Tochukwu Chukwu
The war betweenUkraineand Russiahas been ongoing now for eleven days. Vladimir Putin has ordered the launch of attacks on strategic places in Russia’s neighboring country, in order to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine”.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have already reported deaths after the attacks on the country’s main cities, while the capital, Kiev, is currently being evacuated due to Russian forces attacking the city. Meanwhile, the airspace in the area is closed.
The truth is that the conflict between Ukraine and Russia goes back a long way and a third party, NATO, is at the center of the conflict. The president of Russia has always disowned the organization, considering that it posed a threat to his security. But why does Russia want to do anything in its power to prevent Ukraine from being part of NATO?
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Why doesn’t Vladimir Putin want Ukraine to be part of NATO?
NATO was created in 1949 with the purpose of, at that time, preventing the expansion of the Soviet Union to other European countries. The organization initially had 12 countries, among which are the most important United States, Canada, United Kingdom and France.
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. At the time, Russia claims that President Gorbachev was promised by the US that NATO would not move east.
Instead, several countries joined NATO,such as the Baltic Republics, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. Currently, the organization has a total of 30 countries.
In this way, Russia feels a threat from NATO‘s expansion to the east and, above all, fears that Ukraine, a country in which it can exert influence, will end up joiningNATO, something that has not yet happened. In this way, Putin wants to avoid at all costs that Ukraine ends up in the influence of the West.
Keep in mind that Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe, it has access to the Black Sea and its borders are connected to Russia to the east.
Russian invasion of Crimea
The Crimean Peninsula is located north of the Black Sea. During the period of the Soviet Union it belonged to Russia, although in 1954 it was transferred to the Ukraine.
When the two countries were independent, Crimea was a strategic place that Russia considered, so in 2014 it proceeded to invade the peninsula, and barely without opposition it took control of the area.
At that time, attacks also began in the Donbass region, in order to divide the country, to which the West responded by sending troops to Eastern European countries, something that raised tension in Moscow and demanded that the forces leave. of those countries. Likewise, Russia has warned NATO to reject, in addition to Ukraine, other neighboring countries such as Georgia and Moldova.
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