Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken the first steps of sending his military into Ukrainian territory following weeks of posturing on the border with the threat of a looming conflict.
Putin’s plans, which U.S. officials say are to invade Ukraine, are the latest in an effort by the Russian leader to restore “historic Russia.”
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His other major consideration revolves around NATO, and keeping the Western alliance as far away from Russia’s borders as possible. Ukraine isn’t currently a member of NATO, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed interest in joining. Ukraine is presently considered a “partner country” to the military alliance.
RUSSIA FORMALLY RECOGNIZES TWO SEPARATIST REGIONS IN EASTERN UKRAINE, PAVING WAY FOR INVASION
Despite Ukraine not being a NATO member, the United States and some European countries have provided it with limited military aid and other forms of economic and military support. But they have made clear that the trans-Atlantic alliance will not wage war on its behalf.
Putin described the matter of NATO’s possible presence in Ukraine as “our sharpest dispute with Washington and NATO,” while addressing reporters on Tuesday.
“We are categorically opposed to Ukraine joining NATO because this poses a threat to us, and we have arguments to support this,” he said. “The best decision would be for our colleagues in the Western countries not to lose face, so to say, and for Kyiv itself to refuse to join NATO. In effect, in so doing, they would translate the idea of neutrality into life.”
The Biden administration has said it will not quash Ukraine’s hopes of joining the defensive alliance, citing the open door policy enshrined in NATO’s original 1949 treaty that grants European countries the right to seek membership.
Earlier this week, Putin officially recognized two occupied regions — the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic — as independent in Ukraine, and he ordered troops to go into those regions, both of which were considered significant escalations in the conflict.
Days later, he also demanded that the international community recognize Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as Russian territory.
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The entities in these occupied areas have allowed Putin to portray the fighting as an internal civil war between separatists and the Ukrainian central government, but Western officials and even a Russian judge have stated that Russian military forces are occupying those areas.
“Let me emphasize once again that Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country. It is an integral part of our own history, culture, spiritual space,” Putin said this week, referring to Ukraine’s importance to Russia, according to translated excerpts from the New York Times. “These are our comrades, relatives, among whom are not only colleagues, friends, former colleagues, but also relatives, people connected with us by blood, family ties.”
