Nobody said that Nato had nothing to do with this war. What I (and perhaps a few other posters) reject is the notion that the prospect of Ukraine in NATO is the sole or vastly predominant reason for this war.
Where would you rank it? It seems to me obvious the #1 proximate reason for Russia's invasion was western intrusion their sphere of influence via color revolution. NATO expansion is not exactly
that, but they are intrinisically tied. Russia tolerated the fall of buffer states at the fringes of the old USSR and where the iron curtain expanded post WW2 but they were not going to part with their historical breadbasket, a country half russian and in the empire since Catherine.
Russia cares about stopping NATO for that seem reason, preserving its sphere. They aren't worried about some imminent ground invasion by NATO troops
Russia tolerated the fall at the fringes of the old USSR very begrudgingly, and only due to their own weakness. From the late 80s through the mid-2000s, they were simply too weak to do anything about it. But they are clearly still butthurt about the loss of their empire (at least Putin personally is) and have used it as fuel for their propaganda.
Granted, the populations of Poland, Czechia and East Germany have proven to be overwhelmingly Western-oriented once the threat of Soviet tanks no longer kept them in line, so I doubt Russia would be interested in taking them back. Ukraine is a different case since sizable regions of the country were genuinely pro-Russian.
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Anyway... I guess our perspectives aren't even that far apart.
The root of this conflict imho is a squabble about spheres of influence, about Russia attempting to maintain and/or restore its former empire. The whole talk about how Russia feels (justifiably?) threatened by NATO encroachment and how that is allegedly the root cause of this war is just a smoke screen. As you said: Ukraine in NATO is a red line for Russia because it would enshrine the permanent breakaway of Ukraine from Russia's sphere of influence with the military might of the US. But this doesn't mean that NATO membership itself is the key issue.
Hypothetically, if we went back to 2014 and the government in Kyiv had pledged in an official document that they will never join NATO and that Russia is free to nuke them if they ever break this promise, would that have resolved this conflict? No, of course not, because this has always been about more than just NATO.
Both sides had been engaged in a tug-of-war over Ukraine for over a decade by the time the Maidan revolution took place. Orange Revolution, the poisoning of Yushtchenko, etc. From a realpolitik point of view, Russia was enraged that Ukraine's institutions and official structures had slipped out of their control in 2014. They realized that they could simply not compete with the allure that sucking on the teat of Brussels or Washington had over the pro-Western half of Ukraine. Therefore, they gave up their attempts at winning the battle over Ukraine with soft power or by schemes to keep their men in charge of the presidency and government, and instead resorted to military means and hybrid warfare.
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Of course both sides are using the spin and propaganda which suits them. Russia is hypocritical when it postulates a god-given right to rule over their sphere of influence indefinitely and frames any deviations from this status quo antebellum as nefarious Western aggression. Or when it harps about Ukrainian nazis while tolerating swaths of ultranationalists with swastika tattoos etc. among its own ranks.
Meanwhile, the West is of course also engaging in a self-serving framing when it harps about the right of self-determination of the Ukrainian people, implicitly using its greater economic prowess as the weapon of choice to win over Ukraine, while ignoring the right of self-determination of the people on Crimea or in Donbas.
In hindsight, both Russia and the West should have settled for non-maximalist demands and pushed Ukraine toward some sort of "amicable national divorce" at some point between 2014 and 2019. The end result we're gonna get will look rather similar anyway, but with hundreds of thousands dead, a devastated country and bitterness which will last for generations.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 16 2025 09:49pm