Experts say Donald Trump misunderstands the history and causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, making a fair peace deal more difficult.
Experts say Donald Trump has a poor understanding of the history and causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Analysts believe these misconceptions and what observers identify as Trump’s affinity for Vladimir Putin, despite occasional criticism, have led to U.S. peace proposals that favor Russia and will cause Ukraine to face a new invasion.Trump Gives His Views On Why Russia Invaded Ukraine
“I don’t think they’ll ever be able to join NATO,” he said. “I think that’s been—from day one, I think that’s been, that’s I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining NATO. If that weren’t brought up, there would have been a much better chance that it wouldn’t have started.” (Emphasis added.)
Harvard University professor Serhii Plokhy, the leading historian on Russian-Ukrainian relations, details why Trump’s assertion on how the war in Ukraine started is wrong. “Russia’s threats to take over the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine go back to the times of Boris Yeltsin,” said Plokhy. “Putin acted on those threats in 2003 trying to take over Ukraine’s Tuzla Island off the shores of the Crimea.”
“The annexation of the Crimea in 2014 was explained by the threat from NATO, which allegedly planned to establish naval bases on the peninsula,” notes Plokhy. “In reality, it was a response to the Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity and determination to sign an association agreement with the European Union. By launching a war on Ukraine, Russia was not stopping NATO, which had refused to admit the country back in 2008 but was precluding the ‘escape’ of a former imperial subject from Russia’s sphere of influence.”
In The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History, Plokhy provides an account of the history leading up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He writes that Russia’s strategy for many years—up to the present—has been to control Ukraine, disarm its military and choose a leadership to Putin’s liking.
“Trump’s contention that Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO ‘caused the war to start’ is a claim that is often made, but one that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny,” according to Syracuse University professor Brian Taylor, author of Russian Politics: A Very Short Introduction. “Given that there was no serious prospect of Ukraine joining NATO between 2008 and 2022, it’s hard to see how Ukraine’s hope of joining NATO at some point in the future caused the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Nothing had happened in the previous 14 years to make it likely that Ukraine could join NATO anytime soon.”
“I think most specialists on Russia and Ukraine agree that Putin’s key motive for the full-scale invasion was his desire to restore Russian political control over Ukraine—it wasn’t about this or that piece of territory,” said Taylor. “This reflects Putin’s oft-stated belief that Ukraine is not a separate nation and that it is an artificial state.
