*Originally published in 2022 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

The unbelievable has happened. The world is faced with a crisis on the magnitude of that which it faced in 1961 in Cuba. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to become the biggest war in Europe since World War II. The destruction of Ukraine’s democracy through a Russian invasion and installation of a pro-Kremlin puppet regime, would energise the anti-democratic onslaught of autocrats, such as China and Iran, around the world and send a signal that the democratic West is in decline. A successful overthrow of democracy in Ukraine would increase the threat to the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, all NATO members, and encourage China to consider a military conquest of Taiwan.

Russia has demanded since the mid-1990s that Eurasia be recognised as Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence where countries cannot integrate with, or join, NATO and the EU. Russia has also been opposed to Eurasian countries using UN peacekeepers in frozen conflicts artificially manufactured by the Kremlin to thwart pro-Western countries integrating into NATO and the EU. Ranked by the human rights monitoring think tank Freedom House as a “consolidated authoritarian regime”, Russia aggressively opposes the spread of democracy in Eurasia. The existence of a successful democracy in Ukraine is viewed by the Kremlin as a threat to the autocracy built by President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin’s seeks the consolidation of the three eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians) into the Russian World, a concept created in 2007. Ukraine is important to Russian nationalist mythology because it includes the city of Kyiv, the birthplace of the medieval Kyiv Rus state. In 2016, a monument to Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great was unveiled next to the Kremlin in Moscow, a city that was founded in 1146 and did not therefore exist when Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great ruled Kyiv Rus in 980-1015. The city of Kyiv is at least 600 years older than Moscow.

In 2010–2014, Ukraine pursued a “non-bloc” foreign policy where it did not seek NATO membership. This “non-bloc” status did not prevent Russia invading and annexing Crimea in February–March 2014 and launching a military invasions and hybrid warfare against Ukraine. Russia always interpreted “neutrality” in a different manner........

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