Ukraine: The Shock of Recognition

Abstract

Like the international struggle against Hitler-led fascism in the last century, the broad and cohesive mobilisation against Vladimir Putin’s Russia following his brutal invasion of Ukraine is based not only on realpolitik but also on a visceral recognition of a grave threat to the values and institutions of Western civilisation. While NATO enlargement inevitably discomfited Russian leaders, it was largely driven by the demands of former Soviet republics or bloc countries that sensibly and presciently feared Russian revanchism. In any case, Putin’s primary concern about Ukraine appears to have been not Kyiv’s NATO aspirations so much as its increasing Western orientation and democratic development. War has come to Europe mainly because Putin decided that an independent Ukraine was intolerable. A stable and secure neutrality along Finnish or Austrian lines might be viable only because Ukraine has shown its determination and capability to defend itself.