The Ukraine crisis. A step back to understand the invasion

The decisive breaking point between Russia and Ukraine was determined by Russia's recognition of the two republics Lugansk and Donetsk and by President Putin's "defensive" and "protection" choice to send troops to the territories of the separatist leaders who requested his immediate support to "denazify" and "demilitarise" the country from the abuses that ethnic Russian citizens have suffered in recent years. In essence, the Russian leader's objective would be to put an end to the "genocide", a term that has no real international meaning in itself but is defined as a military tool of political redundancy to safeguard those citizens who for many years have suffered the humiliation of the "Ukrainian regime", as Putin put it. The pretext, which gave rise to the irreversible attack, unfolded strategically along three areas: Belarus, Crimea and Donbass. In order to better understand the current terrifying actions, it is good to take a look at the past...

Western leaders' promise to Russia in the Cold War years

The Russian Federation's current demands to halt NATO's eastward expansion date back to shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union. In December 1989, at the Malta summit, President G. Bush assured then-President M. Gorbachev that America and consequently NATO would not take advantage of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to damage Soviet interests. This can be seen not so much in the treaties concluded as in the multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and Western leaders. The latter reassured Russia during the early 1900s that they would protect Soviet security interests and promote the inclusion of the USSR in the new European security structures that would be more inclusive and non-exclusive. During the negotiations between Gorbachev and Chancellor H. Kohl concerning the reunification of Germany, the US Secretary of State, James Baker, and President Bush, tried on several occasions both to reassure the Russian leader by means of the Tutzing formula, i.e. that NATO would not expand an inch towards the East; underlining, furthermore, that America had no unilateral interest in the ongoing negotiations and both to consolidate even more their disinterested position aimed at the sole strengthening of the Gorbachev-Kohl relationship and, in this sense, the actions undertaken with the London Declaration, guaranteeing the non-expansion to the East, having access to a regular diplomatic relationship between NATO and Russia and, finally, the total change of military approach on conventional and nuclear forces.

In conclusion, Gorbachev accepted German unification into NATO as a result of the above guarantees developed by Western leaders towards the Soviets, hoping to achieve greater inclusion and integration in the long run between the countries in question. However, at the end of the Cold War and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, it can be seen that NATO has nonetheless expanded along the eastern territories.

The Russian attack through Putin's eyes.

The Russian operation in Ukraine began on the night of 23-24 February, when Russian leader V. Putin, after explaining his motives in a 55-minute interview, then gave the order to deploy his forces in the so-called Ukrainian Regime. Putin's rationale is that "Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us, it is an integral part of our history, our culture and our spiritual space. They are our friends and relatives, not only our colleagues, friends and former colleagues, but also our peers and close family members. Since ancient times the inhabitants of the historic southwestern lands of ancient Russia have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians were so both before the 17th century, when part of these territories were reunited with the Russian state, and afterwards."

According to Putin, in order to understand the motivations that led him to take part in this invasion, one must analyse the past of the current Ukrainian country, which, according to the president, was a creation of Bolshevik communist Russia. He pointed out that this process began after the 1917 revolution when Lenin and his comrades-in-arms "crudely" wrested its historical territories from Russia and continued during the Second World War when Stalin, trying to implement a compensation strategy, transferred some ancestral lands to Ukraine. According to the president, it should also be noted that after the October Revolution and the ensuing civil war, the Bolsheviks began to build a new statehood, which caused disagreement among its exponents. He also added that during that period, Stalin proposed to build the country on the principles of autonomy, thus giving the republics, the future administrative or territorial units, broad powers but as they joined the unified state Lenin criticised this plan and suggested making concessions to the nationalists as he then called them 'the independents'. It was Lenin's ideas of an essentially confederative state structure and the right of nations to self-determination up to and including secession that formed the basis of Soviet statehood first enshrined in the Declaration on the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of 1922 and then after Lenin's death in the 1924 Constitution of the USSR.

Beyond the personal motivations expressed by the Russian President, it is worth drawing attention to the historical reasons and secular ties between Russia and Ukraine. The latter has been a fundamental part of Russian history since the Tsarist empire. In the years of the October Revolution, following the Ukrainian-Soviet conflict, Ukraine was annexed to the Soviet Union, providing an important source of sustainability thanks to the presence of vast agricultural lands. Following the dissolution of the USSR, their relationship became unstable as Ukraine signed the Declaration of Sovereignty in 1991, which decreed its independence, autonomy, self-determination and democracy. In spite of the volatile relationship between the two, also due to the alternation of pro-Western and pro-Russian governments, the Treaty of Cooperation and Partnership between Russia and Ukraine was signed in 1997.

Since its failure as a sovereign state in the twentieth century, Russia has gradually tried to rebuild its economic, political, social and territorial power silently. However, it cannot be said that it has always been a quiet observer given the immediate actions it took in response to the United States when it attempted to define its status quo in a country dear to Russia, Syria, not only because of its territorial proximity but also because of its key role in the energy-naval sector for the construction of a bridge to transport LPG between Syria and Crimea.