RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has continued to harbour significant resentment against Ukraine, the country it still thought of as a critical part of ‘Mother Russia’. Russian President Vladimir Putin spared no effort to promote an historical narrative that Ukrainians and Russians constituted ‘one nation’. Having declared independence in 1991, Ukraine had chosen a completely different path – an independent path of democratic development, reform and European integration. However, Putin fervently wished to reassemble the countries of the former Soviet Union and reverse what he called the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century”.
36
With Ukraine getting closer to joining NATO, Russia considered the conquest of Ukraine as vital to the restoration of its so-called ‘Historical Russia’. Putin’s ultimate goal was to ‘right the wrongs’, as he saw them, of the fall of the USSR in the Cold War, 30 years ago. And so, after months of military buildup on Ukraine’s borders, and months of denying he had plans to invade, Russian forces finally crossed the line on 24 February 2022. But Putin’s ambitions fell well short, as the performance of his own forces failed to live up to everyone’s expectations and Ukraine’s defenders pushed back with the zeal of a fight for something greater than self.
CONTACT Air Land & Sea – Issue 74 – June 2022
