Pearls and Irritations

One zombie thesis about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that keeps resurfacing is the idea that it was provoked by NATO expansion. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Eugene Doyle reprises this idea, leaning on the views of one ex-CIA analyst, George Beebe. Beebe claimed in 2021 “that Russia was likely to invade Ukraine given the combination of the US’s determination to bring the country into NATO and the fact that it was a “now-or-never moment” for Moscow to stop this happening.”

The idea that the US was determined to bring Ukraine into NATO in 2021 is, in fact, nonsensical. The core principle of NATO is Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack on one member is to be treated as an attack on all.

Russia already occupied large chunks of Ukraine since 2014, when it occupied Crimea overnight and annexed it a few weeks later. It subsequently invaded the Donbas in support of a “separatist” insurgency that was incited, supported and directed by Russian intelligence (and largely manned by Russian volunteers and mercenaries). Some of the main Russian protagonists like Igor Girkin and the recorded conversations of Putin aide Sergei Glazyev have since confirmed this. If Ukraine had joined with Russia occupying parts of it, NATO countries would have been obliged to actively support Ukraine militarily.

So the Russian invasions had taken Ukrainian NATO membership off the agenda by 2021. The vague decision of the 2008 NATO summit that Ukraine could join in the future had never materialised into concrete action such as a Membership Action Plan. Major NATO countries like the US and Germany are still blocking any early path to membership precisely because of the Article V dilemma. 

The 2014 invasions

Nor were the original, 2014 invasions of Crimea and the Donbas provoked by imminent Ukraine membership of NATO.

The immediate cause was the removal from office in February 2014 of Putin’s crony, Ukrainian President Vladimir Yanukovych, following the Maidan protests. Contrary to unfounded claims pushed by Jeffrey Sachs and others, Maidan was triggered by Yanukovych’s decision in November 2013 to withdraw, under pressure from Putin, from a proposed Association Agreement with the EU. 

Yanukovych had fled Kyiv, perhaps fearing retribution for killings of protesters and his gargantuan corruption. This despite the fact that he had reached agreement with opposition parties to stay in office until new elections at the end of the year. After Yanukovych’s flight the Ukrainian parliament removed him by a vote of 375-0 (including many members of his own party).

The new Prime Minister after Yanukovych’s removal, Arseny Yatseniuk, declared on 18 March 2014 that the new leadership would not seek membership of NATO. But Putin proceeded with the annexation of Crimea the same day. And sensing the weakness of the new Kyiv government, pressed on to organise the fake “separatist” actions that took off in the Donbas.

These events underline that Russian aggression was driven by a desire for Russian dominance over Ukraine, not any potential threat from NATO. As do two earlier events in the 2000s.

Putin reacted in almost blasé fashion when the three Baltic States joined NATO in 2004. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are as close to Moscow as Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia, and much closer to St Petersburg. In 2002 he had said that it was “entirely a matter for the Baltic States to decide whether to join NATO”. We saw the same “meh” reaction when Sweden and Finland joined NATO in 2023-24, adding 1,500 kilometres (and the strong Finnish army) to Russia’s border. 

Such attitude contrasted with Putin’s reaction to Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004-05. Putin invested a huge amount of personal prestige and financial, intelligence and other resources into getting his preferred candidate, Yanukovych, elected in the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential elections. According to leading Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, Putin was apoplectic when massive protests forced a rerun of the blatantly dodgy poll and the rival candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, won. Control of Ukraine was the problem, not NATO.

Putin’s imperial worldview 

Eugene Doyle mentions then US Ambassador to Moscow William Burns’s warnings in 2008 that Ukraine membership of NATO was a “red line” for the Russian elite. But was this because they had reason to believe it posed a serious military threat, or because moving towards NATO, like joining the EU, would make Ukraine less amenable to Russian control? Indeed, as Michael Lawriwsky argues, was Russia’s fear that it would it become harder to threaten or use military force against Ukraine?

Burns himself provides part of the answer in Bob Woodward’s book War, about the Biden Presidency. Biden sent Burns to Moscow in October 2021 to warn Putin that the US would impose devastating sanctions if Russia invaded en masse. Putin’s immediate reply was telling: “Ukraine is weak and divided; it’s not a real country; Russia’s interests demand that we control Ukraine’s choices”. This echoed his feelings revealed earlier to diplomats and figures like George Bush, that Ukraine wasn’t a “real country”.

Putin expounded his views with greater sophistication in his 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”. It outlined spurious views, long held by Great Russian nationalists, that Russians and Ukrainians are one people; that Ukraine within its current borders was created by Vladimir Lenin; and that Ukrainian nationalism was invented by the Austro-Hungarian empire to undermine Russia. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, when asked if he was consulted on the decision, reportedly replied: “[Putin] has only three advisers – Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Stalin”.

So while the prospect of NATO membership was undoubtedly a bugbear for Putin and his associates, this reflected more their attitude that Ukraine (like Belarus) belonged under Russia’s thumb, than any military threat. As I detailed in an earlier article, there was no reason for Russia to perceive an enhanced threat from NATO given its posture, policies and relations with Russia. Senior Russian establishment figures said the same in 2021.

Russia’s sense of grievance and enmity dovetailed with Putin’s need to legitimise his rule as it became increasingly repressive by posing himself as a protector against external enemies. This trend was foreshadowed by revered Russian political sociologist Yuri Levada in 2005: “fearsome regimes need a frightened people”. 

There is room for debate whether the West should have been more accommodating to Russian grievances about loss of influence after the Cold War, which were compounded by being ignored on issues like the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. But weighing against such grievances were numerous steps by Western countries to enhance Russia’s status – bringing Russia into the G8 and the WTO; creating the NATO-Russia Council; providing substantial financial and technical assistance; promoting investment; and largely turning a blind eye to serious human rights abuses, notably during Moscow’s wars to repress Chechen separatism (in which upwards of 100,000 civilians were killed).

Conflating “provocation” with steps that Putin hates because they might weaken Russia’s asserted right to control Ukraine’s choices leads to faulty and pernicious thinking. It gives oxygen to calls to end support for Ukraine or to pressure it to give up sovereign territory by suggesting that Russia had legitimate grounds to invade. That would mean acquiescing in territorial conquest for the first time in 70 years, and would be little different from saying Israel is entitled to annex the West Bank or Gaza.

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