The history of humanity, consisting of the history of wars, was forbidden from the use of force in international relations, rather than the “right” of states, to war with the post-Second World War United Nations Treaty. Yet wars still exist as a frequent option in international politics. States that want to have more in an environment where there is no land left unshared, scarce resources, and unlimited needs, are looking for military options. The fact that global military spending over $2 trillion[1] in 2022 shows the strong belief that the most important actor in the international system, states, can still protect their interests through military force. Russia’s military operation against Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was an unacceptable situation for the international community, which witnessed the brutality of the war, although it was a regular development in the course of history. Therefore, the Russia-Ukraine War, which produced important regional and global influences, needs to be analyzed.
Further, when the final period of the process that turned into the Russian-Ukrainian War is examined, it can be said that the problem was deliberately provoked by Russia and moved to the crisis dimension first and then to the war dimension. In 2021, Russia began to deploy Ukrainian troops and conduct exercises in the region. On December 15, 2021, Moscow forwarded the draft agreements requesting security guarantees to the United States (USA) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and put forward demands for a conclusion as soon as possible. Despite the negotiations, the guarantees demanded by Moscow were not given by the United States and NATO. The United States and Western countries have threatened and tried to deter Russia from imposing unprecedented economic sanctions if it invades Ukraine, in line with rising political and military tensions at the Russian-Ukrainian border. The Moscow administration has deployed troops to Belarus on the grounds of the exercise. Recognizing the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on 21 February 2022, the Kremlin launched a military offensive against Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The general public of the world thought that the Ukrainian Army would surrender soon and the Ukrainian Government would be overthrown due to the superiority that Russia has in the physical elements of its combat power. In fact, Russia has defined the military operation it has launched not as a war, but as a “special military operation”. Russia has thought that it can gain control in Ukraine in a short time by quickly capturing important military targets with elite troops, as it has done in the past in Crimea. Although the Russian Army had initially achieved partial successes in its operations from Belarus to the north-east of Ukraine, from Belgorod to the northeast, from the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics to the south and from Crimea to the south, it stopped advancing quickly, losing characteristics such as initiative, agility and tempo that were important in the offensive. The capital Kiev, which is the command-control center of Ukraine and is a physical and more psychological target, was not captured; major cities like Sumi, Chernihiv and Kharkov were besieged; However, no cities were allowed to enter, and only Kherson was captured after an attack in the south. A major coastal city, Mariupol, was able to be contained after about three months of operation. On 25 March 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the operation had reached its initial stage targets, and that the Russian Army would withdraw from Kiev and Chernihiv to focus on the region of East Ukraine and particularly the Donbas region. However, Russia’s plans to change one of its most important goals, rather than a successful planned one; It was the failure of the Russian Army on the battlefield.
The Russian Army began to experience problems in very basic logistical areas shortly after the start of the operation, revealing that Russia had predicted an easy victory in Ukraine and had built on the assumption that its operational plans would be triumphed soon. However, resistance by the Ukrainian state and the Russian army under the leadership of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky led to a change in Western policy towards Russia. In addition to imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia, the West also began providing critical weapons, equipment, intelligence and training support to the Ukrainian Army. This allowed the West to weaken Russia in the economic sphere as well as militarily.
On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the goals of military action against Ukraine as protecting people and, for this purpose, de-Nazification and disarming Ukraine.[2] The strategic and military goals that are the subject of the bet remained vague and subjective and were not limited. It is impossible to transform these strategic goals into concrete military goals at the operational level. However, it is impossible to consider the uncertainty observed in the strategic goals as an erroneous assessment of Russian state management and Russian military thinking at the advanced level.
With these vague, subjective and unconstrained strategic goals, Putin assumed that Ukraine would soon be able to invade all of them. Thus, the Russian Army was not deliberately given clear, objective and limited strategic objectives that would prevent its advance when it succeeds. However, with the resistance of Ukraine and the help of Western states, particularly the United States, to provide Kiev with military weapons, equipment, intelligence, and training, Russia failed to receive the military results it desired on the battlefield and its operation was deemed unsuccessful. What are the factors that led Russia to launch a military operation against Ukraine on February 24, 2022?
Russia’s launch of the Ukraine War has close ties to Moscow’s two basic foreign and security policies. These are; polarity is the creation of the world and its immediate environmental policies. Russia is opposed to the United States’ drive to maintain its unipolar world order and hegemony, especially with China. According to Russia, there are 4-5 major powers, including 193 members of the UN, who are in fact the sovereign power. These great powers have their own surroundings.
According to Moscow, great powers should act in harmony with international politics, mutually unintervening in each other’s spheres of influence and balancing one another. Russia’s multi-polar world vision is a reference to the elements of national power in the great powers. The present international security system established after World War II also reflects the balance of power in international politics. The present-day international security system, based on the UN Treaty, grants the five states of the United States, Russia, Britain, China and France the right to permanent membership and veto the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). These large powers define what constitutes a threat to international security and peace, and can be exempt from international law enforcement under their veto powers. This shows that as stated in the UN treaty, not all member states are truly equal.
On the other hand, with its close environment policy, Russia does not want effective political, military and economic power other than itself in the former Soviet geography, which it sees as a zone of influence in a way that supports the policy of a multipolar world order. In the USA, it has not allowed/does not allow the existence of another great power in its immediate vicinity in the past and present. In fact, the Washington administration, more than 750 military bases in more than 70 countries around the world, the world ocean navigation in aircraft carrier fleets, and large diplomatic mission in the political, military and economic alliances with closely following the developments in every region of the world, is developing measures for the future. This shows that the great powers are trying to create a zone of influence around them and be effective in these regions. As the national power elements of the great powers increase, their zones of influence also expand.
In Russia and Ukraine, NATO expanded five times in the post-Cold War period to approach the borders with Russia. Ukraine, a geopolitical battleground between Russia and the West since the Orange Revolution in 2004, is the last buffer zone between Russia and NATO. Russia has already taken military action against Ukraine, despite the fact that there are no efforts in Kiev or Brussels to ensure that Ukraine joins NATO anytime soon. Because Moscow believes that if the current trend continues, Ukraine will join NATO within the framework of the NATO Bucharest Summit in 2008. Accordingly, Russia has taken preventive measures not against an imminent threat to its own security, but against a threat situation that may pose to it in the coming period.
In the Western security literature, the threat consists of elements of capacity and intention, while Russian military thinking adds an element of proximity to it. In this context, Ukraine’s membership in NATO will lead to the emergence of elements of capacity and proximity from Russian threat elements. On the other hand, although NATO currently has no intention of attacking Russia, Russian military thinking says that the element of intent may suddenly change and that the country’s security may never be left at the mercy of the other side. In other words, if Moscow does not take military action in Ukraine, it thinks that there will be a war on its territory in the coming period.
In fact, governments need to take appropriate measures in the short- and medium-term to ensure long-term survival. Ukraine, for example, would not have transferred its nuclear weapons stockpile to Russia in exchange for international guarantees with the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, had it predicted that Russia would annex Crimea in 2014, would support pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2015, would have attempted a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And these nuclear weapons are the most important deterrent to the United States and to the West in Russia’s operation against Ukraine.
Russia is waging a proxy war with NATO in Ukraine, thinking that it would easily carry out a military operation against Ukraine and deal with economic sanctions. Both economically and militarily battered Russia is neither a loser nor a winner in the ongoing war. Russia is not in a winning situation. Because in two or three days, we want to invade all of Ukraine. It has only controlled two major cities such as Herson and Mariupol. Russia suffered a major loss in terms of military and moral prestige, and was also stripped of a significant force factor, such as the Moscow missile cruiser. Russia is not in a losing situation. Because it controls 5% of Ukraine before February 24, 2022, and today controls an average of 15%. The Azac Sea has also become a Russian inland sea, a land connection between Crimea and Russia has been established, and Russian activity in the Black Sea has increased.
The Russia-Ukraine War, once again, shows that only numerical superiority in war does not guarantee victory. Beyond the physical dimension of war there is the moral and intellectual dimension. In the Russo-Ukrainian War, Moscow suffered both moral and intellectual problems. The fact that Ukraine, which is primarily the enemy of Russia, the United States and NATO, but also of the Slavic race, has become a target of military action cripples the morale of war. On the other hand, since Sun Tzu, it appears that the principles of war, which arose as a result of efforts to establish rules for what would help achieve victory in the war, were not adequately considered by Russia in planning the Ukrainian campaign. In this case, it’s largely because states and armies learn more from their defeats than victories. Russia recently won relatively easy victories in 2008 in the Georgian War, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2015. The Kremlin felt that it would gain an easy victory in Ukraine as well, exaggerating its own power and underestimating the power of Ukraine.
An important aspect that can be taken out of the war on Russia’s security is that it is impossible for Russia to ensure its security with conventional forces. It does not seem possible for Russia to protect its area, which accounts for 11% of the world, with its population, which again accounts for 1.8% of the world.
On the other hand, Russia is facing China in the east and NATO in the West. As in history, Russia’s greatest fear today is to fight both NATO and China at the same time in a two-front war. This leads to the fact that nuclear forces are the only element on which Russia bases the country’s security. However, nuclear forces prevent Russia from being attacked with the deterrence they provide. The use of nuclear weapons when Russia is attacked can have unpredictable and devastating consequences for both Russia and Eurasia and the whole world. In other words, nuclear weapons provide protection by means of deterrence until the war begins, and after the war begins, conventional forces with powerful capabilities are needed. History has witnessed the subsequent restoration of independence and sovereignty of a large number of enemy-occupied countries. But a war in which nuclear weapons are used has the potential to deprive states and nations of this opportunity.
In case of a serious threat to the existence of the state in official doctrine, declare that it will use nuclear weapons against conventional attacks even Russia, who is the subject of the present approach, which has a stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world’s largest conventional capabilities weakness and considering also the fact that, in terms of international security is one of the most current threats.
[1] World Military Expenditure Passes $2 Trillion for First Time”, Sipri, https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time (Date of Accession: 24.05.2022).
[2] Address by the President of the Russian Federation”, President of Russia, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843, (Date of Accession: 24.05.2022).
