What Caused The War In Ukraine
Vladimir Putin would be the short answer. It is far more complicated.
On the night of February 23rd in the United States, it was reported that Russian troops have crossed their Russian borders and have entered Ukraine in a full-scale invasion. Since then we have seen some of the largest displacements and battles Europe hasn’t seen since World War II. With nearly 5 million people displaced from Ukraine since the conflict began creating destabilization in Eastern Europe. Thousands of protesters have been arrested in Russia. What has truly led to this happening in the first place besides the all-out aggression? Is Russian Intervention in Ukraine the peak of the iceberg? For this, we have to go back in history to determine why.
Russia is the largest nation on the planet. Most of their territory in the North and the East is barren unlivable territory. Most of Russia’s economy and population lie in Russia’s western territory. To the west is the European plains that are flat and easy to terrain and have shown to be Russia’s largest vulnerability against approaching invaders. From the Netherlands to the Ural Mountains nearly a third of the way through Russia’s territory. Russia was able to prevent invasions post World War II by making the nations in between the West and Russia’s main territory communist puppet states act as a buffer if any future conflicts were to happen. It gave the nation some breathing room and made Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and some other Eastern European nations the territory that would suffer wars from two sides.
In Russia’s history, the nation has always been vulnerable to the West. Most of present-day Europe was in skirmishes, wars, or attempted to invade Russia. The only successful nation to fully invade the Russian state was the Mongols in 1237. This would split up Eastern Europe into three main sections with the East Slavic people which would include modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In 1480 the Tsardom of Russia would be born as the Russian people and Moscow fought for independence in the 14th century. There is no other point in Russia’s history where a successful full invasion wiped out Russia’s government.
Moscow has burned to the ground multiple times however and they are vulnerable to the West. Most of Europe at one time was at war with Russia outside of World War II or World War I. The landmass is huge but the winters work in their favor as the distance from supply lines is immense
They fought Crimea and Turkey nearly 75 times between the late 1400s and the late 1700s. Moscow was destroyed and completely outnumbered in a full-scale invasion and still defeated Turkey against all odds. Russia fought Poland and Sweden in the early 1600s with attempted invasions. Poland secured its borders but the invasions failed and Sweden took Russian territory that would lose Russia direct access to the Baltic Sea. Sweden then tried to invade Russia again in 1708 when the Russian winter deemed them unsuccessful. Napoleon and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 told the same story as the Swedish in the 1700s. With supply lines stung out immensely and holding territory in Russia the Russian winter and disease caught up to the French and the Russian people lived on. Even before World War II and World War I Russia was attacked countlessly from its western borders. Japan even took some islands away from Russia during the 1900s.
The second world war is where most of modern-day history can tie in with today’s events in Ukraine. The Third Reich was planning Operation Barbarossa which was the German invasion of 3 million troops in an attempt to invade Russia in three offensives against Moscow first, second for oil fields, and finally the oil fields again with Stalingrad. Operation Barbarossa, Operation Case Blue, and Operation Citadel were invasions that were all pushed back and unsuccessful at the highest cost to the Russian people. Stalin’s purge of military leadership led to the Soviet Union being unprepared for a large-scale invasion as their actions in Finland showed earlier in the war and the middle of WWII. In Hitler’s memoir, it showed he wanted to invade the Soviet Union as he believed Germany needed more land to prosper. These invasions were heroically pushed back from Moscow west and then from Stalingrad to Berlin during the winter months when Germany was cut off from supplies and couldn’t move quickly as they wished to. The remaining German troops were surrounded in Stalingrad on Christmas eve in 1942. The winters dealt Germany a black hand. Germany was attempting a war of speed with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union would force Germany into a war of attrition in Russia’s nation in the middle of winter. We all know how the story ended with Russia outlasting the isolated Germans and pushing them back. This eastern front of World War II was the bloodiest and largest conflict the world has ever seen.
A couple of things from the Soviet Union in WWII:
Ukraine was under German control for the course of the war after Operation Barbarossa until the Russians pushed Germany out of Ukraine nearing the end of the war.
Russia suffered heavy losses during World War II, more than anyone else. They did not forget their history and they don’t forgive the west for tiptoeing into Europe. For Operation Overlord the Soviets wanted the United States and Britain to open up a second front against Germany to relieve the Soviets but this didn’t happen until the middle of 1944 when the US went to North Africa before and after Stalin was pushing back the Germans in 1943. US and Britain decided to go to North Africa first and tiptoe their way into war versus how Russia had to carry the weight of the war on their shoulders. Britain was nearly defenseless without the US. This frustrated Stalin immensely and the Russian people did not forget.
The Berlin Blockade in 1948–1949 as a result of the Soviets attempting to block the west’s involvement in East Germany to not spread democracy. The Soviets expected the US and Britain to leave West Germany in a few years when the Soviets could make all of Germany Soviet and Communist. Russia successfully made its first nuclear weapon in 1949, the same year NATO was created to bring peace to Europe after the second world war.
The Cold War began shortly after World War II for control of the world. Proxy wars and buffer states between the west and the Russian frontier are featured for the next five decades. This protected the Soviet homeland from any future attacks from its western borders. Ukraine would become one of those Buffer states. That buffer would start to shrink over time. The United States and Russia following World War II agreed to keep either democracy/communism out of each other’s hemispheres and not to interfere in the regions. The United States would interfere as a conflict of interest every time a communist region would try to start. The Korean War and the Vietnam War showcased this best with the west going into the Soviet Union’s backyard to attempt to limit the spread of Communism. South Korea worked in our favor, but Vietnam did not do so well. The Soviets back the Vietnamese even more. Tensions continued to rise and the Cuban Missile Crisis happened in the middle of the Vietnam War. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is hard to understate that the world nearly ended in October 1962 due to nuclear tensions. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S.-backed Taliban defected the Soviets and communism did not come to Afghanistan, but terrorism did. The Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989.
The Chernobyl Incident occurred in Ukraine in 1986 causing reactor 4 to shut down. Due to the poor design and operator error during the test, the core melted, then exploded, and made the building explode. Following the explosions fire and radioactive contamination were released into the air for days to come. Political and environmental pressure would begin to be pressed against the Soviets. Three years later the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 connecting Germany at last after Poland and Hungary had revolutions making these nations independent from the USSR. East Germany followed.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 the Russians lost the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, and Croatia to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). That took their buffer completely away from Western Europe. Ukraine declared independence in December of 1991 following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine has been attempting to join NATO and the EU recently. That presents risks to Russian territory if there were ever to advance to overthrow the entire nation of Russia. Russia however has the largest deterrent on the nation of that. Nuclear weapons, a lot of them. However, Russia feels both surrounded and vulnerable so they want to take Ukraine by force. Nothing happened for quite some time until Russia assumed control of Crimea in 2014. This was a land grab for the Russians to once again have western access to water that wouldn’t freeze in the winter.
In the past few years after Crimea, there has been a trend of Russian actions leading up to February 2022. Putin showed a strategy to create chaos in democracies and divide the west from each other. From cyberattacks to troop movements to arresting anyone who speaks out against the Kremlin to land grabs in the Arctic. Even to the UK leaving the EU. World leadership was changing and Putin wanted to be on the front end of creating instability, lack of trust, and chaos economically and politically in the free world. There have been several cyber attacks proven to come from Russia that the Kremlin denies including 2016 elections interference. Whether that is due to Putin's preference or not, it was proven to have happened. Whether it would have changed the results or not, Russia was impeding free and fair elections in the United States and Trump had a close relationship with Putin and dealt with business with Russians. U.S. special forces were on the move in Finland. Russia saw that as a threat to their sovereignty despite the number of forces being minimal to not even cause a threat to their borders. Russia has shown an interest in exploration and dominance in the Arctic region. They have a fleet of 50 ice breakers. The United States has three with only one operational. Russia controls the Arctic.
The Kremlin’s favorite critic Alexei Navalny ran for mayor in 2013 and was blocked from running again. In 2016 Navalny announced he was running for president in the 2018 election but was rejected due to a criminal record being held against him that seems to be politically motivated to keep him from competing with Putin. Navalny released a documentary in 2017 that would gaslight mass protests across Russia. In August 2020 it was found that he was poisoned and had to be hospitalized. In 2021 he returned to Russia and was arrested. Navalny released another documentary after getting out of jail in 2021 accusing Putin of poisoning him and corruption. More protests followed again. He is now serving time at a labor camp and facing additional years in prison without possibly ever committing a crime.
In 2019 Ukraine’s 400 million military aid from the USA was frozen by Trump and Trump asked Ukraine’s President Zelensky to investigate the Biden family in an upcoming election leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Aid was never sent and two administrations didn’t show much strength in a relationship with Ukraine leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russia.
Since fall 2021 the United States has reported a Russian buildup of troops around the Ukrainian border. Everyone was still focused on the pandemic and boosters, container shipping rates, and the upcoming holidays trying to return to a normal that was overlooked completely.
In February 2022 the troop buildup of Russians nearing Ukrainian borders amassed 150,000. The world started to pay attention. There were talks and diplomacy was attempted on several occasions to seek a peaceful solution. Putin swayed away from a diplomatic solution countlessly and told the West to get out of the way of Russian business in Ukraine. The United States took troops out of Ukraine and got out of the way. That is exactly what Putin wanted and Putin even made threats anyone who helped Ukraine or got in the way would see consequences they have never faced before. Russia time and time again used its strategy of furthering manufacturing a provocation as a justification to keep getting more and more aggressive. The United States decided to reveal the truth behind the lies and kept the west together. Putin united the West. Putin acknowledges the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk areas controlled in Ukraine by defectors and separatists of Ukraine who are pro-Russian days before the invasion. These two separatist regions then claimed Ukraine as the aggressor and claimed Ukraine of genocide and harboring neo Nazis with leadership that is wrong despite the president being Jewish and ancestors who have survived the holocaust. These separatist regions then claimed 70% more territory than they currently hold. Russia then saw a window of opportunity as an excuse to invade Ukraine as a military operation that was a full-scale invasion from the north, east, and the south of Crimea with goals to demilitarize Ukraine and to expand the separatist’s territory but we all know that’s not the truth. Putin wants Ukraine back.
The day Russia launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 23rd marked the day of Russia’s first draft of the Red Army over a century before. To know Russia invaded the day on this historic day for Russia hints that Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union to its full strength and borders to maybe what it was after World War II to East Germany. Putin is thinking it is the 1940s and living in 2022. Something in the Kremlin is going on and not even the Russian people agree with it. Everyone else has moved to the modern world, but the Kremlin holds on to its old ways. Russia’s forces are in an offensive mode on 3 sides very close to Ukraine’s border. Ukrainian President Zelensky vocal with 250k to defend against a force of 150k Russian military armed to the teeth. By the 24th 75,000 troops would have entered Ukraine from 3 sides. Sanctions from Germany and the United States were placed against the company that created the Nordstream Two pipeline. The United States, the European Union, and Australia joined in sanctioning Russia on the 23rd. Since the conflict began there have been war crimes, mass destruction, and losses on both sides. Ukraine seems to be holding on for now as Russia regroups for an offensive away from Kyiv. The free world will continue to supply Ukraine with the tools they need to defect from its invaders.
