Cold War.
What is the reason behind this now?
Putin may be sensing weakness in the West. NATO was humiliated in Afghanistan last year, and Joe Biden, who ran on a platform of ending wars rather than engaging in new ones, has shifted the United States’ foreign policy and military resources away from Europe and toward China.
It has also been suggested that Putin requires a significant victory in order to consolidate domestic support, vindicate his anti-Western policies, excuse rampant regime corruption and kleptomania, and justify the hardships Russians are experiencing as a result of western sanctions imposed following his first attack on Ukraine in 2014.
That was the point at which he annexed Crimea and assumed de facto control over the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine.
What exactly does Putin want?
Putin wants NATO to promise that Ukraine (along with Georgia and Moldova) will never be admitted as a member state in order to bring the standoff to a close (possibly).
He wants the alliance to pull back from “frontline” countries such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, which were once members of the defunct Warsaw Pact, which he calls “frontline countries.” He wants Kyiv to recognize the Donbass as an autonomous region and to give up its claim to the Crimean peninsula (as part of the so-called Minsk accords).
Mr. Putin wants the deployment of new U.S. medium-range missiles in eastern and southern Europe to be limited or halted. His ambitions are even higher: he wants to overhaul Europe’s “security architecture” in order to re-establish Russian dominance and expand its geopolitical reach.
The United States says “no” to the majority of this. As a result, we are currently in a state of crisis.
