Vladimir Putin blames his attack on Ukraine on NATO provocations. In fact, the Russian President is pursuing a different war aim.
An end to the war is not in sight, and that puts Putin in a difficult position to explain internationally. This is one of the reasons why Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov justified the attack on Ukraine in the UN Security Council on Monday with the well-known Kremlin narrative: The West had provoked the Russian invasion through provocations and its “hegemonic plans”.
The reasons for the war of aggression lie elsewhere. It is more likely that Putin was anticipating a rapid campaign, hoping to add over 40 million Ukrainians to Russia. Because the Russian population is shrinking, which also has to do with the political failure of the Russian president in more than 23 years in power.
Putin wants to make Russia a superpower again. Instead, he hastened his country’s decline. That could end up being his legacy.
NATO is not the problem
In recent years, the Russian President has often criticized the fact that, contrary to all promises, NATO expanded further east after the fall of the Iron Curtain. But the eastward expansion of NATO was in 2004. Almost 18 years later, should that be a reason for war for the Kremlin? Especially since NATO has always rejected Ukraine’s accession, pointing out that the western military alliance does not accept states with unresolved territorial conflicts. After all, Russia occupied parts of Ukraine with Crimea back in 2014. It also confirms that Putin has long been trying to extend Russia’s geostrategic influence to former Soviet republics – especially if they are not in NATO or the EU.
Only since the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 did Ukraine begin to rearm. And only after that did the USA start training the Ukrainian army and special forces according to NATO standards.
Putin is looking for a way out of the demographic trap
The truth about Putin’s reasons for the war, therefore, probably does not lie in an alleged threat from NATO. The Western military alliance has been in a crisis since Donald Trump was in office at the latest. The then US President openly threatened to leave the United States, French President Emmanuel Macron had previously declared it “brain dead”.
Rather, Putin’s speech of February 22, 2022, in which he announced the so-called “special operation,” reveals his real reasons. In it he described his interpretation of recent history: Ukraine has no right to exist as a state. There is actually no Ukraine, but Russian soil.
Putin thus reinterpreted history. At the same time he demonstrated an imperialist ideology. He made it clear that he disregards the post-1990 treaties that guarantee sovereignty to the former Soviet republics. This also shows that the Kremlin boss is primarily concerned with one thing: “Greater Russia”. For this, Putin does not stop at EU states from the Baltic States, as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” documented with reference to internal Kremlin papers.
