On the Ukraine situation · 8:03am Feb 28th, 2022
I'm writing this short blog post in an attempt to solidify my understanding of the Ukraine-vs-Russia conflict, because writing things down usually helps with your thought process. I'm also writing this in case anyone is confused about the situation and wants to know what's going on. I might get something wrong, and if that's the case, feel free to correct me.
So from what I understand, NATO was formed shortly after WW2 as a protective alliance between many European countries and two North American countries (Canada and the US). Here's what that looks like:
It's meant to be a deterrent of further conflict, that is to say, NATO exists on the principle of, "If you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us." In practice this means waging war on a NATO country will have the hammer of the US brought down on you.
Ukraine used to be a huge part of the Soviet Union, they had a close relationship similar to the US and UK, that is to say, Ukraine played a big part helping the Soviet Union during WW2 against Germany. So naturally it was considered a tragedy when Ukraine split from the Soviet Union in 1991, when the latter officially fell. Nevertheless Ukraine remained an important part of Russia, both culturally and politically.
But then Ukraine, since it's no longer part of Russia/Soviet Union and has its own president, decided to join NATO. Putin was completely against this for 3 linked reasons:
1) NATO was founded as an anti-communist alliance and continued being so during the Cold War. In other words, NATO is a "fuck you" to the Soviet Union and now current Russia. Russian is more or less surrounded by NATO countries, which Putin considered a threat.
2) Ukraine becoming a NATO country means Russia no longer has any hold over it, which Putin deems to be a bad thing for his country geopolitically. From his perspective, it means losing further ground from Russia and being even more surrounded by enemies.
3) Putin wants to rebuild the Russian Empire and wants Ukraine to be a part of it for historically reasons. No, Putin is not a communist. He wants to rebuild pre-Soviet Union Russian Empire. The whole concept of being an imperialist who expands their land may seem outdated in our globalist world, but generally speaking countries want to secure as much territory as possible, even if it's at the margins. Losing Ukraine would be a massive loss for Putin's goals, so to speak.
This all leads to Russia invading Ukraine to prevent it from becoming a NATO country, namely by demilitarizing it and just "take it over," for lack of a better phrase.
On the one hand, Putin and his supporters say they want to "de-nazify" Ukraine, because they claim it's run by far-right militia groups, and so the justification here is to free Ukraine from said groups via military operations and exercises.
On the other hand, this isn't exactly the case because a) Ukraine's president is a Jew whose father and brothers died in the Holocaust, and b) virtually every democratic country has far-right groups, that doesn't mean it's run by them. So in actuality it seems that Putin is threatening Ukraine's sovereignty for all the reasons mentioned above.
Ukraine is of course resisting this invasion, considering how many people there are signing up to go to war, or are actively fighting back in general. But because it's not officially a NATO country, the US can't intervene; on top of which, Putin has declared war, or heavily implied war, if anyone tries to stop them. So it's a very sticky situation, but I do believe some countries have supplied them with weapons.
That leads to an obvious question: will WW3 happen? Maybe, but probably not. Fact is, absolutely no one wants a global nuclear war. So any and all attempts to prevent such an outcome will be made if possible. Ironically enough, it was the invention of nuclear weapons that prevented any WW3 from happening till this point, and I imagine that will continue to be. A hypothetical WW3 would be disastrous for anyone involved.
In any case, most people online seem to be supporting Ukraine and are opposed to Putin's nationalism/imperialism. I consider myself part of that camp. But there's absolutely nothing we can do except watch.
Also I like Gogol and he was Ukrainian.
Ukraine has always viewed itself as separate from Russia, the only tragedy is we didn't get them out of our country sooner.