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Closer to War
There is a reality in Ukraine. We are ever-present moving closer to war. For Vladimir Putin this is simple. Ukraine is an emerging democracy that is turning westward. That is a threat to the Russian autocrat who wants to restore the world order before the fall of the Soviet Union.
He has told us this in speeches. His actions, ranging from the attack on South Ossetia in 2008 to the Crimean grab in 2014 prove his intent. Yes, he says all this comes from his fear that he is getting surrounded by NATO. It has been him who has engaged in these aggressive actions, with mostly just a bap on the nose.
Now, let me make this clear. Ukraine is an emerging democracy, with many issues. But it is still a threat to Putin. It also gave up its nukes in exchange for a western security guarantee. This matters, a lot. Ukraine disarmed in exchange for security guarantees:
Melnyk was referring to Ukraine’s decision in the early 1990s to relinquish the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal that it inherited from the Soviet Union. Its arsenal included 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles carrying 1,240 nuclear warheads, 44 strategic bombers with more than 700 nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and upward of 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons. In 1994, Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state, proceeded to transfer all nuclear…