The Missing Half: How Russian Choices Shaped the Path to War in Ukraine

The current war in Ukraine has generated intense debate about its origins, with many Western analysts focusing on NATO expansion and American foreign policy decisions as primary drivers of the conflict.

While this perspective captures important elements of how tensions escalated, it risks overlooking a crucial dimension: Russia’s own strategic choices and the worldview that shaped them.

Understanding the full picture requires examining not just what the West did, but what Russia chose not to do and why those choices made conflict increasingly likely regardless of NATO’s specific actions.

The Energy Wealth Window

In the early 2000s, Russia found itself in a historically unique position. High oil and gas prices generated unprecedented wealth, while Europe’s growing energy needs created obvious opportunities for deeper integration.

Countries like Norway demonstrate how energy-rich nations can maintain full sovereignty while building intimate economic and institutional ties with European partners. Russia possessed far greater resources and geographic advantages than Norway, along with a highly educated population and significant technological capabilities inherited from the Soviet era.

Yet Vladimir Putin chose a fundamentally different path.

Rather than viewing energy exports as a foundation for mutual prosperity and integration, his administration increasingly treated them as instruments of geopolitical leverage. The pattern emerged early: energy cutoffs to Ukraine in 2006 and 2009, supply disruptions affecting multiple European countries, and the explicit linkage of energy contracts to political compliance. This approach revealed a conception of international relations based on dominance rather than partnership.

The contrast with alternative approaches is stark.

Germany’s post-war integration with Western Europe, despite initial resistance and suspicion, ultimately created unprecedented prosperity and security. Japan’s relationship with the United States, built on shared institutions and economic interdependence, transformed a former enemy into a cornerstone ally.

Russia possessed the resources and capabilities to pursue similar integration with Europe, potentially creating a continental economic zone that could have rivaled any other global bloc.

The Imperial Framework

Understanding why Russia rejected these opportunities requires examining the ideological framework that guided Putin’s thinking. From his early years in power, Putin articulated a vision of Russia as a distinct civilization with natural rights to influence over neighboring territories. This wasn’t merely about security concerns or fears of encirclement. It reflected a fundamental belief that certain regions belonged within Russia’s sphere of influence regardless of their populations’ preferences.

This imperial logic manifested in consistent patterns of behavior across multiple countries and contexts. In Georgia, Russia supported separatist regions and eventually recognized their independence after the 2008 war. In Moldova, it maintained military forces in Transnistria despite lacking any legal basis for their presence. In Belarus, it intervened decisively to prevent Alexander Lukashenko’s ouster after fraudulent elections. In Kazakhstan, it deployed troops to help suppress popular protests in 2022.

These interventions shared common features: they prioritized regime stability over democratic legitimacy, used military force to prevent political change, and treated sovereignty as conditional on alignment with Russian preferences. This approach was bound to generate resistance from populations seeking different political arrangements, regardless of NATO’s actions or Western policies.

The Ukraine Test Case

Ukraine represented the ultimate test of these competing visions. For European institutions, Ukraine’s potential membership offered an opportunity to extend prosperity, democratic governance, and rule of law to a large, strategically located country. The process would necessarily be gradual, conditional on reforms, and respectful of existing international obligations, including those to Russia.

For Putin’s Russia, however, Ukraine’s European orientation posed an existential challenge to the imperial framework. A successful, democratic, prosperous Ukraine integrated with European institutions would demonstrate that former Soviet republics could chart independent courses while maintaining positive relationships with Russia. It would prove that the “civilizational” arguments for Russian hegemony were false, and that alternative models of development were not only possible but superior.

I did not use the word NATO for a very good reason: It is the EU which is the existential threat to Putin’s Tsarist vision.

This explains why Putin’s opposition to Ukrainian independence intensified even before serious NATO discussions began. The 2004 Orange Revolution triggered alarm in Moscow not because it brought Ukraine closer to NATO membership which remained deeply unpopular among Ukrainians at the time but because it demonstrated that Ukrainians could organize effective resistance to Russian-preferred outcomes and aspire to be part of Europe.

The Economic Dimension

Putin’s approach to Ukraine also revealed the limitations of the coercive economic model Russia had developed. Rather than using trade and investment to create mutual benefits and interdependence, Russia repeatedly weaponized economic relationships. Gas price manipulation, trade restrictions, and discriminatory policies were designed to punish Ukraine for political choices rather than address legitimate commercial concerns.

This pattern extended beyond Ukraine to multiple relationships. Russia’s trade wars with Poland, the Baltic states, Georgia, and Moldova followed similar logic: economic tools were subordinated to political objectives, creating resentment and driving these countries to seek alternative partnerships. The European Union’s appeal to these nations wasn’t primarily about ideology or security guarantees—it was about access to markets, investment, and economic relationships based on predictable rules rather than political whims.

The contrast with China’s Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. While that program has its own controversies and limitations, it at least offers tangible economic benefits to participating countries. Russia’s economic approach to its neighbors consistently prioritized control over prosperity, creating obvious incentives for those countries to seek alternatives.

The Democratic Challenge

Perhaps most fundamentally, Putin’s system could not tolerate successful democratization in neighboring countries because it exposed the weaknesses of his own model. The color revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005) demonstrated that post-Soviet populations could organize effective challenges to authoritarian rule.

These movements succeeded not because of Western manipulation though they certainly received external support but because they addressed genuine grievances about corruption, economic stagnation, and political repression.

Russia’s response to these democratic openings was revealing. Rather than addressing similar problems within Russia or offering alternative models of governance, Putin’s administration consistently supported efforts to reverse democratic gains. This included backing Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine despite his obvious weaknesses as a leader, supporting authoritarian consolidation in Belarus and Kazakhstan, and intervening directly when peaceful transitions seemed likely to succeed.

This pattern suggests that the conflict over Ukraine was never really about NATO bases or military threats. It was about competing models of political organization and development.

Putin’s system required neighboring countries to remain weak, divided, and dependent to validate its own approach and prevent demonstration effects that might inspire Russian citizens.

The Escalation Dynamic

Understanding these deeper issues helps explain why the conflict escalated despite repeated attempts at accommodation. Western policymakers frequently assumed that addressing Russia’s stated security concerns would reduce tensions.

But Putin’s actual concerns were not primarily about military deployments or alliance structures for they were about the political and economic success of neighboring democracies.

This explains the futility of proposals for Ukrainian neutrality or limitations on NATO expansion. From Putin’s perspective, a neutral but successful Ukraine integrated with European economic institutions would be almost as threatening as a NATO member. It would still demonstrate that former Soviet republics could prosper under different political arrangements, potentially inspiring similar transitions elsewhere.

The invasion itself revealed the bankruptcy of the imperial approach. Putin apparently believed that Ukrainians would welcome Russian forces as liberators from a supposedly illegitimate government. This catastrophic miscalculation reflected years of consuming his own propaganda about Ukrainian identity and political preferences. The fierce resistance that followed demonstrated how completely he had misunderstood the society he claimed to be protecting.

Alternative Histories

Considering what might have been illuminates the extent of these missed opportunities. A Russia that had chosen integration over domination could have become the dominant partner in a continental European system. Russian energy resources, European technology and capital, and Ukrainian agricultural potential could have created unprecedented prosperity across the region.

Such an arrangement would have required Russia to accept certain constraints on its behavior—respect for democratic processes, adherence to international law, and genuine rather than performative anti-corruption efforts.

But these constraints would have been far less burdensome than the costs of the current conflict: international isolation, economic sanctions, military losses, and the transformation of Ukraine from a potential partner into an implacable enemy.

The tragedy is that this alternative was readily available. The European Union repeatedly signaled its willingness to develop closer relationships with Russia based on shared values and mutual benefit. Individual European countries, particularly Germany, went to extraordinary lengths to maintain positive relationships even after the annexation of Crimea. Russia’s rejection of these opportunities in favor of confrontation reflects choices, not inevitabilities.

Beyond Balance of Power

Contemporary discussions of the Ukraine conflict often default to balance-of-power analysis, treating it as a predictable result of great power competition. This framework, while offering some insights, obscures the role of ideology and domestic political systems in shaping international behavior.

Putin’s Russia was not simply responding to external threats or pursuing traditional geopolitical objectives. It was defending a particular model of governance and development that required neighboring countries to remain weak and dependent. This model was fundamentally incompatible with the European approach of voluntary integration based on shared institutions and democratic governance.

The conflict thus represents not just a clash between Russia and the West, but between different concepts of how societies should be organized and how international relationships should function. Putin’s approach assumes that strong states naturally dominate weak ones, that sovereignty is conditional on power, and that international law serves primarily to legitimize the preferences of dominant actors.

The European alternative, however imperfectly realized, envisions relationships based on mutual benefit, respect for democratic choices, and gradual convergence around shared standards. These competing visions were bound to generate conflict regardless of specific military deployments or alliance structures.

Implications for Analysis

Recognizing Russia’s agency and choices doesn’t excuse Western mistakes or absolve NATO of responsibility for its own decisions. The expansion of the alliance, particularly the promises made to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008, clearly contributed to escalating tensions. Western support for the color revolutions, while based on genuine democratic values, undoubtedly alarmed Russian leaders who saw these movements as threatening their own stability.

But focusing exclusively on Western actions risks treating Russia as a passive respondent rather than an active participant with its own objectives and strategies.

Putin’s Russia made deliberate choices to prioritize control over prosperity, confrontation over integration, and imperial nostalgia over democratic development. These choices shaped the trajectory toward conflict as much as any Western decisions.

Understanding this dynamic is crucial for developing effective responses to the current crisis and preventing future conflicts. Accommodation strategies that ignore Russia’s fundamental ideological commitments are likely to fail, while confrontational approaches that treat military deterrence as sufficient may miss opportunities for engagement where Russian and Western interests actually align.

The war in Ukraine represents the culmination of decades of choices by both Russian and Western leaders. While Western policies certainly contributed to escalating tensions, Russia’s rejection of alternative approaches to regional relationships made conflict increasingly likely regardless of NATO’s specific actions.

Moving forward requires acknowledging that this conflict reflects deeper disagreements about political organization, economic development, and international law. These disagreements cannot be resolved through territorial adjustments or security guarantees alone. They require sustained engagement with the underlying questions about how societies should govern themselves and relate to their neighbors.

The ultimate resolution of the Ukraine crisis will depend not just on military outcomes or diplomatic negotiations, but on whether Russia can develop alternative approaches to regional relationships that respect sovereignty while addressing legitimate security concerns. Such evolution would require fundamental changes in Russian political culture and strategic thinking—changes that may only be possible after the current system exhausts itself through its own contradictions.

Until then, the West faces the challenge of defending democratic values and international law while remaining open to genuine Russian interest in alternative arrangements. This balance will require both strength and wisdom, recognizing that lasting peace depends not just on containing Russian power, but on creating conditions where Russia can pursue prosperity and security through cooperation rather than domination.

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