In 1991 Ukraine declared itself independent as the Soviet Union collapsed around it.
For years after, the new Russian Federation struggled to find its footing, and for a small
time there were hopes that the Cold War could be left in the past and Russia would find
its way to embracing better relationships with the West.
However, those hopes were dashed with the election of President Vladimir Putin, a Cold
War era Soviet spy who was still stuck with a Cold War mentality.
For Putin, the Soviet Union may have collapsed, but the dream of Soviet greatness wasn't dead-
and the one thing standing in between this dream and the new Russian Federation was the
west.
In Putin's eyes Russia was forever locked in a zero-sum game with the West, and there
could only be one victor.
As the Soviet Union disintegrated, newly freed Soviet republics and former client states
immediately sought out membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
For these former republics and client states, it was the only way to guarantee their newfound
independence after decades of brutal rule and oppression by the Kremlin.
The Soviet Union may be gone, but nobody had any illusions about the Russian Federation
suddenly wanting to be BFFs with the world, and the election of Vladimir Putin only reinforced
a growing need for NATO membership.
In 1990, NATO had promised that the alliance would not expand “an inch to the east”.
Yet this was before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and clearly meant that the alliance
wouldn't seek to expand into East Germany while the nation was divided.
There had never been any discussions about NATO not expanding eastwards towards Russia's
borders after the collapse, as confirmed by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
That doesn't mean that Russia didn't warn NATO about expanding, it's just that there
was no formal agreement against expansion.
For Russia, NATO expanding eastwards triggered fears of past historical invasions of Russia
by foreign powers.
The nation has suffered greatly from foreign invaders, and thus after World War II, Stalin
worked hard to ensure that eastern Europe remained under his influence.
Europe was thus divided along Germany, with the Soviet Union controlling everything in
Europe east of Germany and using it as a security buffer between itself and the west.
This buffer served two purposes.
First, it was a physical barrier to invasion.
After both German invasions and the invasion of the French during the Napoleonic Wars,
Russia suffered great loss of life and damage to its economy.
Eastern Europe was now a shield that protected the motherland, with any would-be invader
having to pass through the entire Soviet bloc to reach Russian lands.
Even better, millions of eastern Europeans would themselves be thrown into a war to protect
the Soviet Union, placing the nation in the strongest position it's enjoyed since the
heights of the Russian empire.
But this barrier was also an ideological one meant to keep western capitalist influence
away from the Soviet homeland.
The power of the communist party depended on keeping Stalinist ideology alive inside
the Soviet Union.
Liberal western values and democracies threatened this.
This has never been more true than in the post 2000s, after Vladimir Putin's rise to
power.
Liberal western values are now seen as an infection in Russia, because they threaten
President Putin's absolute power on the Russian government.
For Putin, Russia is today under assault by Western culture, and he's spent great efforts
in waging a propaganda war both within and outside of his borders.
The last thing Putin or his elites want is a free and democratic Russia, and the only
way they can prevent the ever-brewing political unrest amongst the population is by creating
bogeymen out of the west to unite the Russians against.
Starting in the early 2010s, Ukraine now wished to draw itself closer economically and politically
with the west, much to Putin's dissatisfaction.
At first there was a wish to be more economically tied to the west to ensure Ukraine's prosperity,
but as Russia exerted more pressure on Ukraine, a growing movement to formally join NATO grew
inside Ukraine.
Putin attempted to suppress this desire through intimidation and by using propaganda inside
of Ukraine, even by infiltrating its government.
In 2014 the situation came to a crisis point when President Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin
stooge, refused to sign a free trade agreement with the European Union which would have drawn
Ukraine deeper into the west's fold both economically and politically.
Instead, President Yanukovych ignored the Ukrainian parliament's overwhelming desire
to sign this agreement and chose to draw closer to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union,
headed by the Russian Federation and made up of former Soviet states.
The result was immediate, as protesters took to the streets and a full-blown civil insurrection
threw Kyiv into chaos.
The Ukrainian people had freed themselves from Russian rule and had no wish to go back
to being a mere client state, and brutal clashes took place between protesters and police.
The Revolution of Dignity, as it came to be known, resulted in the occupation of government
buildings across Ukraine, and the expulsion of President Viktor Yanukovych from power.
Soon after, Yanukovych went into exile in Russia, and Russia responded to the coup by
taking Crimea and supporting the breakaway provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Russia orchestrated pro-Russian demonstrations in Sevastopol, and four days later Russian
troops without insignia stormed the parliament of Crimea and seized it, while other Russian
troops took key strategic sites across the peninsula.
With the peninsula secure, the Russian Federation installed the pro-Russian Sergey Askyonov
into power.
Shortly after there was a referendum that resulted in 97 percent of voters choosing
for Crimea to be absorbed by the Russian Federation.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these votes were never verified by any independent agencies, and
the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to consider the referendum illegal.
Thus to this day internationally Crimea is still considered as belonging to Ukraine,
but with Vladimir Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons, nobody sought to use military
force to liberate the occupied peninsula.
At the same time that Russian forces were seizing Crimea, Russia's infamous 'little
green men'- so called for their green, insignia-less uniforms- moved into the separatist regions
of Luhansk and Donetsk, working alongside separatists and even engaging in fighting
themselves.
Russia denied allegations that its military was in the separatist regions, but the ruse
was all but given up over time as even Russian armor joined the fighting against Ukrainian
forces.
The Donbas War, as it came to be known, would rage until 2022, culminating in Russia's full-scale
invasion of Ukraine.
The real question though is what does President Vladimir Putin really want to do with Ukraine
when the war is over?
The answer depends on how the war ends.
The least likely way that this war ends is with a full occupation of Ukraine by Russian
forces.
Initially, Putin claimed that he had no intention of occupying any part of Ukrainian territory,
and that his advance on Kyiv was merely meant to remove what he called a 'pro-western Nazi
government' from power.
In the early stages of the war, this may have been true- Putin may truly not have wished
to physically occupy Ukraine and instead settle for installing a puppet government.
This would turn Ukraine into a client state, much like Belarus, without the hassle of having
to pacify an inevitable insurrection by physically occupying it.
It would also achieve his grand aim of weakening NATO by denying it yet another member- specially
one situated right on Russia's soft southern belly.
However, as the Russian advance to Kyiv faltered and then failed entirely, Putin's strategy
seemed to radically change as well.
Accepting that he would be unable to take Kyiv and topple the government, Russian forces
instead focused on breaking out of the separatist regions and seizing the all-important Ukrainian
southern coast along the Sea of Azov.
With this coastline firmly under Russian control, Vladimir Putin now has a land corridor from
Russia straight to Crimea, and Crimea's water supply can no longer be threatened by Ukrainian
dams as had happened after the annexation when Ukraine blocked Crimea's drinking water
in retaliation to the invasion.
This land corridor however also gives Russia complete control over the Sea of Azov, essentially
turning it into a Russian lake.
Putin's forces now try to push north and west out of the land corridor, and seem to want
to take as large a chunk of Ukraine as possible.
What's most important however is extending a corridor to the west all the way to Odessa
and the Moldovian border.
This would give Russia complete control over Ukraine's shipping ports, and thus allow it
to choke Ukraine off economically, but also allow it to link up with its forces inside
the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria.
Russia currently has 1500 personnel there and it's greatly feared that linking a land
corridor across southern Ukraine will allow it to move more forces into the region and
eventually take all of Moldova.
This will give Russia control over half of the Black Sea, and extend a security buffer
out from Russia's vulnerable southern regions in case of war with NATO.
It's now certain that Putin wishes to completely annex occupied territories inside of Ukraine,
as starting on May 1st the ruble was introduced as the official currency in the occupied areas
that remain relatively stable and in Russian hands.
Street and building signs were all also taken down and replaced with their Russian equivalent,
and Russia guaranteed the pension payments of Ukrainian pensioners living in the territories.
Even more importantly, Russian state tv was brought to the occupied territories, allowing
Russia to feed those living under occupation a steady stream of Russian propaganda.
Putin's goal is now territorial expansion, and it seems as if his plans for Ukraine hinge
on what happens next in the war.
Russian forces seem incapable of truly taking the whole of Ukraine, and the commitment by
the West, and specially the United States, to arm the Ukrainians makes it a complete
impossibility that Russia will be able to take over the entire country.
However, Russian forces may be able to seize that all-important land corridor to Moldova
and take Odesa- though even this is in question seeing as three months into the war Russia
is yet to bring Mariupol under its full control.
Further west, Kherson is a critically important city to capture and as of the writing the
making of this video, Ukrainian forces are launching successful counter attacks against
Russian forces around the city.
This makes a breakout to Odessa extremely unlikely.
But this isn't Russia's only problem.
Corruption and incompetence across all levels of the Russian military have resulted in massive
casualties and great loss of equipment in the invasion.
The effects of these losses on Russia's ability to continue fighting are only compounded by
the astounding amount of sanctions levied against Russia by the international community.
Of greatest importance though are those targeting Russia's foreign reserves which fund this
war, and of which half have been frozen by western governments.
Of second-most importance is the complete ban on selling electronic components to Russia
which are desperately needed by its military to rearm itself with 21st century weapons.
Already Russian drones and other advanced weapons are being discovered with computer
chips ripped out of coffee makers and dishwashers, and Russian jet fighters have been discovered
with commercial GPS devices taped to the dash.
With the west feeding Ukraine a steady diet of high tech western weapons, and with Russia's
own stockpiles of advanced equipment drying up, it’s becoming increasingly impossible
for Russia to truly win inside Ukraine.
As Europe is committed to an incremental ban on Russian energy imports over the next year
or so, Russia's economic situation will only grow more desperate, and its ability to continue
this conflict will be in serious jeopardy.
Russia is thus likely to attempt to settle the war by holding on to territories it's
managed to secure, adding them to the Russian Federation and weakening Ukraine.
Ukraine itself has been willing to compromise by becoming a neutral nation, with neutrality
enshrined in its constitution and thus seeking no closer ties to the west.
However, Ukraine wishes to have guarantor states sign this neutrality agreement, with
nations legally bound to come to Ukraine's defense in case of another Russian invasion.
Yet as reports of Russian brutality against civilians continue to surface from occupied
areas, Ukraine's President Volodimyr Zelensky has stated that he is less and less interested
in such a deal.
Ultimately, unless Russia achieves some miraculous battlefield reversals, Putin’s future plans
for Ukraine may not matter at all.
Now go watch What Is Wrong With The Russian Military, or hurry and click this other video
instead.