Why has Russia invaded Ukraine and what does Putin want?

Why has Russia invaded Ukraine and what does Putin want?

When Vladimir Putin shattered the peace in Europe by unleashing war on a democracy of 44 million people, his justification was that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a constant threat and Russia could not feel “safe, develop and exist”.

But after almost five weeks of bombardment, thousands of deaths in ruined cities and the displacement of 10 million people inside Ukraine and beyond, the questions remain: what is his aim and is there a way out?

What was Putin’s goal?

The Russian leader’s initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join the Western defensive alliance Nato. But the invasion has become bogged down and he appears to have scaled back his ambitions.

Launching the invasion on 24 February he told the Russian people his goal was to “demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine”, to protect people subjected to what he called eight years of bullying and genocide by Ukraine’s government. “It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force,” he insisted.

This was not even a war or invasion, he claimed, merely the fiction of a “special military operation” that Russian state-controlled media are required to adopt.

The claims of Nazis and genocide in Ukraine were completely unfounded, but it was clear Russia saw this as a pivotal moment. “Russia’s future and its future place in the world are at stake,” said foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin.

Russia’s military aimed to sweep into the capital Kyiv, invading from Belarus in the north, as well as from the south and east.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke of freeing Ukraine from oppression, while Ukraine’s democratically elected President Volodymyr Zelensky said “the enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two”.

But Ukraine’s fierce resistance has caused heavy losses and, in some areas, driven Russian forces back.

Map showing Russian advances and Ukrainian counter-attacks

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Has Putin changed his aims?

Russia does appear to have lowered its ambitions, claiming it has “generally accomplished” the aims of the invasion’s first phase, which it defined as considerably reducing Ukraine’s combat potential.

At peace talks in Istanbul, Russia said it would be “drastically reducing” its military operations around the capital, and around the northern city of Chernihiv.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky said signals from the talks could be called positive, but that they did not drown out the explosions from Russian shells. He said Ukraine could only trust a concrete result, not words.

The war continues in the east and the south, where Russian forces are trying to create a land corridor along the south coast, east from Crimea to the Russian border.

A month into the invasion, Russia declared its main goal was the “liberation of Donbas” - broadly referring to Ukraine’s eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk. More than a third of this area was already seized by Russian-backed separatists in a war that began in 2014.

Map showing the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine and the Russian-backed separatist-held areas within those regions.

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Ahead of the war it was clear President Putin wanted all of the east, recognising the whole area as belonging to two Russian puppet statelets. The head of the Luhansk statelet has suggested holding a referendum on joining Russia, similar to an internationally discredited vote held in Crimea in 2014.

Beyond his military goals, President Putin’s broader demand is to ensure Ukraine’s future neutrality. The Ukrainians have offered that in return for security guarantees from allies, as part of a wide-ranging peace plan presented in talks in Turkey.

Why Putin wants a neutral Ukraine

Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it has gradually veered towards the West - both the EU and Nato.

Russia’s leader has sought to reverse that, seeing the fall of the Soviet Union as the “disintegration of historical Russia”. He has claimed Russians and Ukrainians are one people and denied Ukraine its long history: “Ukraine never had stable traditions of genuine statehood,” he asserted.

It was his pressure on Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, not to sign a deal with the European Union in 2013 that led to protests that ultimately ousted the Ukrainian president in February 2014.

Russia then seized Ukraine’s southern region of Crimea and triggered a separatist rebellion in the east and a war that claimed 14,000 lives.

As he prepared to invade in February, he tore up an unfulfilled 2015 Minsk peace deal and accused Nato of threatening “our historic future as a nation”, claiming without foundation that Nato countries wanted to bring war to Crimea.

What would neutrality look like?

Before Ukraine presented its plans, Russia said it was considering a “neutral, demilitarised” Ukraine with its own army and navy, along the lines of Austria or Sweden, which are both EU members. Austria is neutral, while Sweden is non-aligned.

President Zelensky had already declared that Ukrainians now understood they would will not be admitted to Nato: “It’s a truth and it must be recognised.”

Volodymyr Zelensky

EPA/Ukraine presidency

Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state - we are ready to go for it… If I remember correctly, this is why [Russia] started the war

Volodymyr Zelensky

President of Ukraine

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Under Ukraine’s Istanbul peace proposals:

Ukraine would become a “non-bloc (or non-aligned) and non-nuclear” state, with no foreign military bases or contingents on its territory

Strict, legally binding guarantees would require countries such as the UK, China, the USA, Turkey, France, Canada, Italy, Poland and Israel to protect a neutral Ukraine in the event of attack

Within three days guarantor states would have to hold consultations and come to Ukraine’s defence

Ukraine would be allowed to join the European Union

Ukraine would not enter military-political alliances and any international exercises would require consent of guarantor states.

Ukraine’s bid to join Nato (and the EU) is enshrined in its 2019 constitution, so any change would require a referendum some months later.

What about Crimea and the east?

Under Ukraine’s plan, the future status of Crimea, seized by Russia in 2014, would be decided during 15 years of consultations. And during that time there would be no military action to resolve the issue.

As part of the peace proposals, all Russian troops would leave Ukrainian territory and the future of the eastern areas held by Russian-backed separatists would be discussed by the two presidents as part of a ceasefire summit.

Russia has yet to respond to the proposals and says there is still a long way to go, although it sees the Ukrainian offer as a “step towards us”.

President Putin will come under pressure not to abandon any territorial gains made during the war, especially as the declared aim is “liberating” Ukraine’s east. Kyiv, meanwhile, will never agree to ceding its sovereign territory.

While Russia’s call for Ukraine’s demilitarisation appears to have been dealt with, two other demands may have fallen away altogether: that of “de-Nazification”, and having Russian recognised as a second language in Ukraine.

Russia’s claims of Nazism are unfounded, and Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has said bluntly: “It’s crazy, sometimes not even they can explain what they are referring to.”

Ukraine’s president has said he is prepared to give Russian minority language status, along with the languages of other neighbouring countries, and does not see this as a major issue.

What’s Putin’s problem with Nato?

For Russia’s leader the West’s 30-member defensive military alliance has one aim - to split society in Russia and ultimately destroy it.

Ahead of the war, he demanded that Nato turn the clock back to 1997 and reverse its eastward expansion, removing its forces and military infrastructure from member states that joined the alliance from 1997 and not deploying “strike weapons near Russia’s borders”. That means Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

Graphic showing Nato’s expansion since 1997

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In President Putin’s eyes, the West promised back in 1990 that Nato would expand “not an inch to the east”, but did so anyway.

That was before the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, so the promise made to then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev only referred to East Germany in the context of a reunified Germany. Mr Gorbachev said later that “the topic of Nato expansion was never discussed” at the time.

Does Putin have designs beyond Ukraine?

If he has, his military setbacks in Ukraine may have put paid to any wider ambitions beyond Ukraine.

After hours of conversations with Russia’s authoritarian leader, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz concluded: “Putin wants to build a Russian empire… He wants to fundamentally redefine the status quo within Europe in line with his own vision. And he has no qualms about using military force to do so.”

Tatiana Stanovaya of analysis firm RPolitik and the Carnegie Moscow Center fears a spiral in a new Cold War confrontation: “I have very firm feelings that we should get prepared for a new ultimatum to the West which will be more militarised and aggressive than we could have imagined.”

Having witnessed Mr Putin’s willingness to lay waste European cities to achieve his aims, Western leaders are now under no illusion. President Joe Biden has labelled him a war criminal and the leaders of both Germany and France see this war as a turning point in the history of Europe.

Before the war, Russia demanded all US nuclear arms be barred from beyond their national territories. The US had offered to start talks on limiting short- and medium-range missiles, as well as on a new treaty on intercontinental missiles, but there is little chance of that happening for now.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visiting positions on the frontline with pro-Russian militants in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, 06 December 2021IMAGE SOURCE,EPA

Image caption,

Before the war Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky paid regular visits to the front line in eastern Ukraine

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What next for Russia itself?

President Putin has been stunned by the scale of the Western response to his invasion. He knew Nato’s members would never put boots on the ground in Ukraine, but he could not have guessed the extent of the sanctions that are already having a dramatic effect on Russia’s economy - and he is furious.

The EU, US, UK and other Western nations have targeted Russia’s economy in a variety of ways:

Russia’s central bank has had its assets frozen and major banks are shut out of the international SWIFT payment transfer network.

The US has banned imports of Russian oil and gas; the EU aims to cut gas imports by two-thirds within a year; and the UK aims to phase out Russian oil by the end of 2022

Germany has halted approval on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, a major investment by both Russia and European companies

Russian airlines have been barred from airspace over the EU, UK, US and Canada

Personal sanctions have been imposed on President Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and many other individuals

No peace deal with Ukraine will bring these sanctions to an end, and Vladimir Putin knows that. Instead he has turned on Russians who have opposed the war. “The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors,” said Russia’s president.

More than 15,100 anti-war protesters have been detained and virtually all independent media have been silenced.

There is no meaningful political opposition left as they have either fled the country, or in the case of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, jailed for years in a strict-regime penal colony