Putin’s Motivation for the Ukraine Invasion

 by Manon Francis

By now everyone is aware of what is happening in Ukraine. Russia invaded on the 24th February 2022, and has subsequently unleashed horrors last experienced by Europe in World War 2. Many have drawn parallels between them: ironically the encircling and bombardment of the port city Mauriupol has been likened to the Seige of Leningrad, words such as ‘Nazi’ and ‘Fascist’ are being thrown around, a defianant President Zelenskyy has taken a page out of Winston Churchill’s playbook, and at the centre of it all, is a man with a large army, a grudge against the West and the desire to recreate an empire. 

Politicians, intelligence agencies, international organisations and journalists alike have spent the last few weeks trying to decipher what Vladimir Putin really wants with Ukraine. Putin himself has stated his reasons for this ‘special military operation’ (Russia refuses to even acknowledge that these are the actions of an invasion) are to ‘demilitarise and de-Nazify’ Ukraine, and to rescue Russian-speaking Ukrainians from a ‘genocide’ carried out by the pro-West government (for comparison, Hitler invaded Poland and other countries before and during World War 2 on the pretext of uniting and liberating the German-speaking people who lived there). Azov is Ukrainian far-right all-volunteer infantry military unit, whose members (estimated at 900) are ultra-nationalists and accused of harbouring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology, however has no political branch- there are more groups with these kind of characteristics in America than there are in Ukraine. Svoboda, a radical right-wing populist party with ties to neo-Nazism, has polled below the electoral threshold for winning a seat in the Ukrainian parliament since 2014 and currently only has one seat, debunking Putin’s claims that Ukraine is overrun with Nazis, a particularly offensive accusation since many Ukranians, including President Zelenksyy, are Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust. 

Putin has also expressed his views on Ukraine’s sovereignty as a state, asserting "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood," (an opinion decidedly not shared by the vast majority of Ukrainians). Another insight into his motivations for the invasion can be drawn from his view of the fall of the Soviet Union, which he sees as ‘the disintegration of historical Russia’, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz succinctly explains: ‘Putin wants to build a Russian Empire. He wants to fundamentally redefine the status quo within Europe in line with his own vision. And he has no qualms about using military force to do so.’ For the last two decades Russia has objected to the borders of NATO slowly inching towards them, as more and more former-Soviet countries joined the defensive pact. One of his demands has been for Ukraine to remain neutral, ie. never join NATO, but just as when  he referred to Ukraine as a state that is not independent, the Ukrainian people are not in agreement with this declaration either. As an independent state, Ukraine has the right to apply to join NATO and any other international organisation they wish, including the EU, though whether they are allowed to join remains to be seen.

When analysing the motivations and actions of individuals and nations throughout history, we are taught to group certain points into 3 general factors: political, social and economic. If we apply this process to the invasion of Ukraine, we can see that two of these briefs are fulfilled. Socially, Putin apparently wants to save Russian-speaking Ukrainians from systematic oppression and secure Russia’s cultural influence over Ukraine’s national identity. Politically, he is sending a warning to NATO and its affiliated countries that its continued presence and military escalation so close to Russian borders in former-Soviet countries will not be tolerated. The media has reported closely on these aspects of his incentive behind the invasion, however little is mentioned about his economic reasoning, which I believe in conjunction with the other two factors provides a more rounded understanding of why the Russia invasion occurred.

As is the case with many other wars, this invasion has another dimension, and that is the case of the European oil and gas market. Ukraine has 3 major regions in which oil could be extracted: the Dnipro-Donetsk basin, a major oil and gas producing region accounting for 90 percent of all current Ukrainian production, the Carpathian region in western Ukraine and the Black Sea and Crimea region in the south. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic metres of natural gas, second only to Norway. Their reserves are largely untapped due to USSR extraction in Siberia in the 1970s, which required Ukrainian resources to be shipped north, meaning it now doesn’t have the expertise and capacity to explore its own reserves- only 2% is used today and the country still depends on gas exports. Like North Korea, Ukraine is sitting on a massive amount of fossil fuels but does not have the resources to access and capitalise off of it.

The Ukrainian Institute for Future estimates that to transform Ukraine into a self-sufficient energy consumer and potential exporter would require an investment of $19bn. Reducing reliance on Russian gas is an urgent necessity for the EU to reach net zero emissions, and would also diminish Putin’s political leverage over the EU (Europe is dependent on Russia for about 40% of its natural gas supplies), since it will reportedly import around 90% of its required amount of gas by 2030. The EU has also set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, and becoming climate neutral by 2050, meaning in the process of fading out fossil fuel reliance altogether in Europe, the EU could simultaneously switch to importing gas and oil from Ukraine, greatly benefiting their economy. It is likely that Putin, with a large array of intelligence services and economists at his back, is aware of this possibility. 

Therefore, I believe that Putin’s misguided attempts to ‘save’ Russian-speaking Ukrainians from systematic oppression and reinstate ‘soft-power’ in Ukraine, and prevent and roll back any post-1997 NATO expansion in a recreation of the Soviet Union to form a do form a large part of his reasoning for this invasion. However, I think it too big a coincidence that just when Ukraine was floating the idea of becoming more economically integrated with Europe, such as joining the EU, that Russia invaded. It is probable that in the next decade or so that Ukraine’s economy could develop enough for them to start exporting their surplus gas and oil, which could then impact Russia’s market share of sales in Europe, as the EU would much rather rely on Ukraine than Russia. Therefore, an invasion like what occurred would shatter Ukraine’s economy, rendering the country unable to exploit the natural reserves, and keeping the Russian market share in oil and gas, and the economy safe. So, it is possible that Putin invaded, in conjunction with the other two factors, for this reason.