The russian motives for invading Ukraine; part one

This multi-record entry serves to explain why the russian empire invaded Ukraine, rather than invading then–non-NATO-member Finland; and also serves to explain the timing of the invasion.

First, results convenient to expose some russian lies and myths. Will not attempt to debunk all the russian falsehoods, since russian propagandists create more of those everyday —just recall the outlandish accusation of «biological weapons programmes performed by specialists of the USA in Ukraine» from the year 2022.

Russian falsehoods

• False: Both ethnic russians and ethnic ukrainians belong to an overarching ethnic group called «slavs», therefore they constitute a single-indivisible nation.

  This falsehood results illogical in a number of ways, as follows:

  1. Ethnicity does not create membership in a nation. The member of any modern nation results any person who fulfills the legal requirements for the corresponding nationality. And the «Universal Declaration of Human Rights» enshrines the personal right to abandon a nationality and acquire a new one; cite:

     Article 15:

     1. Everyone has the right to a nationality.
     2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

     Thus, ukrainians can exercise the right to establish their own independent nation; as they did formally upon the internal disintegration of the soviet empire.

  2. Classifying several items as a group of similar elements does not create an association among those. In other words, shared traits of several elements do not create a real-world union, or connection, or interaction, among those.

     For example, species of apples and pears get classified as trees because of their traits, yet that does not create a «gang of trees».

     As another example, the cultural and physical similitude between mexicans and colombians does not create a «single-indivisible nation», as both mexicans and colombians result independent peoples by choice.

  3. The russian empire already results multi-ethnic, although russian nationals of non-ethnic-russian origin remain as vassals. Regarding the ethnic russians as the indispensable constituent persons of the russian empire, or as «the true russians», merely reinforces the self-entitlement of supremacy of ethnic russians inside the russian empire.

     Accordingly, the russian empire does not constitute «the nation of the ethnic slavs», but the nation of many persons of different ethnic origins. Even in the vassal ethnological «nations» within the empire —described in part two of this multi-record entry— does not exist an official segregation of «slavs».

  Currently, only the openly-apartheid state of Israel attempts to build a nation based on the ethnicity of its members, by implementing well-known ethnic-cleansing and genocidal campaigns.

• False: The accession of Ukraine to the military alliance called North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, poses an imminent risk of harm for the russian empire; therefore the russian empire invaded Ukraine out of a need for self-defence.

  This falsehood results illogical in a number of ways, as follows:

  1. In a civilized world, nobody holds the right to hurt another person or country as a preemptive way to avoid future harm from a «strong neighbor».

     Moreover, such «preemptive attacks» promote an arms race in order to «become stronger fast, so that the neighbour does not dare to attack».

  2. Russians say about their country: «Moscow is the brain, but Saint Petersburg is the heart of Russia». This self-assessment underscores the importance of Saint Petersburg for the stability of the russian empire; and actually corresponds to reality that the populations based in Moscow and Saint Petersburg constitute the indispensable core of the empire.

     Utilizing the shortest distances, the border of Finland stands about 140 kilometres of Saint Petersburg in a terrain without significant obstacles, while the border of Ukraine stands about 445 kilometres away from Moscow. For decades before the russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland actively and openly cooperated with NATO; cite:

     • Cooperation began when Finland joined the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme in 1994 and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (a multilateral forum for dialogue that brings together all Allies and partner countries in the Euro-Atlantic area) in 1997.
     • For many years prior to its accession, Finland had been one of NATO's most active partners and a valued contributor to NATO-led operations and missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.
     • As an 'Enhanced Opportunity Partner'1 (a partner country that makes particularly significant contributions to NATO operations and other Alliance objectives), Finland experienced enhanced opportunities for dialogue and cooperation with the Allies.

     Nonetheless, the russian empire selected the admission of Ukraine into NATO as the «imminent threat», and Ukraine as the target of military aggression, rather than selecting Finland.

     As expected, soon after the russian empire invaded Ukraine on a large scale, Finland joined NATO.

• False: The territory of Ukraine consists of a «russian ancestral land» and therefore the russian empire results the rightful owner of the land.

  Like before, the scrutiny of such falsehood exposes its defects:

  1. The russian empire formally recognized the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine in 1991, then again in a treaty in 1997; and likewise recognized the borders of Ukraine in a treaty signed by representatives of both states in the year 2003. Treaties serve precisely for securing the peaceful and expedite resolution of any misunderstanding —until someone reneges its own words, as the russians do frequently.

     For example, when someone sets the boundaries of a real-state property with a neighbour, and commits in writing to it, results unlawful to return 20 or 30 years later to reclaim the property of the neighbour as own.

  2. The claim that the russian empire results the rightful owner of the ukrainian land, inherited after the disintegration of the soviet empire, results contradictory with the claim that ukrainians and russians result «the same people». If in fact both nations resulted the same, the russian side could not wield a preferential claim over any land; and the ukrainians could demand their fair share of the whole imperial territory, upon which establish their own nation (as they already did).

  In the second part of this record I will explain the russian fixation with their supposed ukrainian «ancestral land», as such mythology encompasses more than a simple inheritance problem.

• False: The russian empire stands entitled to represent and protect ethnic russians, or russian-speaking populations, on countries neighbouring the imperial territory.

  Here again results necessary to recall that ethnicity does not create membership in a nation. Furthermore, state officials of a foreign country do not stand entitled to represent citizens of another country by virtue of a shared ethnicity.

  For example, some persons of hungarian ethnicity result ukrainan nationals, same as do persons of belarusian ethnicity, and so on. And this fact does not entitle the hungarian prime minister to speak on behalf of ukrainian nationals of hungarian ethnicity. Moreover, ukrainan nationals, of whatever ethnicity, selected other ukranian nationals as their representatives, for these latter to perform as elected officials of the ukrainian state.

  Yet highly authoritarian individuals do not understand such simple facts; hence, nowadays, one can see the hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, pretending to represent ukrainan nationals of hungarian ethnicity.

  As another example: Millions of mexican nationals immigrated to the USA during the last decades; and they, and their children, became nationals of that country, and for any practical purpose abandoned the mexican nationality —new generations do not even hold mexican passports. However, many millions of persons of mexican descent continue to reproduce much of the culture brought from Mexico, and preserve the skin and hair colour of their ancestors [1]. Nonetheless, the mexican president, and the mexican state, can neither act nor speak on behalf of those stateian nationals.

• False: The russian empire can represent any russian national who holds dual citizenship in the affairs related to the state of the second citizenship.

  In fact, those who hold dual citizenship cannot legitimately invoke the assistance of one state in order to deal with the affairs stemming from their other citizenship. The russian empire for some time now pursued a strategy of delivering russian passports to citizens of other countries in order to interfere in the internal politics of those.

Widely-accepted international conventions, and international organizations for prosecuting crimes against humanity, result fundamental for the protection of minorities within any nation. A strong international community which identifies and isolates backwards countries can do much more, in a much fairer way, than biased unilateral interventions based on the passportization of citizens of other countries, or on alleged non-existent national affiliations.

For this purpose, organizations as the International Court of Justice do a great service to humankind.

The subject of this record will continue in part two of the same title.

--
Anders Baerbock
2025.331

[1] A «mexican ethnicity» cannot get defined within reasonable boundaries. Still the case serves for easy illustration.

References:
[https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc15084.doc.htm]
[https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights]
[https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/partnerships-and-cooperation/relations-with-finland]
[https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL(1994)054-e] «Agreement Establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States»
[https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/v3007.pdf] «Treaty On Friendship, Cooperation And Partnership Between Ukraine And The Russian Federation»
[https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203161/v3161.pdf] «Treaty Between Ukraine And The Russian Federation On The Ukrainian-Russian State Border»