Putin rehashes excuses for invasion

After months spent amassing almost 200,000 troops on the borders of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech by turns sullen and furious on Monday, warping history to justify aggression toward Ukraine. That same day, Russia officially declared parts of eastern Ukraine independent nations and sent in troops—for “peacekeeping,” Putin said. Early Thursday, Russia began shelling and airstrikes on major Ukrainian cities and airports while many civilians took shelter in subway stations or fled.

The U.S. has sanctioned some Russian banks and oligarchs, and Germany agreed to halt progress on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would allow Russia to sell oil to Germany without relying on transit through Ukraine. President Joe Biden promised to announce more sanctions in response to the escalating invasion.

Putin’s pretexts for attack rest on twisted histories he’s been telling for years, particularly his assertions that Ukraine is not a real country. He claimed in his speech that Russia and Ukraine shared a national and cultural identity until Bolshevik communists foolishly carved out Ukraine as a separate region. But Ukraine had a history of sovereignty long before then, although it had been conquered several times, including by Lithuania, Poland, and Russia’s Catherine the Great. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Ukrainians created a central governing body that declared independence in 1918, though the Bolsheviks took control in 1919.

When the Soviet Union dissolved, 92 percent of Ukrainian voters supported independence. Larger and a nuclear power, Russia has continued trying to exert dominance over Ukraine. Putin claimed in his speech that the West staged a coup when Ukrainian protesters ousted their pro-Moscow president in February 2014. The replacement government strengthened Ukraine’s ties to the European Union. The next month, Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

Also since 2014, Russia has supported separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, providing money, intelligence, and other military aid. An estimated 14,000 people have died in the fighting. Declaring Donetsk and Luhansk, separatist regions of Donbas, independent nations gave Putin the pretext to switch from proxy war to openly moving in Russian troops under the guise of protecting their sovereignty from what he claims is Ukrainian aggression.

Putin also regularly complains that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance formed in 1949 for defense against the Soviet Union, promised not to expand eastward and that its expansion threatens Russia. But in 2014, Mikhail Gorbachev, head of the Soviet Union when it dissolved, said U.S. commitments about NATO expansion applied only to new armed forces and military structures in eastern Germany. Historian Markian Dobczansky said research hasn’t uncovered evidence of a commitment to nonexpansion from NATO.

Anticipating a Russian invasion, civilians train with a paramilitary unit in Kiev, Ukraine. Efrem Lukatsky/AP

Dobczansky also cautioned against focusing on the accuracy of Putin’s historical claims in assessing the current conflict. “The most important thing is implications for the international order, for peace in Europe, and for nuclear non-proliferation, all of which are severely strained by current Russian aggression against Ukraine,” Dobczansky said. “We need to be cognizant of that, rather than engaging in historical debates with a person for whom history is clearly a justification of aggression rather than an academic exercise.”

Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power, emphasized understanding Putin as an aggressor unconcerned with agreements not to remake European borders by force. “Putin is doing what he wants because he can, because he’s more powerful [than Ukraine]. Putin may not want peace, he may just want more territory,” Bowman argued. “I’m calling for a strong response to prevent war. We better be strong, or we’re going to regret it.”