I was surprised that Putin decided to invade. I expected he would get his way in eastern Ukraine, which is largely Russian speaking, by bluffing the Biden regime and Germany.
Here is an analysis of his thinking.
That fear informs the potential conflict brewing along the Ukrainian border, Maria Snegovaya, a visiting scholar at George Washington University’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, told Vox via email.
“It looks like Putin is committed to preventing the deepening cooperation between Ukraine and the US/the West,” Snegovaya said, “which he views as Russia losing Ukraine.”
Snegovaya points to a 2021 essay by Putin, titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” as an example of his thinking.
In the essay, Putin called the two nations “essentially the same historical and spiritual space,” tracing his notion of a shared history back more than a thousand years. That assertion, though, elides a long history of differences between the two countries, and even more significantly, flies in the face of current Ukrainian attitudes, which favor membership in both NATO and the EU, (though neither is likely in the near future).
Ukraine has been a satellite operation for the U.S. State Department for approximately 15 to 20 years. The U.S. has held control over Ukraine, and manipulated every political outcome inside Ukraine, for well over a decade. This reality is the source of Vladimir Putin’s angst toward the west for the same amount of time, and it’s the same reason why the EU, specifically Germany, is tenuous in any collaborative response.
The EU, writ large (including NATO), are less interested in Ukraine, because they know Ukraine is the U.S. playground in Europe. This truism explains why we see a conflict when it comes to responses and sanctions from the U.S. compared to the European NATO allies.
Yet more support for the role US has played.
Putin’s reputation until this moment has always been as a shrewd ex-KGB man who eschewed high-risk gambles in favor of sure things backed by the United States, like entering Syria and then escalating forces there. So why has he adopted exactly the opposite strategy here, and chosen the road of open high-risk confrontation with the American superpower?
Yes, Putin wants to prevent NATO from expanding to Russia’s border. But the larger answer is that he finds the U.S. government’s relationship with Ukraine genuinely threatening. That’s because for nearly two decades, the U.S. national security establishment under both Democratic and Republican administrations has used Ukraine as an instrument to destabilize Russia, and specifically to target Putin.
The history of corruption in Ukraine benefitting US politicians including President Biden is a useful background as well. It is also interesting that Russia gnawed off chunks of its neighbors under Bush and Obama before. Putin made noise but took no action while Trump was president. There is a good argument that, under Trump, US oil production drove world oil prices down to $30 a barrel. Since Russia is dependent on oil and gas for most of its GDP, this limited Putin’s options. When Biden was inaugurated he reversed every Executive Order that Trump had used to make us energy independent. In addition, Trump had blocked funding for the Nord Stream II pipeline between Russia and Germany. This pipeline would increase the dependence of Europe on Russia since Germany had foolishly closed nuclear plants. The result of Biden’s actions was to raise world oil prices, now above $100 a barrel, and return the US to an oil importing nation. Our largest source of imported oil is Russia ! Biden has assured Putin that we have no intention of limiting or stopping those energy imports. An election is coming and gas prices and home heating prices are already double the level when Trump was in office.
Thus, a fair reading of the current situation in Europe is that the US enabled Putin by shutting down energy production while Joe Biden made empty threats of sanctions and the US funded Putin’s ambitions with oil money.