This article at 1945 by Constantine Atlamazoglou addresses a question. Would Russia go to war to stop Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO?
It is mostly a flat open space. Coupled with Belarus, it used to provide Russia with a wide buffer zone to its west. Ukraine joining NATO could mean U.S. troops and missile installations right on Russia’s border. Preventing that is a vital Russian interest.
On the flip side, Ukrainian accession to NATO will not offer any added security benefits to the U.S. and its European allies. Should Ukraine join NATO, a Russian attack against it would trigger the Alliance’s Article 5. Failure to invoke Article 5 in such an event, would be NATO’s end. But even if NATO were to invoke Article 5, the Alliance’s record is mixed and never tested against a superpower.
However, Putin will not wait for Ukraine to join NATO and cross his “red line.†If accession processes progress he will attack preemptively. At that point, Ukraine will not be covered by NATO’s defense umbrella. It is doubtful that Western nations will rush to the defense of a non-allied country that is not linked to their vital interests. This will leave Ukraine exposed.
The answer is obvious to anyone who knows anything about Russia: yes, it would. The reasons are incredibly numerous.
I can completely understand why the Ukrainians would want to become a member of NATO. It has no natural borders. It is indefensible. The only time in its history it has been a country distinct from Russia has been since the 1950s. I can only see one reason that NATO would want to admit Ukraine as a member and it is unutterably foolish.
In 1667, or so, Russia and Poland-Lithuania divided Ukraine between them at the Dneiper. Russia got Kiev.
During the heyday of the European empires, Austro-Hungary got parts of western Ukraine and Poland. Russia got a big part of Poland and the rest of Ukraine, and Germany got the rest of Poland plus Lithuania (Prussia).
The French are discussing building a naval base for Ukraine in the Sea of Azov.
I guess the Euros have gone just too damn long without a nice, big, knock down bloodbath. It must be something in the European gene pool. I hope we can stay out, despite the number of Americans with European genes. But our history from the beginning suggests otherwise.
The Prince of Kiev was an important figure in the Late Medieval Period. To give you a notion of how important a princess of Kiev became the queen of France in the 11th century.
But even then Ukraine was not a country. It was a territory. Sometimes the territory was claimed by Poland; sometimes by Russia; never by nobody. It’s not a country any more than Belarus is. Belarus is an ethnicity just as Ukrainian is.