Russian invasion of Ukraine/Reasons

25 июня 2014 в Луганск вошла колонна российской техники. На тот момент городские онлайн камеры еще работали и это можно было спокойно наблюдать. Удивительно, но несмотря на очевидное некоторые будут 8 лет рассказывать “при чем тут россия, у вас гражданская война etc” On June 25, 2014, a convoy of Russian equipment entered Luhansk. At that time, city online cameras were still working and it could be easily observed. Surprisingly, despite the obvious, some will tell for 8 years “what does Russia have to do with it, you have a civil war, etc”

Since 2003, russia planned the russian invasion of Ukraine [4]. Since 2006, russia infiltrated/trained “separatists” in Eastern Ukraine. Since 2011, it started training its troops for invasion using German provided training center. First invasion happened in 2014, second in 2022, with parts of Ukraine occupied by russian troops in-between:

“ Among other things, the Court found that areas in eastern Ukraine in separatist hands were, from 11 May 2014 and up to at least 26 January 2022, under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.

— European Court of Human Rights, “Grand Chamber decision Ukraine and the Netherlands v. Russia - Flight MH17 and eastern-Ukraine-conflict case partially admissible, will proceed to judgment”, January 25, 2023

Below some of the reasons, goals, objectives and enabling factors of the russian invasion of Ukraine.

Rheinmetall wins major order in Russia

Prelude: Background and enabling factors

1994: Disarmament

“ The Clinton administration ignored flashing warning signs as it pushed Ukraine hard to accept unilateral disarmament—depriving Kyiv of a deterrent against Russia while providing nothing real to replace it.

— How Bill Clinton Sealed Ukraine’s Fate: The inside story of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, when Kyiv returned its nuclear weapons to Russia in return for ‘assurances’ from Moscow and Washington.

• Wikipedia:Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction#20th_century_outcome

• See: Russian invasion of Ukraine/US Aid to Ukraine

Early preparations (since 2003)

“ Illarionov was Putin’s chief economic advisor up until 2005. When he resigned, he left the country and became an outspoken critic.

He says Putin has been planning the months-long invasion for years.

“He’s had this idea, this goal for last two decades. Even when I was his advisor, I was able to watch to see myself his intentions,” Illarionov said.

Illarionov says Putin could never accept the fact that Ukraine was its own sovereign nation separate from Russia. He believes the invasion is step one in Putin’s grand plan of reunifying the whole former Soviet Union.

— ‘This should be stopped’: Ex-Putin advisor weighs in on Russia-Ukraine invasion

• Russian insider says Putin openly planned invasion of Ukraine since 2003

• Kamil Galeev, “Daily reminder that Putin’s army of invasion was trained on the Rheinmetall-built training centre Mulino. In 2014 they ‘left’ and construction was finished by ‘Гарнизон’ company, probably a proxy. 100% of its imports came from Germany, last Rheinmetall shipments coming in 2019” [5] (PDF)

• Russia started training separatists to split Ukraine in 2006 already. Then Russia’s relations with NATO were still excellent. [6]

Coup attempts

• “As a little dessert for today’s rather heavy #vatniksoup, I’ll introduce a real coup that was supposed to be done by Yanukovych and his Party of Regions, with the help of Putin. This conspiracy was revealed by a former People’s Deputy of Ukraine, Oleg Anatolyevich Tsaryov.”, March 13, 2023 (thread) (pdf)

Dam construction (2003)

• In 2003 Russia started to build a dam to Ukrainian island Tuzla near Crimea. It was unannounced and illegal construction.

Warning signs

“ “Russia attempts to challenge the territorial integrity of Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, which is 59 percent ethnically Russian and is home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet, must be prevented,” the memo warned five years before Russian forces would seize Crimea and 13 years before they would invade the rest of the country. The memo added that “Russia will exploit Europe’s dependence on Russian energy” and use political means “to drive wedges between the United States and Europe.”

— George W. Bush, 2009 memo to his successor Barack Obama, From George to Barack: A Look at Secret Bush Memos to the Obama Team (Bush warned Obama about Russia’s plans for Crimea, NYT reports)

• 'The plan was to do away with Chechnya and go to Crimea' Dzhokhar Dudayev predicted war in Ukraine

• President Dzhokhar Dudayev about Russia-Ukraine war back in 1995

• The world did not listen to Dzhokhar Dudayev in the 1990s.

OPERATION: NOVOROSSIYA: THE HISTORY BEHIND THE KREMLIN'S NEO NAZI PYSOP IN UKRAINE

• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 1 OF 6: INTRODUCTION TO GRU (THE NAZI PROBLEM?)
• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 2 OF 6: SEPARATION OF DIGNITY: THE RISE OF WAGNER
• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 3 OF 6: THE GREY CARDINAL (AND THE NEW GRU)
• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 4 OF 6: STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 5 OF 6: AZOV: THE RUSSIAN MIRROR
• OPERATION NOVOROSSIYA: PART 6 OF 6: AZOV: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE BOATSMAN
• thread

Territorial expansion, imperialism

Reviving the Soviet Union

[2] Kremlinism/WWII, GULag, Holodomor...

[3] вернём границы 1945 года! Let’s bring back the borders of 1945!

“ Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.

— Vladimir Putin, “Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation”, April 25, 2005

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  Russian T-80BVM, eastern Ukraine

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  Video from the Russian MoD’s Zvezda allegedly showing Russian troops in Ukraine. Note the prominent Soviet flag on the BMP-2. [1]

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  A Russian BTR-80 with a Soviet flag.

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  Soviet Flag on a Russian BTR-82A in Kharkiv Oblast.

“ In essence, Ukraine’s ruling circles decided to justify their country’s independence through the denial of its past, however, except for border issues. They began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united us, and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.

— Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, July 12, 2021

• Наступление России и нового мира
  • Russian news agency deletes victory editorial
  • The advance of Russia and The New World Order
  • “The article “The Advance of Russia and of a New World” by Petr Akopov was briefly published in several Russian state news sites on 26 February 2022, two days after Russian forces openly invaded Ukrainian-controlled territory, but was soon deleted. Its original publication on RIA News at precisely 8:00 a.m. suggests it may have been automatically published by mistake.”, Wikipedia: On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians

• Video from the Russian MoD’s Zvezda allegedly showing Russian troops in Ukraine. Note the prominent Soviet flag on the BMP-2. (thread)

«Ты вообще понимаешь, что мы фашисты?»

Expanding the russian empire

Границы России нигде не заканчивается - Russia’s borders end nowhere

“ Peter the Great ... was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.

Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals.

— Vladimir Putin, “Meeting with young entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists”, June 9, 2022

• “Putin’s pet propagandists readily embraced his speech about taking back historical territories. They jumped on the bandwagon with gusto, comparing their empire to the Golden Horde and North Korea.”

• Putin compares himself to Peter the Great in quest to take back Russian lands

• Europe’s last empire: Putin’s Ukraine war exposes Russia’s imperial identity

Genocide

Destroying Ukraine as a nation, genocide of Ukrainians

“Russian state-owned propaganda outlet RIA published the new programmatic article with the title ”What Russia must do with Ukraine“. The article reveals a detailed plan for a genocide, starting from full elimination of Ukrainian state.” Что Россия должна сделать с Украиной

• Russian state-owned propaganda outlet RIA published the new programmatic article with the title ”What Russia must do with Ukraine“. The article reveals a detailed plan for a genocide, starting from full elimination of Ukrainian state.”
  • Что Россия должна сделать с Украиной [7]
  • What should Russia do with Ukraine?
  • What Russia should do with Ukraine?

• Pavel Gubarev, Russia’s “DPR” figure in Donetsk, states their intent towards Ukrainians: “We aren’t coming to kill you, but to convince you. But if you don’t want to be convinced, we’ll kill you. We’ll kill as many as we have to: 1 million, 5 million, or exterminate all of you.”

• Sergej Sumlenny, “Russia is insane about renaming streets of the occupied territories. They always massively rename everything, including the cities and towns after occupation. Here is an interesting example of their logic: re-naming list for Ukrainian Melitopol, occupied by the Russians”, February 1st, 2023, (thread) (pdf)

• “Anna Dolgareva, Russian propagandist, says: “denazifying means they all need to be killed, all adult population of Ukraine who resist - physically destroyed. And their children raised in Russian spirit.””

• Calculated evil: How Putin’s forces use war crimes and torture to erase Ukrainian identity

• “Of course we deny Ukraine the right to sovereignty”, says Russian propagandist Mardan, boasting about Russia’s “imperial consciousness”

• Біографія Тандиру, “Thread about genocide in Ukraine Genocide cannot be strong, weak or “halfway”. It’s not a literary term; it has specific characteristics. It either exists or it doesn’t. It’s happening in Ukraine. The word “genocide” shouldn’t be used to reinforce smth.” (thread) (pdf)

• Solovyev’s big-eared lapdog confirms to a vast Russian audience, and to us, that the goal of the invasion is to destroy Ukraine as a state.

Genocide of minorities from occupied Ukraine

“ Crimean Tatars enjoyed an autonomy within Ukraine. But since Russia annexed Crimea the deportation of Tatars resumed.

— Mikhail Svetov, “An appeal to western libertarians about the war in Ukraine”, August 19, 2014

• russia is organazing another genocide of crimean tatars: 80% of men forcefully conscripted from russian occupied Crimea are crimean tatars (while they only consitute 20% of population). This is deliberate extermination.

• See: Crimea/Crimean Tatars

Genocide of minorities from russia

“ Putin cannot announce a general mobilization, since that would be an admission that he is losing the war. It would too overtly break the social contract according to which the poor, the Asians, and forcibly mobilized Ukrainians do the dying.

— Timothy Snyder

• One of the reasons for why russia doesn’t want to let minorities have their independence is the projected decline of ethnic russians and increase of minorities.

Demographic decline / kidnapping children

• Deportation of children constitutes genocide

“ Mr Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, born on 7 October 1952, President of the Russian Federation, is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022. There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility for the aforementioned crimes, (i) for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute), and (ii) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts, or allowed for their commission, and who were under his effective authority and control, pursuant to superior responsibility (article 28(b) of the Rome Statute).

— Situation in Ukraine: ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova

• Russia’s population crisis is making Putin more dangerous (archive)

• See: Russian invasion of Ukraine/Deportation of children

Cultural domination

• Kamil Galeev, “War of memes: why Z-war won’t end with peace Some Western analysts unfamiliar with Eastern European cultural context perceive Z-war as an accident. They presume that Russian invasion results from some sort of “misunderstanding” or mistake which can be resolved via negotiations🧵”, April 18, 2022 (thread) (pdf)

Preventing democratic concurrent models

• How Putin’s fear of democracy convinced him to invade Ukraine

• Yet again, State Duma member said the quiet part out loud on Russian state TV: Adalbi Shkhagoshev stated that Russia rejects the notion of a rule-based world order and has been trying “to squeeze out the democratization” promoted by the United States out of Syria and now Ukraine.

Resource grab

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• If you believed Putin’s lie that Russia wasn’t planning to occupy any of the Ukrainian territories, listen to gov’t official on state TV admit the opposite. Discussing Ukraine’s vast mineral & energy resources Russia wants to pocket, state TV host says she is overcome with pride.

• Ukrainian lithium, another cause of the Russian invasion? “The discovery of reserves of more than 500,000 tonnes of lithium, one of the key metals in the energy transition, could have amplified Putin’s interests in Ukrainian territory”

• In the Ukraine war, a battle for the nation’s mineral and energy wealth (archive)

• gas reserves

Domestic popularity boost

• Putin's approval rating soars since he sent troops into Ukraine, state pollster reports

• Putin’s approval rating ends 2022 at 81%, boosted by support for the war in Ukraine

Fighting the West

• Dmitry Medvedev (playing bad cop, so that Putin can be good cop)
• Kremlinism/Threats against the USA

False reasons (excuses, pretexts, artificial reasons)

Some of these reasons are relevant, but not as primary reasons. Ukraine potentially joining NATO, and Euromaidan, impeded russian plans of controlling Ukraine. But they were not initial reasons for the initial goal of controlling Ukraine and putting an end to its independence and democratization —one way or another. If the Kremlin had no such plans to begin with, none of this would have been relevant. Note also the direct russian involvement behind some of those “reasons” (e.g. the consequences of the 2014 russian invasion/russian-led seperatism, russian nationalists/extremists, etc.).

• Debunking tankies on Ukraine (Part I)

• Debunking tankies on Ukraine (Part II)

NATO

“ I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision is to be taken by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.

— Vladimir Putin, “Press Statement and Answers to Questions at a Joint News Conference with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma”, May 17, 2002

• Putin says Russia has ‘no problems’ with Finland, Sweden in NATO, May 16, 2002

• From Accepting NATO Aspirations to ‘Denazifying’: 20+ Years of Putin’s Changing Views on Ukraine

• See: NATO

Denazification

• Even Russians themselves can’t find Nazis and fascists in Ukraine.

• The Facts on ‘De-Nazifying’ Ukraine

• See: Ukraine/Antisemitism, Ukraine/Racism and Azov

Desatanization

• See: Desatanization. This one didn’t quite catch on...

• Pekka Kallioniemi, In today’s #vatnik soup I’ll discuss Russia’s disinformation and propaganda campaigning in more detail, and go through four of the main “big” themes around which most of their propaganda is based on. (thread) (pdf)

• Right so, let’s talk debunking russian nonsense. This thread will be long but I hope you stick with it. I will go through propaganda claims and debunk them and explain how best to do so. In following threads I’ll explain how better to bonk and argue. Have to walk before you run. (thread) (pdf)

Euromaidan

• Warrant for an Invasion: The Myth of the “American Coups” in Ukraine. 1. The Orange Revolution of 2004

• Warrant for an Invasion: The Myth of the “American Coups” in Ukraine. 2. What Happened in 2014

• See: Euromaidan

Donbas

• FM #Lavrov: Important objective is to ensure that no threats to our security are created or remain on🇺🇦territory. They say that West did not try to urge Ukraine to engage in military action vs Russia, however, I regard oppressing Russian-speaking people in🇺🇦as genuine aggression

• Let’s talk about the hoax that’s been perpetrated daily for 9 years and that was key to for this illegal invasion and its atrocities: Russian assertions that Ukraine has committed “genocide” against “ethnic Russians” in Donetsk and Luhansk. (thread) (pdf)

• See: Donbas

See also

• Nidheg/Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reasons