A question often comes up about the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Vladimir Putin: why? The answer is a mix of geography, history and people.
According to many Western intellectuals, the end of the Cold War was to pave the way for a period of peace and prosperity. Liberalism had triumphed over tyranny; the shadow cast by the two world conflicts was to fade thanks to the radiant light of liberal democracy. It was a poor reading of history.
Those who argued that war was an anachronism in the 21ste century in Europe see that there are limits to reasonable exchanges with unreasonable violent power. Putin’s reasoning behind his criminal invasion of Ukraine is aimed at mobilizing nationalism. Through his control of the Russian media, he manipulated the country’s collective memory and played on fears vis-à-vis the outside world, which are linked to Russia’s geography and turbulent history.
Repeated attacks from the west
Before the Russian western border, extends the plain of Northern Europe, from France to the Urals. It is at the level of the Baltic Sea and the Carpathian chain that this plain is narrowest, which corresponds to the territory of Poland. If an invading army heads east from Europe, once it crosses Poland, the plain widens again all along the Russian border. Conversely, an army heading west may also expand its deployment after crossing Poland.
This largely explains why Russia has repeatedly sought to occupy Poland in recent centuries. It is a relatively narrow corridor in which Russia can engage its armed forces in order to block an enemy advance towards its own border, which, as it is longer, is much more difficult to protect. For five hundred years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. The Poles arrived via the European plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes in 1707, the French in 1812, then the Germans in 1914 and in 1941.
Master the plains and oceans
For a long time, Russian leaders have sought at the very least to control the plains to the west of their territory, or even to occupy them by integrating these territories into the Russian Empire, the most recent case being the formation of the USSR. Russia does not have a port in the warm seas with direct access to the oceans. Parts of the Arctic ports are iced over for several months each winter, and Russian ships have to navigate through the pack ice north of the Arctic coastline. The routes that allow the Baltic and Black Sea fleets to join the sea lanes are difficult, if not impassable.
These two concerns – vulnerability on land and the lack of a year-round open water port – converged in Ukraine in 2014. As long as a pro-Russian government was in power in Kyiv, Russia was confident that its buffer zone the most important would remain intact and protect the European plain, in addition to Belarus. The neutrality of Ukraine – which had promised not to join the EU or NATO, and which would preserve Russia’s access to the Black Sea thanks to the concession of Sevastopol, in Crimea – was tolerable. But when a pro-Western government came to power following the Maidan events in 2014, the Kremlin was horrified.
A buffer zone in danger
Several neo-fascist groups took part in the clashes in kyiv that year, and the Kremlin was able to persuade many Russians that Ukraine was now ruled by fascists of the kind that their motherland had precisely defeated in 1945. The Kremlin was convinced that a free Ukraine would join the European Union, an organization assimilated to the antechamber of NATO. Russia’s buffer zone was in danger of disappearing, and the concession for the port of Sevastopol was due to end in a few decades. Putin was faced with a choice: respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the right of its people to choose their government or resort to violence. Crimea was occupied and annexed. The Donbass region, on the Russian border, was partially occupied to serve as a mini-buffer and conflict zone that Moscow could escalate at any time.
The population of Donbass has a strong Russian minority, part of which supports Russia. Putin has already pushed through laws that allow Russia to “legally” come to the aid of Russian minorities wherever they are, and he manipulated his submissive media to stoke the pansl