Depending on political leanings, there are various explanations for Putin’s reasons to attack Ukraine. Be it that «NATO expansion» somehow (and miraculously) has «forced» Putin to attack Ukraine; be it that Putin puts a form of Russian imperialism, based on a «sacral nationalism» (the «Holy Rus»), into action, with the goal of re-establishing the glory, the might, and the historical mission of the former USSR or the Russian empire. Also the idea has been floated that Putin, a former KGB man, is haunted by feelings of guilt that his former KGB could not prevent the downfall of the USSR in 1991 and, in a sense, thus betrayed it. For which he now wants to make amends.
This may all be more or less true and factors in what is happening.
But these are such general and vague «explanations» or «themes», that Putin can play with whichever he finds suit at any given moment. I find a more mundane explanation more convincing.
In 2008, at the NATO summit at Bucharest (Romania), Ukraine and Georgia applied for NATO membership. The George W. Bush administration pushed hard for a speedy admission with a precise time-table, but was repudiated by the Europeans, esp. France and Germany, who, in fear of antagonizing Russia, watered process and final declaration down to a general pledge of admission for both states at some unspecified time in the future.
In 1994, at the OSCE conference in Budapest (Hungary), Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In this Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine, then nominally the world’s third largest nuclear power, accepted to hand-over its nuclear weapons (ICBMs and long-range bombers) to Russia in exchange for Russia’s acceptance of its political sovereignty, territorial integrity, and economic independence. The U.S., China, France, and the U.K gave security assurances to Ukraine (not «guarantees») vis-à-vis Russia.
The Budapest Memorandum and the exchange of nuclear weapons for political sovereignty was the prerequisite for the START I treaty between Russia and the U.S. on the reduction of nuclear weapons. When this treaty, binding by international law, expired in 2009, Russia made a public statement declaring that even after START I it would continue to recognize the validity of the Memorandum, and with that the sovereignty of Ukraine.
But that put Russia into a bind. With a sovereign Ukraine eyeing NATO membership, Russia faced the prospect that some day Ukraine would become a member of NATO. What then about Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, stationed in Crimea, primarily in the port of Sevastopol, esp. in case of military conflict between NATO and the Russian Federation? Thus even as it violated international law, there was sound rationale for Russia to occupy Crimea in 2014 and try to consolidate its achievement henceforth.
Since 2014 the Ukrainian army has been constantly upgraded and trained by military specialists from the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. And only lately did the security analyst Florence Gaub suggest in a German talk show (16:50) why Putin may have attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and not earlier or later: The point seems to have been that the Ukrainian army had improved so significantly that chances were that it could militarily retake Crimea from Russian control in about two years. Add to this that in 2024 Putin is up for re-election as Russian president, and it becomes clear that he has been in a hurry to prevent the recapture of Crimea rather sooner than later.
That does not mean that the reasons mentioned above and often cited by Putin himself did not play a role in his attack on Ukraine. But I find this the most mundane explanation of why he aimed to create a land corridor from the Donbas region to Crimea: To provide a conclusive answer to the question of how to guarantee the continued stationing of the Black Sea Fleet and Russia’s continued and unhindered access to it.
Beyond all the various motifs flying around, this is the question Putin needed to answer for Russia to have any chance of keeping its strategic might and future relevance.
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