Ukraine, NATO, and Russia

I have seen a resurgence of a false account of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, so I have assembled a debunking here. I expect I may add resources over time, if it keeps coming up.

The false thesis goes something like this:

The common assumption in the West (the US & Western Europe) that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reflects Putin’s imperialism is a dangerous misunderstanding. Rather, the invasion was a predictable response to Western foolishness & aggessiveness toward Russia.

Given Napoleon in the 19^th century and Hitler in the 20^th, Russians have good reasons to worry about security threats from the West. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, they have said clearly that they would read expansion of NATO toward Russia as an existential threat, so the West promised back in the 1990s not to rouse that concern.

But the West has betrayed that promise with aggressive expansion of NATO, toward the end putting Western troops right on Russia’s border with Ukraine.

Mirroring the Soviets creating a buffer of client states in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, Russia has seized part of eastern Ukraine as a buffer against the West now. Putin is eager to embrace peace with Ukraine, if they simply allow that ethnically-Russian territory to have an independent, Russia-friendly government, but because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is an instrument of the West’s dangerous betrayal of Russia he refuses.

I dug down the rabbit hole of this argument a couple of years ago. It is deceitful Russian propaganda.

The biggest hole in this thesis is how Ukraine has not joined NATO! That should end the argument right there.

But but but, they say, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was triggered by the security threat presented by a pattern of aggressive NATO expansion pointing to Ukraine eventually joining.

This does not hold water.

Russia invaded Ukraine in the 2020s because the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania which share a border with Russia joined NATO … in ’04? Between then and Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Russians sent weapons and troops into Ukraine starting in 2014 while the only addition to NATO was North Macedonia ’20, which does not share a border with Russia. The West made no such promise, and the timeline of Western violations of that supposed promise provoking Russia makes no sense.

But but but, they say, there has been talk of Ukraine joining NATO!

True. That results from Ukranian parliament voting to pursue NATO membership at the end of 2014, reversing their prior disinterest.

Aha oho oho, they counter, Ukraine changed their tune because in 2014 the West created the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in order to get a friendly government which would support NATO expansion.

That reading compounds several absurdities.

It ignores the Ukrainian motivation that earlier in 2014, Russia sent weapons and troops into eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea on Ukraine’s southern border.

Yes, Maidan did have Western support, but it was an organic popular movement which did not need the help. Ukrainians have obvious reasons to favor building ties to the (rich & democratic) West over ties to Russia, which is impoverished, ruled by a dictator who denies Ukrainian national legitimacy, and genocided millions of Ukrainians in the 20^th century.

Again, how is the West “pushing” for NATO expansion if a decade after Ukraine made these overtures, it still is not a member? For the last decade, NATO has responded to Ukraine, “yeah, okay, we can offer some support and someday maybe we will let you join”, while some NATO member states remain hesitant over the prospect, since it would commit them to potential war with Russia.

This claim that the West provoked Russia is not just absurd, it is morally repulsive. NATO is not an aggressive alliance, it is a mutual-defense agreement: an attack on one is an attack on all. Sying that Russia had to invade Ukraine to prevent it from joining an alliance which would defending it from invasion is like saying:

“That domestic violence shelter is responsible for provoking Ukraine’s ex-husband to break into her house and beat her again, like he did years ago. They should not have endangered Ukraine by accepting a call to their hotline after he showed up pounding on her door.”

And Zelenskyy? He refuses “peace” because the only “peace” on offer from Russia is seizure of Ukranian territory with zero security guarantees against further Russian aggression. That is not diplomacy, that is a demand of surrender.

References:

• Russian Disinformation on NATO Expansion and the War in Ukraine (2023) — from a US Army analyst
• Exposing the myth of Western betrayal of Russia over NATO’s eastern enlargement (2022) — a succinct analysis from an expert
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was never about NATO expansion (2025) — a short critique of the thesis, with numerous links to supporting resources
• Putin debunks his own propaganda by disarming Russia’s NATO borders (2023) — what it says on the tin
• Russia’s belief in Nato ‘betrayal’ – and why it matters today (2022) — contextualizing the thesis in the historical half-truths it relies upon
• Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine (2022) — an interview with the most promiment American proponent of the Russian thesis, in which he cannot answer straightforward questions about his argument
• The American Pundits Who Can’t Resist “Westsplaining” Ukraine (2022) — digging into Mearsheimer and other commentators