Background: During negotiations in 1990 over German reunification, Western leaders (including U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl) made verbal assurances to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO military jurisdiction would not expand eastward into the territory of the former East Germany. Moscow has consistently argued that eastward expansion into former Warsaw Pact nations and former Soviet republics brings Western military infrastructure directly to Russia’s borders.
In 2014, a major revolution broke out in response to government corruption, police brutality, and the suspension of Ukraine’s integration into NATO. The United States funded the NGO’s which supported these Maidan protests. As the violence peaked and political support collapsed, President Yanukovych fled the country. Citing a threat to Russian-origin population and assets, Russia moved military forces into Crimea, annexed the peninsula in March 2014, and backed separatist movements in eastern Ukraine (Donbas), marking the start of the broader Russo-Ukrainian War.
The key reasons for the annexation of Crimea:
- Moscow has consistently argued that eastward expansion into former Warsaw Pact nations and former Soviet republics brings Western military infrastructure directly to Russia’s borders.
- The port of Sevastopol has long served as the main home for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, providing vital, round-the-clock access to maritime trade routes and projecting power into the Mediterranean and Middle East.
- The Russian government needed to defend ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking majorities—who made up roughly 60% of Crimea's population—following political upheaval in Kyiv.
- Gaining control of Crimea allowed Russia to seize valuable offshore oil and natural gas reserves in the surrounding Black Sea exclusive economic zone, cutting off potential competition with Ukraine's energy-independence efforts.
Recognition of Separatist Regions: Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions were fighting Ukraine to pressure it to leave pro-EU alignment. This area is collectively known as the Donbas. It broke away from Ukrainian government control in 2014 and proclaimed its independent "people's republics". The move led to a bloody conflict between Ukraine and Russia-backed forces, which partly ended with the signing of the Minsk agreement in 2015. Subsequently, on 22 Feb 2022, Russia recognised the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic by signing a decree.
The Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine: On February 24, 2022, Putin announced a "special military operation," and Russian forces launched coordinated missile strikes and ground invasions from the north (via Belarus), east, and south (via Crimea), aiming for regime change in Kyiv. However, Russia has failed to seize Kyiv and install a pro-Moscow government or take a promise from Ukraine against joining NATO. Thus, the fighting could drag on and become a war of attrition.
Ukraine received billions of dollars in military aid from the West to fight the Russian invasion. Zelensky responded by declaring martial law and general mobilisation of Ukraine's military-age population. Ukrainian Forces have been able to defend themselves because Ukraine's military underwent extensive reforms in the years since Russia annexed Crimea (2014), and defence spending increased dramatically during that time. In addition, their personnel have earned valuable combat experience while serving in the Donbas against Russian proxies since 2014. As of now, Russia occupies about 20% of Ukraine’s territory. But Ukraine will be able to hold on to its territories in the coming months, assuming continued Western military support, intelligence sharing, and unimpeded access to Starlink and Starshield communications technologies. However, Russian forces are now targeting strategically important locations using missiles and drones. The power grid has been the hardest hit, causing severe electricity shortages across Ukraine. The people of Ukraine are hardest hit by death, injuries and displacement.
The war has been responsible for the deaths, total killed, wounded, or missing between 525,000 and 625,000, more than two lakh soldiers and thousands of civilians in Ukraine. Russia has suffered roughly 400,000 to 450,000 deaths (and over 1.5 million total casualties, including wounded). The costs of rebuilding Ukraine could be $588 billion over the next 10 years. Finding those funds will be difficult as the war has significantly weakened the Ukrainian economy.
Projecting the outcome of the war is challenging. The war has badly damaged Russia's military, disrupted the economy, and profoundly altered the geopolitical picture in the region.
Finland and Sweden, which long pursued neutrality policies, have joined NATO. They have significant military capabilities. Their membership in the alliance makes the Baltic Sea effectively a NATO lake, leaving Russia with limited access.
The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution for rejecting — and demanding reversal — of Moscow's illegal annexation of Ukraine. Russia demands a halt to NATO expansion and the containment of NATO forces in countries that had been members before 1997. This would, in effect, remove the NATO security umbrella from eastern and southern Europe and the Baltic States.
Solution: A trilateral agreement involving Russia, the US, and Ukraine that includes an immediate ceasefire, NATO forswearing eastward expansion, armed neutrality for Ukraine, de facto territorial control, a Russian-contributed reconstruction fund, and phased sanctions relief, backed by the UN Security Council. The US must offer concessions on severe sanctions on Russia, and Russia may be promised that cases of war crimes will not be pursued against it to bring Russia to the negotiation table.
Reports indicate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has shown a willingness to consider freezing the conflict along current front lines if Ukraine receives credible security guarantees from the United States and European allies, though control of the Donbas region remains a major sticking point. If Ukraine recognised that Crimea was Russian, which it did until 1954, then Putin would become more accommodating concerning the other occupied provinces; they could, for example, become neutral zones of common interest, with a regime of free exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine should promise not to join NATO. This pledge would allow Russia to abandon the conflict by declaring victory. On the other hand, Ukraine's candidacy for the European Union (and not NATO membership) would be honoured. Russia should promise to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and to desist from destabilising its democracy.
The West has frozen more than $300 billion in Russian Central Bank reserves. Some of these must be utilised for Ukraine's reconstruction.
For controlling wars in the future, a limit needs to be set on deployments of conventional forces across all of Europe, including a tactical nuclear weapons arms control arrangement.
Conclusion: The ongoing conflict is primarily a proxy war between the USA and Russia, which has also become a civil war within Ukraine. Prolonging this armed conflict is likely to have devastating consequences for the people of Ukraine. Therefore, a political-diplomatic solution is required to resolve the Ukraine conflict.