After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, NATO expanded eastward, eventually taking in most of the European nations that had been in the Communist sphere.
These includes the Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, once parts of the Soviet Union, joined NATO, as did Poland, Romania.
As a result, NATO moved hundreds of miles closer to Moscow, directly bordering Russia.
And in 2008, it stated that it planned some day to enroll Ukraine.
This move did not auger well with Mr.Putin who has always been against NATO’S advances.
He described the Soviet disintegration as one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century that robbed Russia of its rightful place among the world’s great powers.
He has spent his 22 years in power rebuilding Russia’s military and reasserting its geopolitical clout believing that one day Russia would resume its former position in the world power.
The Russian president calls NATO’s expansion menacing, and the prospect of Ukraine joining it a major threat.
Russia presented NATO and the United States in December 2014 with a set of written demands that it said were needed to ensure its security.
Foremost among them is the guarantee that Ukraine would never join NATO at whatever cost.
The West responded by dismissing this demand out of hand.
But why does Russia feel threatened with Ukraine Joining NATO?
Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed, it has gradually looked to the West – both the EU and NATO.
Putin feels threatened that if Ukraine joins NATO, the organization would exploit Ukraine’s natural resources, an opportunity Russia has unsuccessfully been seeking.
Further Russia believes that if NATO gains full control of Ukraine, it will establish military base in Ukraine and given the close proximity of Ukraine and Russia, NATO would use the opportunity to launch military attacks to Russia, an act which would automatically destabilize Russia.
Hence Putin is prepared to fight to the last man to prevent Ukraine joining NATO.
Russia’s leader has sought to reverse that, seeing the fall of the Soviet Union as the “disintegration of historical Russia”.
He has claimed Russians and Ukrainians are one people, denying Ukraine its long history and seeing today’s independent state merely as an “anti-Russia project”
Putin has always believed that “Ukraine never had stable traditions of genuine statehood”
As a result, Putin chose to invade Ukraine. His initial aim was to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, ending for good its desire to join the Western defensive alliance NATO.
After a month of failures, he abandoned his bid to capture the capital Kyiv and turned his ambitions to Ukraine’s east and south.
