The USA did not provoke Russia but enabled it

From the KyivPost:

"OPINION: No, America Didn’t Provoke Russia – We Enabled It

Those who claim NATO enlargement was responsible for Russian aggression have it backwards. Russian aggression has been consistently fueled by the West’s reluctance to confront it.

By Alexei Sobchenko, June 29, 2025

There’s a narrative gaining ground in some conservative and academic circles: that the United States and NATO provoked Russia into invading Ukraine. You’ve likely heard it –whether from Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, or Tulsi Gabbard. This idea has also taken hold among influential scholars like John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs and Jonathan Haslam, who argue that decades of Western overreach – especially NATO expansion – backed Putin into a corner.

This interpretation may sound intellectually appealing, especially after the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is flat-out wrong.

Russia didn’t invade Ukraine because America was too aggressive. It invaded because we were too weak for too long. The Kremlin saw appeasement, not resolve. It interpreted our caution as a blank check.

The West’s long history of looking away

If you want to understand what “provoked” Putin, just look at what the West let him get away with:

• In 1992, Russia armed separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, undermining Georgia’s sovereignty.
• That same year, Russian troops intervened in the conflict between Moldova and Transnistrian separatists, taking the side of the breakaway regime and helping establish a Russian protectorate that still exists today.
• In 1993, US President Bill Clinton backed Russian President Boris Yeltsin after he ordered tanks to shell the Russian Parliament, crushing an internal constitutional crisis by force.
• In 1994, the Clinton administration gave its blessing – diplomatically if not militarily – to Russia’s genocidal war against Chechnya, a nation that had opposed Russian domination for centuries. The Chechens declared independence after the Soviet collapse, but Moscow responded with overwhelming force. Grozny was flattened. Thousands were killed. Washington looked away.
• In 1996, Vice President Al Gore flew to Moscow to endorse a questionable election outcome and falsely assured the public of Yeltsin’s health, helping keep a moribund autocrat in power.
• In 1999, after a series of apartment bombings many experts believe were staged by the FSB, Putin launched a second war in Chechnya – this time to solidify his rise to power.
• 2008: Russia invaded Georgia under a fabricated humanitarian pretext. No real US response.
• 2014: Putin seized Crimea – the first successful annexation in world history since World War II, creating a dangerous precedent – and started a covert war in eastern Ukraine. President Obama refused to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine, offering blankets instead.
• 2015: Russia sent troops to prop up the anti-Western Assad regime in Syria.
• 2016: Russian intelligence interfered in the US election – to divide and weaken American democracy.

When assassinations became state policy

• In 2006, journalist Anna Politkovskaya – a fierce critic of Putin and chronicler of the Chechen wars – was gunned down in her Moscow apartment building on Putin’s birthday. Her assassination marked the beginning of a new chapter in Russian repression: the open use of murder as an instrument of state policy.

  Politkovskaya was the first high-profile opposition figure openly eliminated by the regime’s security services or their proxies. But she was not the last. Over the next two decades, a long list of critics was silenced. The most visible victims were:

  • Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister turned fierce Kremlin critic, was shot in 2015 on a bridge just steps from the Kremlin – a symbolic act meant to intimidate.
  • Alexei Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition figure and anti-corruption activist, was poisoned with a nerve agent in 2020, returned to Russia after recovering abroad, was imprisoned, and died in 2024 under suspicious circumstances in an Arctic penal colony.

  After seeing the West’s mute response, Putin went further: he began eliminating opponents abroad. Two brazen cases involved radioactive poisonings – Alexander Litvinenko, and Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK. But there were a dozen or more unexplained deaths of prominent Russian émigrés overseas, including former information minister Mikhail Lesin in Washington, DC.

  Traditional assassinations were also not ruled out. When caught, Russian assassins were traded for American hostages – tourists, journalists, missionaries – detained in Russia on fabricated charges. The Kremlin murdered its enemies and then bartered the killers back for innocent Americans. And we let them.

  Let’s drop the NATO excuse

  The “NATO provocation” argument is factually flawed. The last serious push for Ukrainian membership happened in 2008 and was blocked by Germany and France. After the Cold War, NATO members – especially in Europe – pursued an unbridled disarmament race, slashing defense budgets and trying not to antagonize Russia.

  Before the invasion, Germany and the UK had just one battle-ready brigade each. France claimed to have seven brigade-level formations ready for rapid deployment. Even if that were accurate, by 2022, NATO wasn’t threatening Russia – it was barely capable of defending itself. Moscow saw weakness and opportunity, not encirclement.

  The disarmament of Ukraine

  One of Putin’s most absurd justifications for invasion was his demand that Ukraine be demilitarized. In fact, over the decades, Ukraine repeatedly disarmed itself with the US encouragement in order to please Russia.

  After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had one of the largest military arsenals in Europe:

  • 1,700 Soviet-era nuclear warheads,
  • 130 UR-100N (SS-19) and 46 RT-23 Molodets (SS-24) ICBMs,
  • 33 strategic bombers (e.g., Tu-160, Tu-95),
  • Thousands of tanks, APCs, and artillery systems,
  • Hundreds of combat aircraft,
  • 6 million PFM-1 “butterfly” mines.

  Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which the US imposed on Ukraine, the latter gave up all its nuclear warheads and strategic missiles (some of which later returned to kill Ukrainians). In return, the United States did not commit to protecting Ukraine. By 2002, Ukraine had dismantled its entire strategic bomber fleet, including 11 Tu-160s and 27 Tu-95s, and transferred an additional 11 bombers to Russia, along with 582 Kh-55 cruise missiles – some later used in strikes against Ukrainian civilians.

  Under the CFE Treaty and 1996 Flank Agreement, Ukraine destroyed 2,450 tanks, 2,222 APCs, and 550 combat aircraft. From 1992 to 2008, more than 52,000 pieces of equipment were destroyed.

  Under the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty, Ukraine destroyed 101,088 anti-personnel mines in 1999 and reported 568,248 destroyed by 2014. By 2021, about half of its original stockpile remained.

  How much further could Ukraine have been disarmed – had Putin not invaded?

  Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants power.

  Calls to “make a deal” with Putin ignore the regime’s nature. Putin isn’t a misunderstood leader – he’s a predator. He thrives on escalation. Appeasement doesn’t pacify him; it encourages him. The very thought of reaching a deal with him is inherently wrong.

  Trying to reason with Putin is like trying to negotiate with a shark in your pool. Either he eats you, or you eliminate him. Coexistence is not an option.

  For years, Russian state propaganda has portrayed America as an arch-enemy. The average Russian, saturated in state propaganda, now believes that the United States – not Russia –is the aggressor in Ukraine, and that Ukrainians are mere proxies of Washington. This ideological posture is not without consequences. Should the United States now pressure Ukraine into accepting a ceasefire favorable to Moscow, it would only embolden further Russian adventurism in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or even domestically within the US. As long as Putin remains in the Kremlin, the US will continue to face trouble. 

  Ukraine is not Iraq. This is not regime change

  Let’s be clear: Ukraine is not Iraq. This is not a war of choice. Ukraine isn’t asking for US troops – only weapons to defend itself.

  Nor is this about regime change. But if Russia is defeated, history suggests change follows:

• After the Crimean War, Tsar Alexander II freed the serfs.
• After the Russo-Japanese War, Russia held its first elections.
• After Russia’s defeat in World War I, the Romanovs fell in the February Revolution.
• As the Soviet Union was being defeated in Afghanistan, Gorbachev launched perestroika and glasnost.

Defeat breaks the system. Today, that system is Putin...

We have a window. Don’t blow it.

Paradoxically, the war has created a strategic opportunity. Ukrainian resilience has shattered the myth of Russian military might. Had President Biden delivered decisive aid in 2022 – instead of drip-feeding support over three years – Ukraine might have already won.

But it’s not too late. Victory is still possible... But if Putin walks away with land, leverage, and the illusion of victory, he won’t stop.

Worse, Beijing is watching. If Russia wins by attrition, what lesson does that send about Taiwan – or the global order?

We don’t need to fight for Ukraine. We just need to help it win. A Ukrainian victory would be a strategic triumph: Putin falls, the world stabilizes, and the price is paid by Russia – not the United States.

We’ve appeased Moscow long enough. It’s time to stop blaming ourselves – and start leading again." 

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