Peter Dickinson is a British journalist who has been based in Kyiv for 25 years. He is publisher of Business Ukraine magazine and editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.
The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine has transformed the geopolitical landscape and looks set to shape the international security climate for decades to come. However, as the second anniversary of the invasion approached in early 2024, there were growing indications than many in the West had yet to fully appreciate the historical significance of the war raging on Europe’s eastern frontier. Political battles fought in Washington DC and Brussels over the future of Western military aid for Ukraine highlighted this alarming shortsightedness, while also hinting at a broader reluctance among Western policymakers to acknowledge the scale of the threat posed by Putin’s Russia to the existing world order.
The lack of vision on display in many Western capitals is partly a matter of convenient denial in the face of painful realities. After all, no Western leader would be eager to abandon decades of peace dividends in order to prioritize military spending. But there is more to the problem than fear of destabilizing domestic politics or angering voters. The invasion of Ukraine has also exposed a fundamental failure to grasp the true nature of modern Russia or the revisionist imperial agenda driving Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Nothing illustrates this lack of understanding better than the readiness of many in the West to embrace Putin’s own attempts to justify the invasion. For more than two years, the Russian dictator has blamed the war on NATO expansion, which he claims poses an intolerable threat to Russian security. Many Western commentators and politicians have readily echoed this argument, despite the fact that it has been comprehensibly debunked by Russia’s own actions.
In the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Finland and Sweden both decided to abandon decades of neutrality and seek immediate NATO membership. In theory, this should have represented a much greater threat to Russian national security than Ukraine’s far slimmer hopes of NATO membership. Indeed, on the eve of Russia’s invasion, the most optimistic forecasts indicated that Ukraine’s dream of joining NATO was still decades away.
Revealingly, Putin made no attempt to derail, disrupt, or even symbolically oppose the fast-track accession of the two Nordic nations, even though Finnish membership more than doubled Russia’s border with NATO and Swedish membership promised to transform the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Instead, he downplayed the entire issue and pretended it had nothing to do with the massive war he had just unleashed on strikingly grounds. Nor was Putin’s obvious indifference merely for show; in the months before Finland joined the alliance, Russia actually withdraw approximately 80% of its military from the Finnish border. Clearly, Putin knows perfectly well that NATO poses no security threat to Russia.
This does not mean that Russia’s objections to NATO’s post-1991 enlargement are entirely insincere. On the contrary, the growing presence of the alliance in the former Eastern Bloc has long been a source of bitterness and resentment throughout the Russian establishment. However, it is critical to clarify that this indignation has nothing to do with legitimate security concerns. NATO is not a threat to Russian security; NATO is a threat to Russian foreign policy because it prevents Russia from bullying its neighbors.
While the NATO narrative has helped the Kremlin conceal its true intentions from international observers, Putin has been far franker when addressing domestic audiences. Throughout the invasion, Putin has spoken openly of his imperial ambitions in Ukraine. He has compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great, and frequently refers to Ukraine as “historically Russian land” while insisting Ukrainians are actually Russians (“one people”).
The actions of the Russian army in Ukraine mirror this imperialistic language. In areas of Ukraine under Kremlin control, thousands of potential Ukrainian community leaders and opponents of Russian rule have been killed or imprisoned, while millions have been deported or forced to flee. All traces of Ukrainian national identity are being methodically eradicated, while Ukrainians living under Russian occupation are under enormous pressure to accept Russian nationality and submit their children to Russian indoctrination.
Ukrainians are acutely aware that they are fighting for national survival. They are under no illusions that if Putin achieves his goal of subjugating their country, all traces of Ukrainian statehood and nationality will be ruthlessly erased. This alone should be enough to convince Western leaders they cannot afford to stand by and allow a genocide to take place in the heart of Europe. However, there are also compelling pragmatic arguments for more forceful intervention.
The key question is how far Putin’s ambitions extend. If he is not stopped in Ukraine, will he go further? The Kremlin strongman has been obsessed with Ukraine for much of his 23-year reign, but this obsession actually reflects his broader fixation with reversing the verdict of the Cold War. Putin frequently mourns the collapse of the Soviet Union and the injustices of the 1990s. For years, he has spoken of his desire to end what he sees as the era of Western dominance. In its place, he dreams of ushering in a new multipolar world order. This has become a key theme in many of his public addresses since the start of the Ukraine invasion.
It is difficult to define exactly what this means in practice. What can be said with a high degree of certainty is that Putin seeks to divide the West and destroy key Western institutions such as NATO and the EU. He believes this can be achieved without having to embark on an all-out war. All Russia need do is continue exploiting the chronic lack of political resolve displayed by Western leaders in Ukraine. If Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, that is exactly what he will do.
In terms of territorial ambitions, Putin’s stated commitment to “returning historically Russian lands” means all former possessions of the Russian Empire are potentially at risk. This includes Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Alaska, and the whole of central Asia. An emboldened Putin would almost certainly seek to press home his advantage against a demoralized and discredited West by launching fresh invasions or hybrid takeovers using thinly veiled proxy forces.
This nightmare scenario cannot be avoided by appeasing Putin or offering Russia some kind of compromise deal that allows Moscow to retain some of its territorial gains in Ukraine. Such an approach would only pause the war and enable Putin to rearm before resuming hostilities. Instead, the only way to end the threat of resurgent Russian imperialism is by providing Ukraine with the weapons to win the war and then fully integrating a victorious Ukraine into the Western community of nations.
As long as Ukraine remains in the geopolitical gray zone, it will be the primary target of Russian aggression. However, if the West demonstrates the resolve to fully arm and integrate Ukraine, a defeated Russia will be plunged into an existential crisis of its own, and will eventually have no choice but to abandon its imperial agenda. Putin and other Russian leaders regularly frame the invasion of Ukraine as part of a bigger war against the West. They will continue waging this war until they are decisively defeated. The West must choose whether it prefers to support Ukraine today or fight Russia tomorrow.