Why has Russia attacked Ukraine?

Published in

The Istanbul Chronicle

3 min readMar 9, 2022

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is what everybody is talking about nowadays and has been breaking news for several days now. Although the news coverage of the attack is new, it did not catch anyone by surprise. Why is that?

Russia and Ukraine’s past go way back, but we will just take a look at the incidents that occurred after the separation of the USSR, also known as the Soviet Union. Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. However, now we see that Russia does not want to acknowledge Ukraine as an independent state and rather keep it as a part of itself to have control. An example of that would be the annexation of Crimea.

Besides having a shared history, Russia wants Ukraine because of its economic position and geographical location. Let’s start with economic position. One of Russia’s greatest incomes is petroleum. They export it to a lot of western countries as well, besides utilizing it to advance their country. However, now that Ukraine is independent, what will happen to the pipelines that were built across the country, working as a bridge between Russia and the Western customers? Well, Ukraine wants to charge Russia for them to continue using the pipelines. Moreover, in the early 2000s, Ukraine was discovered to possess a lot of natural gas in its vicinity, especially near Crimea although limited means of extracting the natural gas.

Let’s discuss the latter, the geographical location of Ukraine. Ukraine is placed in between Russia and the west, acting as a cushion to separate Russia from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But what is the significance of NATO in this case? Well, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was first established because of the threat of the Soviet Union, and the organization still stands, even after the end of the Cold War, as a peacetime military alliance(1).

The problem started when Ukraine established more political relations with NATO and the western countries compared to Russia. Thus, the aforementioned seizing of Crimea by Russia and deployment of troops to assert its presence in Ukraine happened.

Now, in 2022, Russia is gradually increasing its military around the borders of Ukraine, arguing that they are taking measures to assure their safety. And on February 21st, 2022 (2), the inevitable happened and Russia started advancing in Ukraine, leaving the country in chaos and nearly half a million people in the refuge.

What Could Have Been Done Instead?

With this attack, innocent Ukrainians had to be displaced to find security, as well as Russian civilians that had no say in this, had to take the backlash, just because of the actions of world leaders. Now, let’s reflect: what could have been done to avoid this attack?

Although this attack was long coming with tension, it could have been avoided if not for the constant “competition” between NATO and Russia. Russia should have tried to negotiate with Ukraine and form political relations with them instead of avoiding acknowledging their independence as a whole. To do that, one of the best opportunities would be offering to assist the extraction of natural gas that Ukraine could not. With that, Russia and Ukraine would be in a mutually beneficial economic relationship. Russia would be helping the extraction of natural gas and help Ukraine utilize its energy sources, and Russia would demand a discount in using the pipelines that go through Ukraine. This way, Russia and Ukraine would establish an initial economic relationship that would gradually ease the political tension between the countries, or at least be a start of diplomatic relations at the least after years of avoiding formal discussions.

I think that Politics should exist to establish relations between countries to keep international peace, and not cause more problems. I believe that no innocent civilians should be impacted so gravely by political decisions in which they have no say.