Is Russia planning to invade Ukraine and why does Russia care so much about Ukraine in the first place? Right now, Russian forces have been building up near the border. Analysts say they’re seeing intel that shows Russia is preparing for a military offensive potentially early next year.
However, Russia denies that it wants to invade Ukraine and says its troop movements are defensive, something that several European countries aren’t buying. So why would Russia even want to invade Ukraine and start a war?
There are a couple of reasons. The first is national identity. Ukraine and Russia have a lot of shared history. Before 1991 both were a part of the USSR or Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union finally collapsed Russia emerged from the ashes and several the republics that were a part of the Union like Ukraine gained independence.
Many Russians’ including the top Russian himself President Vladimir Putin still consider some of these former Soviet states to be Russian and Putin has repeatedly said he believes the collapse of the Soviet Union was a tragedy.
There are people living in Ukraine that identify as Russian, however most of the country identifies as Ukrainian and is keen to see Ukraine remain independent.
Ukraine also holds a lot of strategic importance. It has access to the black sea valuable natural resources and important trade routes. Plus, it’s a place where Russia would like to have military bases. When you zoom out a bit more, Ukraine also represents a bit of a buffer zone between Russia and the rest of Europe or more importantly a buffer between Russia and members of NATO. NATO is a military alliance that Russia considers a threat. NATO denies this and says it’s a purely defensive organisation.
When you’re a NATO member an attack on one is an attack on all. This is designed to keep NATO members safe from invasion. But Ukraine is not a member of NATO even though it would like to be. Russia on multiple occasions has pressured NATO to not give Ukraine membership. NATO’s chief has publicly rejected Russia’s demands to deny Ukraine entry but if Ukraine did gain membership there are genuine worries that Russia would respond aggressively either militarily or economically.
For example, Germany one of the largest members of NATO gets a significant chunk of its natural gas from Russia.
So just how likely is an invasion? Russia has already invaded Ukraine before. In 2014 Ukraine’s President who was accused of being pro-Russia and anti-European Union was kicked out during the Ukraine revolution. Shortly after the revolution kicked off Russian forces invaded Ukraine and took control of two different areas of Ukraine: Crimea and eventually parts of the East. Both areas are known to be compared to other parts of Ukraine home to more ethnic Russians or Ukrainians that are sympathetic to Russia. At first Russia denied it had any involvement and said that the troops that had taken control of Crimea weren’t theirs.
There was a lot of international backlash and Russia was hit with some heavy economic sanctions but no countries physically stepped in to stop it from happening.
Fighting between competing factions particularly in the East has continued to this day.
Russia continues to maintain that what happened wasn’t an invasion but simply locals trying to restore the Russia of old.
Fast forward to today and Ukraine’s army is still no match for Russia’s military. Plus, countries like the US have come out and said they won’t be sending in any troops. Despite all this many experts believe that an invasion probably won’t happen. World leaders have warned Russia it will face massive political and economic consequences if it goes ahead with an invasion.
Instead, many experts reckon this is less about planning an actual invasion and more about Putin pressuring world leaders to give Russia more of a say in the future of Ukraine. Simply the threat of an invasion might be enough to keep NATO out and pressure Ukraine to let go of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Now it’s important to note that while Russia is quick to point to NATO as the reason for it feeling insecure about Ukraine, there are questions about whether all of this is just an attempt by Putin to recreate the Soviet Union in another guise.
A big problem for NATO and the US is that if they give in to too many to Russia’s demands, confidence in both powers internationally could take a hit. For example, the Baltic nations who are a part of NATO but also former Soviet states like Ukraine may feel less confident that they’ll be safe from Russia if it ever decides it wants to ‘reunify’. Overall, it’s a very complicated diplomatic dance with a lot of moving parts. Right now, the Russian & Ukrainian Presidents are in talks with world leaders trying to figure out a solution to this very delicate situation that currently hangs in the balance.
