Why Putin Wants Ukraine

Olympus News
Mar 6, 2022
4 min read

By: Stephen Widjaja

There’s no easy way to put this: as this article is written on the 24th of February 2022, Russia has officially commenced it’s invasion of Ukraine. An all out military effort to encompass the smaller baltic nation, attacking by land on its Eastern and Northern borders, by sea towards it’s south, and attacking critical infrastructure by air.

In a tragically desperate effort to put up a resistance, Ukraine’s President Zelensky declared martial law, and has decreed for General Mobilization, prohibiting men ages 18-60 from leaving the country. There are countless reports of military (and some civilian) casualties, as well as claims of Ukrainian forces pushing back on Russian advancements, unfortunately the reliability of accounts is very questionable. What we do know is that Russian forces have been able to destroy or take over a worryingly large amount of Ukrainian Infrastructure, both military and industrial (including Chernobyl).

As bullets to fly and bombers soar above Ukraine, the wider international community has rallied to protest and to condemn Putin’s Administration. Western governments have started to pile on economic sanctions on Russia, both the US and the UK have frozen overseas Russian financial assets, and have banned Russian Banks from their respective economies. Though notably, they haven’t been able to reach a consensus to cut Russia off of SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), a Belgium-based medium all banks in the world use to communicate to each other in order to arrange transactions worth billions of dollars daily. However, this all begs the question: what does Putin hope to gain, in order for him to risk ostracization by the global community and a potentially devastating economic recession?

Why does Putin want Ukraine so badly?

In order to try and understand the madness behind the situation, we must roll back a couple of weeks (when the idea for this article was originally conceived, oops). Tensions first peaked between Russia and the rest of the world when large numbers of Russian troops were seen accumulating around the Ukrainian borders with Russia and Belarus. In recent years Russia has had a strenuous relationship with Ukraine, to say the least. From election rigging to annexing Crimea (a peninsula that used to be part of Ukraine), Putin has always had his eyes set on seizing back control of Ukraine.

From the very beginning, Ukraine and

Russia have always had an entangled history. The ethnic group that makes up the majority of the population in Ukraine and Russia were once part of a nation called Kyivan Rus, up until the mongol invasion.

After a very tumultuous few centuries, the inseparable pair were once again reunited as the Russian Empire. Eventually, the working class revolted against the Tsarship, and formed the USSR, a not-so-communist state ruled by Stalin, a notoriously harsh dictator. The people of Ukraine, like the rest of the USSR, ultimately suffered under the rule of Stalin, and millions starved to death despite the fertile and prosperous soil in Ukraine. As a result it wasn’t surprising at all that by the end of the 1980s, Ukrainians vied for Independence from Russia.

After decades of being under Soviet rule, Ukraine finally gained its independence on the 1st of August 1991, installing a democracy and voting a president in power. Eventually, Ukraine became more “Western”, and they decided to pursue a NATO membership, to the disdain of Putin. As a former KGB Member, Putin has always longed for the grandiosity of the USSR, calling it’s demise the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe”, and Ukraine going to NATO for help made him furious. Aside from historical grudges, a NATO-Backed Ukraine would corner Russia and greatly limit their influence in Eastern Europe. As a result, Putin decided to prevent Ukraine’s membership in NATO, by whatever means necessary.

Fast forward 10 years, and tensions that have been building for decades have finally boiled over, and unfortunately, the people of Ukraine will bear the consequences. Fortunately for Putin, however, a Russian takeover of Ukraine has the potential to bring about many great positives for his nation. Assuming everything goes extremely smoothly, by invading Ukraine, Russia significantly increases its influence in Europe, and regains its position as THE regional power in Eastern Europe, pushing back NATO’s progress in the region significantly, and humiliating them in the process. Not to mention gaining control over Ukraine’s large amounts of natural resources, considering Ukraine is the world’s 5th largest exporter of wheat, the 7th largest producer of Iron ore, 5th largest producer of titanium, and the 2nd largest source of natural gas in Europe (behind Russia).

Unfortunately, it is unlikely for the major western nations to intervene directly with military action, as doing so would most definitely escalate the war in Ukraine into a World War, potentially a nuclear one, where no one comes out a victor. As harsh as it may seem, the truth is governments all across the world have likely considered all possible courses of action, and deemed that sitting back and giving support from afar is the safe option to stay away from the possibility of a third, nuclear, world war.

As Albert Einstein so eloquently put it: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”