You have been lied to about Ukraine
Vladimir Putin did not provoke the war
Just before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, during the 1990 negotiations on German reunification, the then President of the United States gave a series of informal assurances to Gorbachev, assuring him that NATO would not continue its expansion into Eastern Europe.
But what has actually happened since then, given that the Russian Federation no longer posed any threat since the dissolution of the USSR, has been quite the opposite.
NATO expansion has led to war
In International Relations, most countries are sooner or later subjected to the security dilemma: this means that as the security of a State increases, the perception of its rivals, opponents or enemies is that of a decrease in theirs.
Therefore, if it is seen from the perspective of the international security dilemma that NATO has been incorporating members over the years and the CSTO has not, Russia could have perceived a certain insecurity and fear of the proposal that Ukraine become a member of the Western organization, having wanted to respond in order not to be left behind in the face of actions that have caused an increase in security for the Atlantic Alliance, but not so for Russia.
On the other hand, it should be noted that successive NATO enlargements in Europe have changed the balance of power in the Black Sea region in favor of the United States and the Atlantic Alliance.
As the parity between the United States -together with NATO- and Russia in the region has been broken, the Soviet country has seen its existence endangered and has been forced to invade Ukraine, since in the hypothetical case that Belarus and Ukraine align themselves with NATO, Moscow would be left very vulnerable, with an indefensible border of more than 2,000 kilometers of flat land.
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This point is of vital importance and explains why Russia is so afraid of Ukraine joining NATO, while the recent Finnish membership does not matter much to it: putting NATO missiles in Finland means for Russia the inability to defend St. Petersburg, but putting them in Ukraine would mean the impossibility of defending Russia’s heartland, Moscow.
The map below clearly shows that, historically, invaders have tried to enter Russia by following certain routes, most of them passing through Ukraine or Belarus.
It is not, therefore, just a Russian “invasion”; it is the only way for the country to guarantee its security.
Zelenski’s behavior is not sovereign
The following words sum up perfectly why this war makes no sense whatsoever for Ukraine.
The only way to understand Zelenski’s behavior is to recognize that his main objectives are defined by interests outside Ukraine.
Swinging from one empire to another does not seem to constitute sovereign action; breaking free from Russia to embrace NATO would be like changing the leash that holds the dog.
[…] The Ukrainian president […] persists in subjecting his people to suicidal resistance while continuing to beg for assistance from his new Western partners. He has become the military head of NATO interests, even though he does not belong to NATO.
The pretense of subscribing his membership to the organization clashes with the founding principles of the organization; it is not possible to incorporate a nation at war.
The fastest solution to war
According to most experts in International Relations, Russia is only interested in two things to withdraw from Ukraine: Ukraine’s neutrality and that NATO, this time, formally guarantees that it will stop sticking its nose into Eastern Europe.
