Sleepwalking Into Conflict with the Kremlin

Less than six months before Russian troops seized Crimea, Hillary Clinton visited the strategic Black Sea peninsula. A guest of honor at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in September 2013, the recently retired secretary of state praised Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych for moving his country closer to the European Union. “We, the USA, are for Ukraine’s integration into Europe,” Clinton said, adding that a planned trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine would “benefit not only the parties, but the rest of the world too.”

Clinton’s words clashed with those of another guest, Kremlin adviser Sergei Glazyev. He warned that if Yanukovych signed the EU agreement, Ukraine risked not only financial ruin, but its very existence as a unified state. The Kremlin ramped up the pressure on Yanukovych—until he finally backed out of the EU deal, sparking months of protests in Kyiv. After police shot and killed dozens of protesters in February 2014, Yanukovych’s power base crumbled and he fled to Russia.

In the ensuing power vacuum, Russian leader Vladimir Putin sent troops to Crimea under the pretext of “protecting” ethnic Russians. The Kremlin claimed that the CIA had helped orchestrate a coup to install a “fascist junta” in Kyiv. The smoking gun was a leaked tape—presumably by Russian intelligence—of Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s top Europe official, discussing the composition of a new Ukrainian government with the US ambassador in Kyiv. The recording sounded damning until put into context: The United States had been openly mediating between Yanukovych and his opponents, and the government Nuland was referring to was a power-sharing arrangement proposed by Yanukovych in which he would have remained president.

Putin played up the dramatic events in Ukraine as a struggle for influence between Russia and the West. He waged a trade war to force Yanukovych to renounce the EU association agreement and justified Russia’s seizure of Crimea as a necessary step to prevent the port of Sevastopol, the historic home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, from falling into NATO hands. The bitter irony is that beyond pompous declarations, neither the EU nor NATO had any intention of granting Ukraine full-fledged membership.

The West sleepwalked into a conflict with the Kremlin. Unchecked hubris after the Cold War led the United States and its allies to overpromise to Ukraine and misread Putin.

The West sleepwalked into a conflict with the Kremlin. Unchecked hubris after the Cold War led the United States and its allies to overpromise to Ukraine and misread Putin. Even after 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Washington continued to treat the conflict as a secondary issue that could be farmed out to allies. Only with the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 did Ukraine become the defining factor in US-Russian relations.

A decade ago, most people in the West knew almost nothing about Ukraine. To the EU, Ukraine was too large, poor, and burdened by corruption to be offered membership. Having already incorporated 11 former communist countries in three waves of enlargement, the EU offered Kyiv an association agreement—more out of bureaucratic habit than any grand vision. As for NATO, the question of Ukrainian membership was moot. Not only was the alliance divided over the issue, but there also was no clear majority among Ukrainians for joining NATO.

The first and last US president who wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO was George W. Bush. In his final year in office, Bush pushed for Ukraine, together with Georgia, to be offered a path into NATO as a reward for contributing troops to the US-led occupation of Iraq. Germany and France were staunchly opposed, in part because of Russia’s fierce objections. At its contentious 2008 summit in Bucharest, NATO settled on a compromise, promising eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia. It was not enough to give the two former Soviet republics any more security, but plenty to inflame the Kremlin.

Four months later, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Kremlin unambiguously marked its sphere of “privileged interests”—which even the Bush administration had no choice but to honor. Under the wishful assumption that the five-day Georgia war had been a one-off, the United States and Europe refrained from imposing sanctions on Russia.

Barack Obama took office promising to reverse Bush’s aggressive unilateralism and ease tensions in the world. Six months after the Georgian war, Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, announced a “reset” in Russia relations. Without dwelling on the many areas of disagreement, the Obama administration set out to pursue goals of common interest with the Kremlin: a more peaceful Afghanistan, a nuclear-free Iran, arms control.

American and European leaders acted on the assumption that Russia was a status quo power, when in fact it was increasingly acting like a status quo ante power.

Ukraine figured nowhere in Washington’s strategic outlook as Obama tried to pivot US foreign policy to China. Ukraine was a low priority for American intelligence, and the US military continued to withdraw its forces from Europe. When the antigovernment protests in Kyiv turned bloody, Obama did not call Yanukovych, he called Putin. Just like Bush had in Georgia, Obama tacitly recognized that Russia was calling the shots in Ukraine. Once Russian troops began taking over Crimea, the United States was again powerless to impel a peer nuclear power to change course. As Russia fueled an armed uprising in eastern Ukraine, Obama delegated peace negotiations to Germany and France.

For Ukrainians, Donald Trump’s election brought little improvement. Although Russia hawks in his administration began delivering US defensive weapons to Kyiv, the president himself did not hide his admiration for Putin. Trump’s interest in Ukraine rested entirely on how to extract political benefit from the country’s novice president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in exchange for vital American military assistance. Trump’s attempt to solicit foreign interference in the upcoming US election resulted in his first impeachment.

When Biden took office in 2021, Ukraine was not a priority on his agenda with the Kremlin. Containing Russia as a global disruptive force was much more important, and Biden offered Putin a summit in an effort to find a way to work with the Kremlin. The incoming administration was not indifferent to mounting Russian threats against Kyiv, only the Ukrainians’ travails seemed less pressing than bringing some predictability to US-Russian relations. Zelensky swallowed his anger when Biden made no new promises on NATO membership and left him waiting more than two months after the Putin summit for his first White House meeting.

In the meantime, Putin’s fear of “losing” Ukraine rose in inverse proportion to the West’s flagging interest. The Russian leader retreated to a germ-free bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic. In his isolation, Putin stewed in a small circle of hardliners who believed that the United States was taking control over Ukraine to strike at its ultimate target: Russia. As his 70th birthday loomed in October 2022, Putin felt a growing urgency to leave his mark on Russian history. On February 24, 2022, he ordered a multi-pronged attack on Ukraine with the goal of overthrowing Zelensky and installing a puppet government in a matter of days.

Tragically, before Putin seized Crimea a decade ago, Ukraine had the potential to be a bridge between Russia and the West. Instead, it unwillingly became the first line of defense against Putin’s naked aggression.

Putin’s “special military operation” ended in disaster. It was based on faulty intelligence and a fundamental misunderstanding of how most Ukrainians had come to view themselves: as citizens of their own country and not a western offshoot of the Russian nation. After failing to take Kyiv, the Russians dug in and prepared for a long war. Surprised by the military aid flowing from the West, the Kremlin claimed that Russia was fighting NATO in Ukraine, an explanation that fit neatly into the narrative of encroachment by the US-led alliance.

The fallacious notion that Russia is waging a defensive war provoked by NATO has also been embraced in certain quarters in the United States and Europe. Although NATO’s enlargement infuriated Russians who missed the Soviet Union’s superpower status, the alliance has not accepted any former Soviet republics since 2004, when the three Baltic nations joined. Bush’s promotion of Ukraine and Georgia was the exception among American presidents. Most significantly, Russia effectively wrecked the two countries’ NATO prospects by creating intractable disputes on their territories that the alliance would be loath to inherit.

The real reasons for the war in Ukraine are Russia’s imperial nostalgia and Putin’s dictatorial rule. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 traumatized a generation. When Putin came to power, he channeled the windfall from an unprecedented oil boom into reasserting Russian influence over its lost empire. Putin and his entourage seethed with resentment that former Soviet satellites were gravitating to the West.

That resentment became grounds for all-out war, as Putin canceled his own term limits and crushed all opposition to his authoritarian rule. Decisions of war and peace were made by a coterie of aging security officials stuck in the corrosive feedback loop of their own propaganda.

The West is not blameless for the turn of events. American and European leaders acted on the assumption that Russia was a status quo power, when in fact it was increasingly acting like a status quo ante power. NATO and the EU raised expectations among Ukrainians without intending to follow through on the prospect of membership. As a result, Ukraine became vulnerable to Russian revanchism.

Tragically, before Putin seized Crimea a decade ago, Ukraine had the potential to be a bridge between Russia and the West. Instead, it unwillingly became the first line of defense against Putin’s naked aggression. The kind of Russia the world must deal with in the future depends on whether the United States, together with its allies, continues to provide the support that Ukraine needs to prevail.

Lucian Kim is former Kennan Institute fellow who has reported on Ukraine and Russia for the past two decades. His book about why Russia invaded Ukraine will be published by Columbia University Press in late 2024.

Cover photo: A detachment of Russian army soldiers in Red Square against the background of the Kremlin. Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2019. Shutterstock/Anton Brehov.