Quite the opposite. Ukraine has been prevented from joining NATO by the west, especially Germany and France, for fear of angering Russia. This course of action has led to war. The proper course of action in hindsight would have been to have Ukraine join NATO asap back then.
Ukraine wasn't a candidate for NATO membership in 2014 or 2022, and this was agreed to in all major treaties/agreements with Russia. It's still not a candidate, and can't be while it's actively engaged in war.
NATO membership has never had anything to do with it. Note how Finland has joined NATO since 2022, and faces no repercussions from Russia, despite a third of their land-based nuclear missiles within 400 km of the Finnish border.
Although Russia has obstinately described NATO expansion as a threat, Putin was actually more concerned about the loss of Russia’s perceived sphere of influence in former Soviet republics which were aligning themselves with the West economically and politically
So it wasn’t about NATO, it was about maintained a decaying sphere of influence.
Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat who later resigned in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, recalled that the draft treaties had shocked many Russian diplomats and that he immediately viewed the demands as non-negotiable.
Even the Russian diplomats knew it was posturing while Russia added to the 100,000 troops already staging on the border with Ukraine. Demands made at the point of 100,000 guns pointed at you are not good faith negotiating positions.
What right does Russia have to formalized neutrality, to control Ukraine’s foreign policy? Do you think that, since “Germany is just a vassal state” that Russia deserves one too?
Yes, Ukraine has been a candidate for NATO membership. In 2008, during the Bucharest Summit, NATO members agreed that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the alliance. However, no formal invitation was extended at that time.
COMMONS LIBRARY
In 2010, under President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine adopted a non-aligned status, halting its pursuit of NATO membership. This policy shifted after the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia, leading Ukraine to renew its aspirations for NATO integration. In 2019, Ukraine amended its constitution to enshrine the goal of joining NATO.
NATO
In September 2022, following Russia's annexation of parts of southeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine had applied for NATO membership under an accelerated procedure.
WIKIPEDIA
As of November 2024, Ukraine remains a NATO partner country and has not yet achieved full membership.
Between 2010 and later 2022 (i.e., not in 2014 or in February 2022) Ukraine was officially not pursuing membership, and France, Germany and the US were all unofficially making it clear that NATO membership was not being pursued and would not be offered.
Ukraine applied for NATO membership after Russia's invasion. It cannot therefore be a cause of Russia's invasion. At the time Russia sponsored and supported internal revolt in Crimea and Donbass, it was 2014 and Ukraine was officially and unofficially not in or applying to NATO--so how can that be the cause of Russian intervention then?
Thank you, though, for using ChatGPT to support my contention that NATO membership had nothing to do with Russia's invasion.
Also, to clarify one point: No one is a candidate for NATO who is currently engaged in hostilities. While Ukraine was in a state of war against Russian supported forces in Donbass and Crimea, it was ineligible to even apply. It may have put the goal of joining NATO in its constitution, but it was a non-starter until that conflict was resolved.
BTW, Russia has shared borders with multiple NATO countries, starting with Norway in 1949 when NATO was founded, and the Baltics since 2004. A neighbouring country's membership in an alliance is not a casus belli.
Compare: "The serial-killer is responsible but not alone, this second stabbing could have been prevented by not trying to protect yourself from being stabbed again by the same serial-killer!"
That may be true in the most narrow and mechanical sense, but the way it presents blame is very wrong.
That’s bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m tired of apologists falling to Russian state lies. Falling over to Russian lies is not independent thinking.
The first rule of kremnology is that Russia always lies without a shame, as lies are usefull and they incur zero cost on the liar.
Russia invaded because they felt Ukraine was showing a bad example of slavic people becoming a democracy.
Also Russia has always had an affinity towards Ukrainian genocide. See Holodomor.
Also there is the narrative of lost colonial honor, Crimea, Catherine the great, and other idiotic pseudo-historical ramblings of a demented autocratic propagnada.
> The first rule of kremnology is that Russia always lies without a shame, as lies are usefull and they incur zero cost on the liar.
you’re describing international relations, none of this is specific to russia. people are indoctrinated from birth into nationalist propaganda. when these mouthpieces speak they aren’t lying, but it’s not the truth.
We may find it ridiculous to be afraid of NATO or the USA
Russia isn't "afraid" of either -- it just considers them to be annoyances.
Its regime pretends be "afraid" of both, for the benefit of its internal and external propaganda, and of course to entice its people to sign up for the meat grinder. But that's just its delusion, which we are under no obligation to honor or validate.
It's not convincing. It's a man wrapped up in defending a worldview he's held for 5 decades against real world experiences that directly contradict it.
Putin's actions do not line up with this portrait of him as a hyper-rational long-term strategist acting on the interests of the Russian state. They line up very well with what you would expect from an aging, deeply conspiratorial cold warrior with widely publicized nationalist beliefs [0], a desire to have a legacy that compares against the likes of Peter the Great [1], and the type of delusional thinking that is the near-inevitable result of not having anyone that is willing (due to brownnosing) or able (due to corruption) to tell you hard truths [2].
Even when someone like Tucker Carlson sits down with Putin and practically tees him up to blame the war on US, he goes on ridiculous historical tangents to try to justify why Ukraine isn't real, as opposed to saying anything related to NATO. And that's not a fluke. Russian internal narratives are vastly more focused on nationalism than on anything resembling "NATO made us do this".
You also just have to look at the assassinations carried out on NATO soil - including using chemical and radiological weapons - blowing up Czech ammunition depots, etc. Years and years of unilateral kinetic escalation directly against the west. And then no response whatsoever when Finland and Sweden joined NATO.
Captured, no. Never estimate the human potential for naivete self-deception.
What we do know is that they've been in close contact, and that he is sincerely grateful to them:
In John Mearsheimer's 2023 book "How States Think", the foreword acknowledges him receiving a small financial support from Valdai in conjunction with Best Book award for his 2019 book "The Great Delusion".
Not joining NATO is just a way of deferring the genocide. A regional power has no chance to stand against a global superpower on its own. If not NATO, then a different coalition.
I understand what you mean but Russia is not a global superpower. They are not the USSR. Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess, the US and Europe didn't show any real backbone during the decade following the initial 2014 invasion, or during the Syrian crisis before that, or the 2008 invasion of Georgia before that.
One strand of BS I've seen is "Ukraine now is a different country than the one we promised never to invade."
If that's really how it works, Russia should be ejected from the United Nations and apologize for fraudulently casting votes in the UN Security Council, because it's a different country than the USSR.
Fair, but even if they are not a global superpower, they are a tier above most of their bordering countries. 2014 was a direct result of Germany being dependent on Russian gas.
I wouldn’t argue that EU and the US did not screw up in 20{08,14} though. We did. Massively. We did underestimate Putins long game - had we known how far he wants to go, and I’d argue most post soviet countries knew, this would’ve been nipped in the bud.
Acting and speaking as though they are is part of how we got into this mess,
Actually it was Putin's acting and speaking as if he could partially restore the glory of the former Soviet empire (whose collapse he called "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century") that got Russia into its current mess in Ukraine.
He does, in any case, consider the current Russian Federation and the Soviet Union to be continuations of "historic Russia". So it's not Western rhetoric. And it isn't the West that is making him invade Ukraine and menace other countries.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Of course Putin is an imperialist. But for two decades his grievances were treated as though they had legitimacy, or as though Russia should be given the same level deference and appeasement that the USSR was. Even holding Putin's opinions constant, the US and Europe should have pushed back harder against the aggression rather than pretending it wasn't happening.
You could always just bootstrap a nuclear program in Ukraine instead.
They gave up their nukes in exchange for protection from Russia and the US. Both countries have failed to keep up their end of the bargain, so it's sensible for Ukraine to get back what they gave up.
Great idea. Uncontrollable wars? Rising extremism all over the world? New generation of politicians who never experienced real diplomacy? Moralism, division, hatred... of course... the only things to save us all: the nukes. Let's just get it over with!
A somewhat more-amusing proposal I've seen: Ukraine declares "war" against a NATO nation (e.g. Poland) and then immediately surrenders. Then it starts negotiations to secede while keeping NATO membership without a gap.
