Russia has launched an attack on Ukraine, perhaps igniting a European war over Russia’s demands for a stop to NATO’s eastward expansion.
Origins of the Conflict
This infuriated Russia, which began sending troops near the Ukrainian border for “training exercises” in the spring of last year and extended their presence during the autumn. By December, the US had begun to hype up the deployment of Russian forces, and President Biden had threatened Russia with heavy punishment if it invaded Ukraine.
While tensions between Russia and Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, have existed for some time, the situation began to spiral out of control in early 2021. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pushed US President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to join NATO in January of last year.
Russia has requested that the West provide a legally binding commitment that NATO would not conduct military operations in eastern Europe or Ukraine. Vladimir Putin thinks Ukraine is a Western puppet and was never a real state in the first place.
This is not the first time that tensions between Russia and Ukraine have erupted. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, when insurgents backed by President Putin captured vast swaths of eastern Ukraine, and has been fighting Ukraine’s army ever since. At that time, Russia had annexed Crimea.
Ukraine, as a former Soviet country, has extensive social and cultural ties with Russia, and Russian is widely spoken there, but those ties have deteriorated since Russia invaded in 2014.
When Ukraine’s pro-Russian president was overthrown in early 2014, Russia launched an offensive. More than 14,000 people have died as a result of the battle in the east.
Russia and Ukraine have signed the Minsk peace agreement to put an end to the armed war in east Ukraine, including the Donbas region. However, as the violence has raged on, Russia has stated that it is sending “peacekeepers” to the region where the conflict is raging. The West sees it as a ruse used by Moscow to capture sovereign land.
The renewed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which borders the European Union, has ramifications for the EU. As a result, the EU, the majority of which are NATO signatories, has joined the US in imposing penalties against Russian entities.
Only a few weeks ago, French President Emmanuel Macron travelled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to defuse tensions.
India has called for a diplomatic solution to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian situation.
