By Victoria Ojeme

In the mind of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, the events leading to December 25, 1991, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist as a sovereign state should not have happened. The collapse of the former USSR was gradual, but Putin feels Russia was taken advantage of its weakest point by the rest of Europe. Now, he dreams of a remaking of the former union, or at least sometime close to it.

The Soviet Union was once the largest country in the world, covering more than 22 million square kilometers. It consisted of 15 Soviet socialist republics but was highly centralized for most of its history. Although the U.S.S.R.’s official language was Russian, more than 200 other languages and dialects were spoken, and it was home to more than 290 million people of various ethnicities.

According to some, the dissolution of the Soviet Union began when its last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power and introduced reforms that were aimed at ensuring more democracy and economic prosperity. All that is history now.

However, back in 2012 when Putin was still the Prime Minister of Russia, he had a vision for a Soviet Union-lite he hopes will become a new Moscow-led global powerhouse. Then, he claimed his planned Eurasian Union won’t be grounded in ideology but on trade.

Today, Ukraine has become central to Russia’s expansionist ambitions. Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea in 2015 and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine have ruptured its relations with the West, and Putin has intentionally recreated a Cold War atmosphere by touting Russia’s “conservative values” as an ideological counterweight to the American-led liberal world order.

Since last week, Russia has massed an estimated 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, with the United States and its European allies scrambling to deter an invasion and respond to Putin’s demands.

Although Russia has denied it’s planning to attack the former Soviet state, Putin has issued several security demands that have been dismissed by the West, resulting in a diplomatic stalemate. Russia is demanding NATO deny membership to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries and to roll back its military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.

But why is Putin obsessed with Ukraine? Russia and Ukraine have been linked by a common history since the ninth century, when Kyiv became the capital of the ancient state of Rus.

In the early 20th century, the two nations and nearby Belarus formed the Slav core of the communist Soviet Union. In addition, many Russians and Ukrainians share family ties and speak closely related languages.

The two neighbours stayed aligned after the breakup of the USSR in 1991 but began drifting apart in the 2000s as Kyiv sought deeper integration with Europe.

The relationship had completely soured by 2014, when months of deadly protests and the toppling of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government culminated in Moscow annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Russia also threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s east, a war that has rumbled on ever since despite a series of shaky cease-fires, costing an estimated 14,000 lives.

For years, Putin has been saying Russians and Ukrainians are so closely historically and culturally aligned that they are essentially one people.

He has also said that Ukraine as an independent country is an artificial construct and lamented the breakup of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

A former KGB officer, Putin has spent his time in office seeking to restore Russia’s position in the world. The increasing presence of NATO, established in the wake of World War II as a bulwark against the then-Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe and the West’s close ties with Ukraine have been at the crux of Russia’s demands in the Ukraine standoff.

Putin’s statements on Ukraine’s history and statehood have given rise to a view among Russia observers that he sees Ukraine as “unfinished business” and wants to follow the seizure of Crimea with further action to bring the country back under Moscow’s influence, as he entertains an ambition to reconstitute a Moscow-led Eastern bloc reminiscent of Soviet times.

Indeed, the real cause of today’s crisis is Putin’s quest to return Ukraine to the Russian orbit. For the past eight years, he has used a combination of direct military intervention, cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, economic pressure, and coercive diplomacy to try and force Ukraine into abandoning its Euro-Atlantic ambitions. The failure of these efforts has led us to the current confrontation, with Russia now warning of “military-technical measures” if it does not succeed in re-establishing its dominance over Ukraine.

Putin’s ultimate objective is Ukraine’s capitulation and the country’s absorption into the Russian sphere of influence. His obsessive pursuit of this goal has already plunged the world into a new Cold War. It could now ignite a major armed conflict in the heart of Europe.

Nothing less than Ukraine’s return to the Kremlin orbit will satisfy Putin or assuage his fears over the further breakup of Russia’s imperial inheritance.

A diplomat and former Russian Ambassador to Nigeria, Nikolay Udovichenko said Russia’s military training at the Ukrainian border is no threat. “Our activities are transparent and fully correspond with the criteria and rules fixed by the international community. We allowed international observers including Americans and Ukrainians to come for relevant inspection activities in the territory of Russia,” he said.

He said that they are within the framework of the Treaty on Open Skies, according to which flights around territories of member states for observation from the air are organized, the flights were organized just a few weeks ago at the request of the Ukrainian party.

On whether Russia is going to invade Ukraine, Udovichenko said “Definitely not.”

“I would like to underline that we have absolutely no intention to cross the border to Ukraine. The President of Russia Vladimir Putin stated many times that we don’t want war with Ukraine or with any other country. We stand for the stability and prosperity of our neighbours. We will steadily apply such a policy. I am confident that there will be no military conflict with Ukraine,” he said.