The Russian Empire of Putin's Dreams
Russia and Ukraine's unique geographical position is a crucial factor behind Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
One of the stated top priorities for Russian president Vladimir Putin is being able to defend Russia against who he deems a hostile aggressor, NATO. In that objective, Ukraine plays a fundamental role. Leaders of the Russian Empire, from Ivan the Terrible all the way to Putin himself, have made Ukraine pivotal in their strategic jurisdiction.
I am a Ukrainian, born and raised, and though the actions of the Russian Federation are impossible to stomach for me, I realized that without unpacking this region’s history, where it draws its borders and why, it will be difficult to decipher the motivations behind the violent attack Russia launched on its sovereign neighbor, Ukraine. If we set aside the moral implications of the savagery that this war has brought on a civilized and peaceful nation, in its place is a game of RISK which involves a cold analysis of strategic positioning. When Putin sees this part of the world, what territories are most important to conquer?
For centuries, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union comprised nearly one-sixth of the world’s land mass. The regions we know today as Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Belarus, Finland, the Caucasus, and the Central Asian and Baltic states, were under a single Soviet umbrella for the majority of the 20th century.
Each of the republics maintained regional identities but were united under one nation with a single ruling party. The citizens of this giant country lived without borders and families often spread across the land through generations. For this reason, the people of these territories have a profound connection through their shared history, coupled with a national pride because for all those generations, this region was widely considered a formidable and global superpower.
These glory days of Mother Russia were plastered on every school book and dutifully recited by every citizen until 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and all those territories became 15 independent republics.
The Soviet Union overnight lost more than half of its population, something that Putin has lamented about regularly, like in his state television address in 1991. "Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones,” Putin stated, “overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.”
After World War II, two competing military alliances emerged. On one side, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and on the other side the Warsaw Pact Organization (WPO). NATO’s original members were the USA, Canada, and most of western Europe, and its stated goal was to promote democratic values and coordinate on defense to prevent conflict in their respective regions.
In the east, the WPO comprised the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and East Germany until 1990. These states created a buffer zone between NATO and its biggest rival during the Cold War, the Soviet Union.
The strategic positioning of the Warsaw Pact countries is that it largely covers what is known as the North European Plain. Beginning from Northern Germany in the west, to the Ural Mountains in the east, this area is incredibly rich in resources and almost entirely flat, making it easily accessible for invaders throughout history.
From the Soviet Union’s perspective, controlling the western parts of the Plain as much as possible was imperative for securing its resources and tactical advantage for a possible conflict with NATO.
During the Cold War, Moscow was in just that position, dominating the largest portion of this Plain, from the Ural Mountains all the way to East Germany. This was one of the key factors for Russia's formidable dominance on the world stage.
Then suddenly in 1991 the geographical advantage of Moscow dramatically changed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. That same year the WPO disbanded, leaving Russia without a cover.
In the years that followed, every former WPO member and nearly all former Soviet Republics have since joined NATO. This includes Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic in 1999, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Estonia in 2004.
This dramatic takeaway from what used to be the Soviet Union and its proxies is what Putin has claimed over and over again is the greatest shame of the Russian Empire’s collapse.
"There's been a logical, methodical plan that goes back a very long way, at least to 2007, when he [Putin] put the world, and certainly Europe, on notice that Moscow would not accept the further expansion of NATO," said Fiona Hill, a former official of the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European Affairs.
NATO did not take Putin’s concerns as a precaution and kept an “open door” policy for entering into the alliance - meaning new members are welcome to join if they meet certain economic, political, and military goals. In 2008, NATO signaled that in the future, they would consider Georgia's and Ukraine's aspirations for membership. Then in 2009, Albania and Croatia officially joined the alliance.
This antagonistic tug-of-war between Eastern and Western alliances was not missed on Putin. He had already observed NATO's willingness to apply violent means as when the Western alliance inserted itself into the Kosovo War in 1999, between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and a Kosovar Albanian rebel group known as the KLA.
NATO tried to negotiate a diplomatic solution but it proved fruitless. When the matter was brought to a vote at the U.N. Security Council but was stuck down by Russia and China. As the death toll mounted, justifying the campaign as a "humanitarian war", NATO intervened by sending aerial bomb campaigns which continued unabated for nearly three months against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The war came to an end on June 11, 1999, when the Yugoslav armed forces agreed to withdraw from Kosovo.
"The very real suffering in Kosovo warranted international involvement," said Michael Barutciski of Forced Migration Review, "yet deciding the appropriate international response required careful analysis. NATO’s decision to bomb cities throughout Yugoslavia transformed an internal low-intensity conflict into a regional humanitarian crisis."
Given this display of aggression, it is hard to blame Putin for believing that NATO is a dangerous adversary or that its advance to the edge of Russia’s border is hostile. It is also worth noting the manner in which Putin has imposed himself onto Ukraine’s soil, sounding tragically similar to NATO’s reasoning for intervention in the Kosovo War.
"We have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, conducted in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries [by the West], continues today. They are constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position," said Putin, in his speech announcing the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula, in 2014.
To counter this Western alliance trend, Russia formed the Collective Security and Treaty Organization (CSTO), which consists of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, and Armenia, though notably not Ukraine, which has remained the largest neutral territory between NATO and CSTO. Through this lens, it is easy to see why Ukraine’s geography will always be a core interest to Moscow.
If Ukraine can be pulled into the CSTO, then it pushes Moscow's defensive lines to the Carpathian Mountains in the southwest and limits their exposure across the North European Plain to the Eastern border of Poland. Even though NATO’s Baltic state members Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia also lay across the Plain, CSTO could easily overtake them by encircling them and cutting them off from the rest of NATO, due to Belarus’s position to the south.
Conversely, if Ukraine became part of NATO, it would swell the West’s borders far into the North European Plain and place the new CSTO defensive line across 1,500 miles of vulnerable, flat land. What’s more, it would only be 185 miles away from Volgograd, which if taken would shut down the entire Volga River and cut off Russia’s prized oil and gas resources. This is actually not an imaginary fear as it nearly happened during WWII, when Hitler tried to capture the city in what became known as the Battle of Stalingrad.
Belarus, for its part, also has a vested interest in Ukraine not joining NATO, as it would then be surrounded by NATO states on three sides. Russia would likely be unable to defend it should war break out.
In short, Ukraine’s entrance into the CSTO as a member, or at the very least permanent neutrality, is essential to Russia’s defense. Putin, who is 69 years old and has been in power for nearly 22 years, securing Russia’s geographic integrity is both a matter of personal legacy and realizing demonstrable progress for the Russian Federation.
"Russia is not between Europe and Asia. Europe and Asia are to the left and right of Russia. We are not a bridge between them but a separate civilizational space, where Russia unites the civilizational communities of East and West," said Vladimir Yakunin, a long time associate of Putin from his KGB days and the head of the Russian Railways, one of the country's most strategically significant companies.
We now find ourselves being mocked by a tyrant, who threatens us with nuclear armageddon unless he gets what he wants, a “Russky Mir”, which directly translates to a “Russian World.” This means re-gathering all the Russian-speakers of the bygone places that once belonged to the Russian tsardom. Acknowledging the role of the Western alliances in Putin’s bloody crusade is critical, and having a sober perspective on the strategy of his big picture is essential in understanding where we go from here. Watching my country be picked apart in this war is unbearable. Watching this happen throughout the world is unthinkable.
