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How the Ukraine Crisis Developed, and Where It Might Be Headed
Here’s a guide to the causes behind a conflict that threatens to become a major military clash, and what’s at stake for Russia, the U.S. and NATO.
It feels like a scene from the Cold War. An unpredictable Russian leader amassing troops and tanks on a neighbor’s border. The threat of a bloody East-West conflagration.
But what seems like a perilous episode from a bygone era is now front and center in global affairs. After a meeting with European leaders on Feb. 11, the White House warned that Russia could start a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in less than a week.
U.S. officials say Russia’s buildup has reached 130,000 troops. They say they have evidence of a Russian war plan that envisions
an invasion force of 175,000 troops that Ukraine’s military, despite U.S.-provided equipment and training,
would have little ability to stop.
Some 8,500 American troops
are on “high alert” for possible deployment to Eastern Europe, most likely to provide assurance to American allies in the region.
A military action threatens to destabilize the already volatile post-Soviet region, with serious consequences for the security structure that has governed Europe since the 1990s.
Russia has made a
list of far-reaching demands to reshape that structure — positions NATO and the United States have rejected. Russian officials have repeatedly insisted that Moscow has no plans to invade Ukraine, but
Mr. Putin pointedly has not ruled it out.
What’s behind the Ukraine crisis?
After the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO expanded eastward, eventually taking in most of the European nations that had been in the Communist sphere. The Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once parts of the Soviet Union, joined NATO, as did Poland, Romania and others.
As a result, NATO, an alliance created to counter the Soviets, moved hundreds of miles closer to Moscow, directly bordering Russia. And in 2008, it stated that it planned — some day — to enroll Ukraine, though that is still seen as a far-off prospect.
Mr. Putin has described the Soviet disintegration as a catastrophe that robbed Russia of its rightful place among the world’s great powers and put it at the mercy of a predatory West. He has spent his 22 years in power rebuilding Russia’s military and reasserting its geopolitical clout.
The Russian president calls NATO’s expansion menacing, and the prospect of Ukraine joining it an existential threat to his country. As Russia has grown more assertive and stronger militarily, his complaints about NATO have grown more strident. He has repeatedly invoked the specter of American ballistic
missiles and combat forces in Ukraine, though U.S., Ukrainian and NATO officials insist there are none.
Mr. Putin has also
insisted that Ukraine and Belarus are fundamentally parts of Russia, culturally and historically. He holds considerable sway over Belarus, and talks about some form of reunification with Russia have gone on for years.
But East-West relations worsened drastically in early 2014, when mass protests in Ukraine forced out a president closely allied with Mr. Putin. Russia swiftly invaded and annexed Crimea, part of Ukraine. Moscow also fomented a separatist rebellion that took control of part of the Donbas region of Ukraine, in a war that still grinds on, having killed more than 13,000 people.
A 2015 cease-fire agreement on Donbas could give Russian proxies veto power over much of Ukrainian policy, including in foreign affairs. But with the war making Russia more unpopular in Ukraine, and both sides accusing each other of violating the accord, it has never been fully implemented.
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