Meaning behind Russia’s action against Ukraine
To understand the reasoning behind Russia’s aggression behind Ukraine; one has to understand the logic behind its action from the point of view of Russia. Russia is the largest country in the world on the basis of its land mass however; it lacks natural borders that can protect her from the external forces.
The only border it has is in form of Arctic Ocean in north and Pacific in the Far East. In the past Russia has dealt with the attacks from the Napoleonic France and that of Nazi Germany that made it insecure about its borders. After the Second World War the Soviet Union established its control over the land in Easter Europe and Central Asia in order to protect its mainland.
Things took turn for the worst after the disintegration of the Soviet Union as it lost area more than three million square kilometers of sovereign territory. To make Russia feel unassailable NATO promised that it will not expand its territory in the east. But all these promises were not kept intact by the NATO.
a total of more than 13 countries joined NATO and some of them were part of the WARSAW pact. All these countries share border with Russia or are in extreme proximity with Russia. Russia saw this as direct threat to its dominance near the Black Sea. Since then almost all the counties near the Black Sea joined NATO and if Ukraine and Georgia also joined the NATO then that would mean that end of the dominance of Russia in the Black Sea region.
In the recent years Russia has been acting swiftly in all the Soviet era regions; by turning them into the geopolitical opportunity for them to have control over them and indirectly gaining control over them. A few of these instances are when the Russian friendly government toppled in the Ukraine in 2014; it had to send its forces to annex Crimean peninsula thereby protecting its interest in the Sevastopol that is near the Black Sea.
Another instance was when South Ossetia and Abkhazia broke free from Georgia then came under the control of the Russian forces. In 2020 protest erupted after the controversial election in the Belarus; and to help the then government Russian forces were sent to restore order. Russia also sent “Peacekeeping Forces” to end the war between the Armenia and Azerbaijan and it offered help to Kazakhstan during the violent unrest that erupted in the country.
Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia has now deeper control over the Central Asia republics. Almost whole of the Europe is dependent upon the Russia for the natural gas which also acts as; deterrent over the actions that these countries can take against Russia.
The aim of this Russian government is to stop the expansion of NATO near its border and ;it has successfully done so by destabilizing Georgia and Ukraine and by bringing Belarus, Caucasus and Central Asia under its control.
Russia has sent Security Draft Pact for the west to fulfill the conditions that are mentioned in it. The first demand was to end the expansion of NATO and not allow the former soviet states to join. Another demand was that NATO stops installing military base in countries that; are not part of NATO and are former Soviet states. The west has rejected all the demands of the Russia security draft pact.
As of yet Russia has deployed more than 1,00,000 forces on the Ukraine border. Many countries have expressed displeasure against the actions taken by the Russian government. US have stationed more than 9500 troops on standby in case NATO decides on military action against Russia.
If things are not de-escalated then this situation can quickly take turn for the worst. It is important that both Russia and US should remember the lessons learnt from the Cold War ;and they should not repeat the same mistakes. Instead of escalating the military strength on the borders; they should open more communication channels between them and should resolve this situation by diplomatic channels only.
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