Why Invade Ukraine?

Benjamin Butsko

As the current Russian invasion of Ukraine progresses, taking the lives of more and more soldiers and civilians across both countries, a question that sits with so many Ukrainians, and the world, arises: Why invade Ukraine?

A country thought to be militaristically mighty on the world stage has shown, after over 4 years of full-scale war, that it is dedicated to invade Ukraine no matter the economical, human, or moral cost. According to multiple official statements of the Russian Federation time and time again, the goal of the “special military operation” is to demilitarize, “denazify,” and protect the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine. However, a quick look at history and facts ultimately debunks Russia’s reasoning to invade Ukraine, and unveils the true motives behind such a costly conflict.

Although the full-scale conflict we know of started in 2022, it really started on a smaller scale than the current conflict in 2014 after Russia’s occupation of Crimea and their seizure of the city of Sevastopol's ports. Sevastopol had historically served as a base of operations for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since its founding in 1783 following the Russian Empire’s occupation of the Crimean Muslim Khanate. Since then, Russia has done anything it could to maintain control of such a vital port that has year-round warm water access to the Black Sea, giving Russia a massive geopolitical leverage in the region.

In the 1950s, the USSR moved Crimea from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR for a multitude of reasons, including Crimea’s reliance on resources from Ukraine, the region's historical ties to Ukraine, and it would better support the local economy if Crimea was transferred to the Ukrainian republic. However, many modern Russian officials call this move "illegitimate" because of their claim that it violates both the Russian and Soviet Constitutions. This claim can be proven false. Soviet authorities went through all legal processes of the time to transfer and recognize Crimea as a part of the Ukrainian SSR. Post-Soviet accords by both Ukraine and Russia recognized Crimea as an autonomous region within Ukraine.

For a long period after the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine’s elected officials still kept close ties with Moscow, putting Ukraine well within the Russian sphere of influence. With this came rampant corruption in the government. The people of Ukraine were sick of it. After Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected an EU agreement proposal in November of 2013, the people were finally fed up, leading a series of riots and protests named the Revolution of Dignity, or the Euromaiden. The Euromaiden aimed to strengthen ties with the EU and rid the government of its rampant corruption. It ended in February of 2014 when President Viktor Yanukovych was declared unfit to perform his constitutional duties by the Ukrainian Parliament 328-0 after he’d fled Kyiv. An act of the people of Ukraine speaking up for what they want for their country was seen as a direct attack to Russia’s national security.

As former Eastern-European Soviet-aligned communist countries joined the EU and NATO, the western institutions that Russia fought so hard against were only coming closer to Russia’s borders. During Ukraine’s period of being in Russia’s sphere of influence after the USSR, Ukraine served as a buffer state between Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary, all more western-aligned countries. A Ukraine now joining this new sphere meant that the Western world was now on Russia’s doorstep, a threat to their anti-west ideology.

This now also meant that Russia could potentially lose access to Sevastopol’s ports and the wider Black Sea Fleet. All of this led to Russia, in February of 2014, occupying Crimea to “protect Russian speaking populations” and hold a quick referendum on the sovereignty of the region. The only two options were to become an independent country, or join Russia. Nowhere was there an option to remain in Ukraine, meaning that people who would’ve wanted to keep Crimea in Ukraine had no voice to express their opinion in this referendum. Afterwards, Russia reported that the voter turnout was 83.1% and that 96.7% of the votes were in favor of Crimea joining Russia. However, in an April 2014 report prepared by members of Russia's Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, the voter turnout was closer to 30% and only about 50% of those who voted were in favor of joining Russia. This report was hastily removed by the Russian government and claims have been made that this wasn’t true.

Despite the setback, Ukraine still progressed after the 2014 revolution to lean more towards the west. New government officials replaced the old, often corrupt, Russian-aligned officials. Ukraine was looking at a bright future where the people weren’t set back by a government paid off by a foreign power. Even after Russia had already occupied and illegally annexed Crimea under local and international law, it still felt threatened by the fact that they no longer could meddle in the politics and affairs of a neighboring country in order to keep their interests relevant.

This tension escalated into Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Russia’s stated goals being to “demilitarize,” “denazify,” and protect the Russian populations of Ukraine, specifically those in Donetsk and Luhansk. To start off, far right groups do exist in Ukraine, as they do throughout Europe, however, no far right nor neo-Nazi party has won a national office in Ukrainian politics since modern-day Ukraine’s founding in 1991, meaning these parties have no influence on Ukraine’s politics and debunks the claim that Ukraine needs “denazifying” from its politics.

Next, following the 2014 occupation of Crimea of Russia, separatist governments in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk formed to break away from Ukraine to be independent nations, which the UN Human Rights Office concluded was created and funded with Russian support. A conflict quickly emerged between Ukraine and the separatist governments. Russia doesn’t acknowledge the fact that these governments were Russian formed, and instead used them as an artificial means of justifying conflict with Ukraine to “liberate” these regions from Ukraine.

However, demilitarizing Ukraine is a very clear and real goal of Russia. It has been explicitly stated by Russian officials that Ukraine needs to limit its armed forces so as to not pose a threat to Russia. This ties into the wider reasoning for Russia’s real motive to invade Ukraine, to reestablish the Russian influence it once had over the country by making sure it isn’t a threat to them and can be easily meddled with. In the past, Russia relied on political control and energy threats to exert influence on Ukraine, now, they're invading Ukraine to achieve the same goal.

Many people within the Slavic world, not just those in Ukraine prior to 2014, have had their governments conform to Russian interests over their own. A strong example of a country today that shows many similarities to what Russia was trying to achieve with Ukraine in the past is Belarus. Ever since Belarus’s establishment as a country following the collapse of the USSR, the country has had only one president: Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko is a leader who has altered the systems and policies of Belarus to allow him to remain “president” for as long as he can, similar to Vladimir Putin, president of Russia. Lukashenko has shown repeatedly that he will conform to Russian interests no matter what, transforming Belarus into a Russian de-facto state. This came at the cost of the people of Belarus, who’ve had their liberties and right to elect proper leaders taken away to keep the interests of Russia. The government has conformed so much, that Belarusian, technically an official state language of Belarus and a language of many of the local people of Belarus for years, has become widely discouraged across the country, with Russian, a foreign language to Belarus, being the preferred language of the country. 

From attempting to exert heavy influence on foreign countries, fabricating reasons for invading Ukraine, and actively attempting to silence the voices of the people of foreign countries through rigged politics, Russia has shown that it will take whatever action necessary to further their interests on the world stage. Allowing Russia to exert such control shouldn’t be tolerated by the international community as other countries deserve to exist as their own sovereign territory, without the people having to be silenced by a foreign power that only has their interests in mind. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine is a wakeup call as to what Russia is trying to achieve. All of its goals came at a heavy cost for Ukrainians simply for defending the rights to their sovereign nation. We shouldn’t have to live in a world filled with puppet states for any one country, so it's important to spot the early signs of such happening and stop it before it can really happen.