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WHO STARTED THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE?  
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Matthew Hallinan
March 14, 2025
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_ The NATO issue did not trigger the war. However, the thoughtless
expansion of NATO contributed to a climate of mistrust that was a
factor in Russia’s moving in an aggressive, nationalist direction.
But there are two more parts to the story. _

Even without an agreed-upon count for the number of soldiers killed,
the toll is staggering., Credit: Narciso Contreras/Anadolu // Deutsche
Welle (DW)

 

Trump shocked the world when he let loose an angry tirade accusing
Ukraine of starting the war with Russia. He argued that Ukraine’s
attempt to join NATO was the trigger that provoked a Russian invasion.
This idea has been circulating since the beginning of the war. It’s
central to Putin’s narrative. He portrayes Russia as a victim of an
attempt by the West to encircle it and bring nuclear weapons to its
borders. This is what he tells the Russian people—who don’t know
that Russia is at war with Ukraine, but think it is fighting the
USA/NATO. There are many on the left who accept this story—(see
Medea Benjamin: War in Ukraine: 2022).

 

To be plausible, a false narrative must contain a grain of truth—and
this one does. The grain of truth is that the USA, after the collapse
of the USSR, did pursue a policy of inviting a number of old Warsaw
Pact countries to join NATO. This was a serious and stupid mistake. It
broke a promise that Bush1 had made to Gorbachev.  It created
insecurity on the part of a Russia that was struggling to make a
difficult transition from communism and that was feeling weak. The
NATO expansion was experienced as the humiliation of what had been a
great power. Putin was a protégé of Yeltsin during this period, and
like Yeltsin, he was opposed to NATO’s expansion. However, Russia
was helpless to do anything about it. Putin concluded that Russia
needed to become  “great again” or it would be sidelined as a
second-rate power—unable to influence world events. The USA’s
policies toward Russia and NATO did not start this war. But they
helped to push Putin in an aggressive, nationalistic direction.

The immediate events that led to the current war took place in
2013-2014. They began with a rebellion against a newly elected
Ukrainian president who had gone back on his promises to move Ukraine
towards joining the European Union. Instead, he signed an energy and
trade pact that tied Ukraine more closely with Russia. This produced a
mass uprising resulting in his expulsion. Russia’s reaction to his
removal and its fear that Ukraine would move closer to the West, led
it to seize the Crimean Peninsula—the home-port of its navy. Shortly
thereafter, a separatist movement was launched  in Luhansk and Donets
(Donbas). The rebels were backed by Russia  (the Wagner Group) and a
protracted civil war began. Zelensky was elected in 2019, running on a
program of reconciliation with the separatist faction, negotiating
with Russia to bring the Crimea back into the fold, and moving towards
joining the EU. This is when he made an attempt to join NATO. 

 In an interview with Fareed Zakaria, Zelensky said that after his
election, he went to NATO Headquarters in Brussels and asked about
becoming a member. The NATO General Secretary told him that NATO could
not accept Ukraine because of the ongoing civil war in the Donbas.
NATO, Zelensky was told, is a defensive alliance. It acts when a
member is invaded by a foreign power. It does not take sides in a
civil war.  At that point, Zelensky realized that NATO was not an
option for Ukraine. He told Fareed that when he met with Putin in
December 2019 to talk about to ending the war in the Donbas and the
settling the issue of the Crimea, he told Putin that Ukraine would
agree to never join NATO and that it would be politically
neutral—and put off negotiations on the Crimea for ten years.
However, he also told Putin that Ukraine would not cede the Donbas
(the main center of its heavy industry). Putin, according to Zelensky,
paid no attention to the NATO issue. He was focused entirely on
Russia’s territorial claims-- on which he refused to budge. That
convinced Zelensky the war was all about territorial expansion. 

How to make sense of all of this? The NATO issue, I believe it is
clear, did not trigger the war.. However, I do believe the thoughtless
expansion of NATO contributed to a climate of mistrust that was a
factor in Russia’s moving in an aggressive, nationalist direction.
But there are two more parts to the story.

One comes from Michael McFaul. McFaul was Obama’s ambassador to
Russia (2008-2016). McFaul, in his book: “From Cold War to Hot
Peace” 2018, explains Obama’s policies toward Russia. These were
built on the idea of a “reset:” an attempt to establish a positive
relationship with Russia. McFaul comes across as an honest player who
believed in what the Obama administration was trying to do. He
criticizes the missteps made by previous US administrations, but
argues that Obama was trying to improve relations with Russia, not, as
is wrongly stated by some on the left, trying to instigate a conflict
between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed, Obama did not feel Ukraine could
win a war with Russia, and thus refused to provide it with military
equipment in order to avoid encouraging it to resist militarily.

McFaul also describes Putin’s descent into authoritarianism and the
closing down of all democratic openings in Russia. Putin  returned to
the presidency in 2011 after a constitutionally mandated step-down. At
that point, there were mass demonstrations in all the major cities
calling for democratic reforms. That is when Putin began a
nationalistic campaign against the West—developing a whole
historical narrative of Western hostility and humiliation going back
to Peter the Great. The campaign was capped with the seizure of the
Crimea—which produced an outpouring of nationalist support in
Russia. This surge of nationalism pushed Putin’s powers to new
heights, leading to the suppression of all protests and political
resistance—the takeover of the media, jailing’s, beatings, and
assassinations. Indeed, to say that the war in Ukraine is a “war”
and not a “special military operation” can presently result in a
9-year jail sentence.

There is another piece of the puzzle. In a very thorough and valuable
book (“Collapse: the Fall of the Soviet Union:” 2021: Zubok) the
author relates an experience I think is very relevant to this
discussion. As the situation in post-communist Russia was spinning out
of control, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote a letter to Yeltsin telling
him that the goal of the reforms should be to create a great Russian
nation built on the Eastern Slav ethnicity—the ethnicity that,
according to Solzhenitsyn, was the “true foundation” of the
historic Russian state and culture. He told Yeltsin to dispense with
the “mongrels’ (peoples of Central Asia and Far East) and unite
the three eastern Slavic-speaking peoples—Russians, Belarusians, 
and Ukrainians. Yeltsin, who was Putin’s mentor and who appointed
him President, was very impressed with the Solzhenitsyn letter. I
believe this played an important role in Putin’s thinking. If Russia
was to become a truly great power again, it would need to incorporate
the Ukraine. Putin is not , as is widely believed, trying to
reconstitute the USSR: he is trying to resurrect Tsarist Russia.

On February 22, 2022, Russia began a massive invasion of Ukraine.
While there is room for criticism of the US role, the Ukrainians had
done nothing to warrant this military assault. Russia has tried to
portray this war as defensive--between itself and a hostile,
Russia-hating, hegemonic  USA. This narrative is supported by those
on the American left that see the USA as all-powerful and behind every
international misdeed. What Putin and these folks leave out of their
narratives is the role of the Ukrainian people—whose efforts to
construct a workable Ukrainian state and whose courage and resistance
to Russia’s imperial designs, has been at the center of this drama
from the very beginning.

_[MATTHEW B. HALLINAN [[link removed]]
received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California,
Berkeley. In Beyond Biology, he brings together his years of study and
independent research to answer a question that has long fascinated
him: How could humans have gone through the same kind of evolutionary
process as every other animal and yet have come out so different? This
question has been central to Hallinan’s intellectual life. His
passion for the subject is not driven simply by curiosity, but rather
by a sense that time is growing short for us to come to terms with our
place in the natural world. More
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* Ukraine war
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* Ukraine
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* Russia
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* NATO
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* Vladimir Putin
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* Volodymyr Zelensky
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* Donald Trump
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* Europe
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* Russian nationalism
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* great power chauvinism
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* Russian Empire
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