Dmytro Polovynka

All the reasons to invade Ukraine

So why did Russia invade Ukraine exactly? There are many reasons and I will go through them one by one with my comments. And then I will pin-point the most logical reason, which, though, shouldn’t be a surprise.

I will start with Reasons for Export — the one which Russia tries to promote to the western audience, often successfully.

Then I will go through Reasons for Domestic Use — these are more interesting for the western reader, because these are mostly talked about internally and most of the information about them are in Russian.

And then I will mention some reasons which are not actively promoted by Russia, but we may safely assume that they were in Putin’s mind, when Russia attacked.

Reasons for export

First about some reasons, openly said by Russian officials, both for external and internal audience.

NATO expansion

NATO promised not to expand eastwards, but now it expands, that’s why Russia attacked Ukraine.

Really? NATO did not promise not to expand eastwards — there could be some private talk between two people, but it was never written in any treaty. Latvia is long in NATO and is as close to Moscow as is Ukraine, and is even closer to St. Petersburg. Finland is also joining NATO, but Russia is fine with that. So NATO itself is not a reason.

Moreover most of the Ukrainian efforts to join NATO started after Donbas war and Crimean annexation. Wish to join NATO is a consequence of Russian actions, not vice versa.

To avoid a big war

An interesting subtype of the NATO argument is that since Crimea is not recognised by Ukraine as a Russian territory, and then if Ukraine joins NATO, then there would be a big war between NATO and Russia for Crimea, which would result in a nuclear war and extermination of a humankind. So Russia attacked Ukraine to prevent this from happening. War is peace?

What can I say — this is a very nice trick — to annex a territory to have a reason to annex more. If they really cared about world peace, they would give Crimea back, no? They wouldn’t have attacked it in the first place. This juggling of facts is inherent for Russian propaganda.

Genocide of Russians in Donbas

…so Russia needs to protect them. I also heard that

Ukraine was killing the people of the Donbas, who are majority ethnic Russians

First of all — majority of people in Donbas are Ukrainians, not Russians, according to the 2001 census. Check the data on Luhans’k and Donets’k regions, which make Donbas. In both of them more than 50% are Ukrainians. And there is no genocide of Russians by Ukrainians anyway. If it was — it would be horrible. But there is none. And no, 14000 civilians were not killed by Azov either — that’s a Russian disinformation. Conflict in Donbas was freezing, not heating.

Russian language forbidden

…so Russia needs to defend it. That’s a plain lie. Russian language is not forbidden, nor oppressed. More about it in my article “Is Russian language forbidden in Ukraine”. Or please read a publication “Russophone Identity in Ukraine” by an International Alert organisation. Quote from there:

It [research] found that Russian-language speakers or Russians in Ukraine do not, on the whole, face problems with their language or identity and that neither of these are key drivers of the conflict.

Ukraine is a Nazi state

…so it requires a denazification. That’s a lie. President of Ukraine is Jew. Which does not work well with being a head of a Nazi state. Presence of right parties in the parliament is very limited, right (not even ultra) parties did not get many votes in the elections. Azov regiment, even if it was 100% Nazi (which it absolutely isn’t) did not have virtually any influence on Ukrainian politics. There are no more Nazis in Ukraine than in other European countries including Russia, and probably even less. Having several Nazis in a country does not mean that is a Nazi state.

More about it in the article “Should Russia denazify Ukraine”.

Ukraine needs demilitarisation

That’s a very strange argument from a country with the second (or first — depending on how to count) largest nuke arsenals in the world and which is proud of having the second strongest army in the world.

Ukraine never attacked a neighbouring country, which is in a stark contrast with Russia, which attacked Georgia twice and annexed part of Ukrainian territory in 2014. And these are only neighbouring conflicts.

Ukraine demilitarised in the past dramatically — it had the third largest nuke arsenal and gave it all up for the promises of its sovereignty being respected by USA, UK and Russia. I’m talking about Budapest memorandum. Who broke the promise? Russia in 2014. Ukrainian most dramatical demilitarisation resulted in its territories being attacked by one of the protectors. No wonder Ukraine started militarising itself as a result of that.

Kyiv regime was installed in 2014 coup

…so Russia needs to uninstall it. That’s a lie. There were two democratic elections — one in 2014 (after the so called coup), one in 2019. And in the 2019 power shifted dramatically from one camp to another. 2014 president Poroshenko and 2019 president Zelensky most likely hate each other (I did not ask them, but it looks like that). You may read more in the article about Kiev regime.

Roughly 90% of Ukrainians support current president Zelensky. And he was elected with 73% of votes in 2019. Obviously Ukrainians don’t want Russia to uninstall Zelensky. This is another Russian lie.

By the way — Lukashenko, who is a Belorussian president, did not come to power via democratic elections, but for some reason Russia does not attack Belarus to uninstall that regime.

Chemical, biological, atomic weapons

Or whatnot — all created by US in Ukraine. Why not in Latvia for that matter, which is already in NATO? Ukraine is a rather strange choice.

These are all groundless claims. There is not a single fact which would support that. Even Russian propagandists stopped using that argument.

As for biological and chemical laboratories in Ukraine. Yes — there are laboratories in Ukraine. It’s a large country and it has a pharmacy industry. Can this be a proof of producing a biological weapon? Don’t other countries (including Russia) have laboratories?

Ukraine would have attacked Russia

…so Russia decided to make a first blow. This is a very strange argument. First of all — Ukrainian army is much smaller and Ukraine does not posses any nuclear weapons. Attacking Russia was definitely not in plans. And if Ukrainian army was so strong that it would attack Russia — how come it could not take Donbas back since 2014?

There are no proofs for planned Ukraine invasion of Russia. There are proofs, however, that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine. Do you think that Russian forces were gathering near Ukrainian borders for several months just not to invade? Actually Russia did invade — which is the best proof that Russia did plan it.

Whatabout Iraq and Kosovo?

Russia condemns USA for invading Iraq in 2003 and for recognising Kosovo independence in 2008. But on the other side Russia say (sometimes openly)— since USA can do it, Russia can do it too. So do they condemn USA? Or do they admire them?

There is no clear logic in this argument, but I brought this up to show a typical Russian feature. They think that they are “greater” than Ukraine, so they are allowed to invade a neighbouring country and kill its people. Even the one they call a “brotherly nation”.

By the way — Ukraine does not recognise Kosovo independence, if that matters to you.

Liberate all Donbas territories

It looks like the most honest reason. Except for the word “liberate” should be changed to “occupy”. There is no point in “liberating” anything in Donbas.

This shouldn’t have been a reason by itself — this is just a description of what they want to do, not why they want to do that. The why is pretty strange though. DNR and LNR (unrecognised republics in Donbas) decided to mark their borders not by the territory they controlled, but by the official Ukrainian region borders. Since they included the Ukrainian controlled territory into their so-called republics, they decided to occupy more territories to prove their papers correct. This is a backward logic. But that’s what Russia is about.

Reasons for domestic use

These are reasons, often mentioned on the propagandists talk-shows or internal interviews. These are usually kept inside, because mostly these do not sound nice to the westerners ears.

Traditional values

Russia claims that collective West (USA and Europe) wants to destroy normal families, they force kids to stop saying “mom” and “dad”, but use words as “parent 1” and “parent 2”. They want people to become gays and change their gender identity. And Russia stands against it. It’s a holy war against satanic West.

And no — I’m not exaggerating. That’s what Russia say (check out the Putin’s speech on 30th of September 2022). They attack Ukraine to protect Russian kids from a homosexual propaganda. Is that even logical?

Ukraine is not a nation

Russians claim that Ukraine state never existed, Ukrainians do not exist as a nation, there is no such language as Ukrainian, so they simply should become Russians again. Russians pretty often justify their invasion by these claims. All these claims however are historically inaccurate. But not to bother you with history — just two facts.

  1. Ukrainian language was already forbidden by Catherine the Great in 1763 and then again in 1863 by a Valuev Circular (among other). Would Ukrainian language be forbidden if it did not exist? It seems that 200 years passed and Russians still cannot live with the fact that Ukrainian language exists.

  2. First literary work in modern Ukrainian language is Eneida published in 1798. Pushkin — the father of a modern Russian literary language — was yet to be born.

Denying people their own national identity — doesn’t that sound Nazi to you? Do Russians really say that? Yes they do — they use the term “de-ukrainization” on their TV shows and in the articles. One infamous example is the “What Russia should do with Ukraine” published by a popular Russian news agency.

Ukraine is a Western anti-Russia

Collective West hates Russia so much, so they decided to create a country, which would be a total opposite to Russia. Including gay-parades and stuff. This anti-Russia project should cease to exist.

This is a pretty crazy argument, but is often mentioned by Putin himself. He mentioned it in his 24th February speech (in Russian, search for “антироссия”). He often repeats it in other occasions.

Russian-NATO war should start

Oh, so you still think Russia only wanted to invade Ukraine? They wanted to start a war with NATO and Ukraine should have been only a first and easy step.

These are not crazy kitchen talks or talks on propagandists shows. There were at least two important political figures which mentioned invasion of NATO countries. First one was Lukashenko, who hinted on it in his interview to Soloviov.

By the time they turn around and send some troops here, we will already be standing near the English Channel.

That was a very gentle hint, but these are words by a Belorussian president, who should weigh his words very well.

And the second figure is a prominent Russian politician Zhirinovsky, who asked for a war with NATO. He also predicted the war with Ukraine starting on February 22nd 2022. Apparently they saw some symbolism in the 22/02/2022 date (European date format). War started two days later, though. Bad luck.

And surely enough, after being punished by Ukrainian Armed Forces, Russians already think that they are fighting NATO.

Russian empire should be back

This can take many forms, it does not have to be named Russian Empire or USSR. This can be called a Union State for example (the one currently implemented with Belarus), or through such innocent looking organisations as CSTO (ОДКБ), CIS (СНГ) or ECU (Таможенный Союз). However when Ukraine decided not to join ECU, but go for European Union instead in 2014, Russia immediately started a war in Crimea. These organisations are not so innocent after all. The Russian World (Русский мир), which Russia promotes, is just a naming of a Russian imperialism according to Surkov (Russian politician):

There was such a task: how to speak about the Empire, about our desire to expand, but at the same time not offend the hearing of the world community.

(Была такая задача: как сказать об Империи, о нашем желании расширяться, но при этом не оскорбить слух мирового сообщества.)

Russia just recently (30th Sep 2022) annexed a fifth of Ukrainian territory — this is probably the best proof for this reason. And this plays very well with the Russian idea that Ukraine is not a nation and should be eliminated. Putin often expresses his regrets over USSR being dissolved and calls it a “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of a twentieth century”.

Land corridor to Crimea and Transnistria

These are military reasons for invasion, which make sense. The problem with these, that Putin can’t simply say that “We need a land corridor to Transnistria, therefore we will annex part of Ukrainian territory”. But this reason is mentioned by Russian military personnel or famous TV propagandists.

Eternal war between Land and Sea states Maybe you have heard about Russian philosopher Dugin, whose daughter died in a car blow. So if you wonder what his philosophical ideas were — these were pretty strange. He saw Russia as a representative of a Land state and NATO block as a Sea (or Ocean) state — and these fight for dominance, and the Land state should win.

Ukraine is part of this Sea-Land opposition. I don’t think that makes much sense, but I’m mentioning it, because some say that Dugin had lots of influence on Putin (others reject it).

Dugin’s philosophy is just a variation of the “geopolitical” theme, pretty popular in Russia. Mikhalkov in his “Manifesto of enlightened Conservatism” says:

Geopolitics in Russia should take priority over politics, geoeconomics over economics, and geoculture over culture.
[…]
We must again become united and strong, and Russia — Great.

Other reasons

These include reasons not directly mentioned by Russia, but are often assumed.

No one would fight in Ukraine

This was probably the main reason for invasion. Putin (Russian president) did not believe Ukrainians would fight back. Lukashenko (Belorussian president) openly said that no one would fight in Ukraine and that the war would last for only three-four days. No one believed in Ukraine — that’s why western countries did not really help much in the beginning of the war.

Putin thought that the Special Military Operation (that’s how he named the war) would last for only few days and it would be a cake-walk, same as in Crimea in 2014. He also believed that Ukrainians would greet Russian soldiers with flowers and army would switch sides pretty quickly (he directly addressed Ukrainian Army to switch sides).

That’s why Putin did not carefully thought through the reasons for invasion — he thought no one would care about the demilitarisation and denazification after three days anyway.

There was an accidentally published article on RIA Novosti called “Russia and the New World is coming”. It was accidentally published on 26th of Feb — on a third day of invasion, which includes the following words:

Russia is restoring its historical fullness by gathering the Russian world, the Russian people together — in its totality of Great Russians, Belarusians and Little Russians [term for Ukrainians in Russia].
[…]
Did anyone in the old European capitals, in Paris and Berlin, seriously believe that Moscow would give up Kyiv?

The article was removed (but WebArchive remembers everything), but it proves many previous points and it shows that Russia did believe they would take Ukraine in three days (otherwise it wouldn’t be published). And if we talk about Kyiv…

Kyiv is a mother of Russian cities

Kyiv is of utmost ideological importance for Russia. Russia claims that they are the successors of a great Kyivan Rus. But for some unexplainable reason Kyiv is now a capital of Ukraine — not even a city inside Russia. Think about it for a moment:

  1. Kyiv was a capital of Kyivan Rus
  2. Now Kyiv it’s a capital of Ukraine
  3. Russia claims that they are the Kyivan Rus successors

Something is off.

Kyiv should become a Russian city in the eyes of Russian imperialists.

Genocide of Ukrainians

This is a hard to believe reason, but after seeing what happened in cities, such as Bucha, Mariupol or Izyum, this sounds as a real Russian purpose. Especially if to combine that with the previous statements that Ukraine is not a valid state and Ukrainian nation does not and should not exist.

Low Putin rating

Putin’s rating was low (not really low, but lower than 70%). And it got higher last time when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014. So maybe this invasion was a way to improve Putin’s rating.

Control of Oil and Gas reserves

There are some important reserves of Oil, Gas and Coal in Ukraine. Russia could have invaded to take control over them.

This is a very pragmatic reason for invasion. And is rarely discussed in other places, but I have to mention it for completeness. The idea behind controlling Ukrainian resources was not about resources per se, but more about not allowing Ukraine becoming a Russian competitor on European market.

There are probably other reasons. Some (i.e. Lavrov) even claim that there was no invasion at all. But hopefully I did not miss any important reasons.

However there were no just reasons to invade Ukraine. If there was a genocide of Russians, if Ukraine was indeed a Nazi state or even if it did attack Russia (which it never did) — Russian acts would be justifiable. But these statements are not true.

In my personal opinion the reason for invasion is very simple. Russia wanted to bring Ukraine back into its sphere of influence with all the economical and ideological benefits it would bring. Political influence failed — Russia thought that Zelensky would be their puppet, but it did not work out. They thought this would be an easy military task. So they crafted some artificial reasons for invasion and invaded. However something went wrong. Not only task wasn’t easy, it looks impossible now.

Sources