The Introduction poses the question of how we should best understand the military conflict that began in 2014, showing why the prevailing explanations are insufficient. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many analysts believed that the problems of security in central Europe had disappeared. Security challenges did not disappear in 1991 and resurface later, but rather persisted. This chapter uses three concepts in international relations theory – the security dilemma, loss aversion, and the democratic peace – that will be used throughout the book to show why the new conflicts could not easily be managed.

Under Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine became increasingly autocratic. His concentration of political power and economic assets engendered opposition, but Ukraine seemed stable. While Yanukovych turned Ukraine toward Russia, making significant concessions in return for cheaper energy, he resisted the economic integration that Putin sought, hoping instead for a more popular Association Agreement with the EU. His efforts to play Russia and the EU against one another made Ukraine’s status a zero-sum game internationally. By 2013, it looked like Russia was primed to finally achieve the goal of reeling Ukraine back in, as Yanukovych succumbed to Russian pressure and delayed signing the EU Association Agreement.

As Russia massed troops on Ukraine’s borders in late 2021, few believed that Russia would actually carry out a full-scale invasion. On February 24, 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine along four axes. Contrary to expectations, Ukraine put up a spirited response and Russia’s attack stalled. The West enacted extensive sanctions and provided arms to Ukraine. By the summer of 2022 the war bogged down, with Russia in control of roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory. Both sides appeared committed to pursuing success on the battlefield rather than the bargaining table. The war was turning into a contest of logistics, resupply, and endurance.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shattered any remaining illusions about order in post-Cold War Europe. What caused the conflict? The grounds for conflict were deeply rooted and multiple factors interacted. From the outset, the actors’ goals were incompatible, even if that was obscured by the euphoria that accompanied the fall of communism. All the causes of the conflict remain in place, exacerbated by the war and responses to it. Understanding the deep causes of the conflict forces us to confront the likelihood that simple solutions, like Putin’s passing, are unlikely to solve it.

After 1999, Ukraine and Russia both slid toward autocracy. As Leonid Kuchma’s autocracy made him a less fit partner for the West, he moved closer to Russia, and Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election looked set to solidify Russia’s position in Ukraine. The overturning of that rigged election via the Orange Revolution shocked the Russian leadership. In addition to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Ukraine, revolution now appeared to threaten the Putin regime. By merging the Ukraine–Russia conflict with the growing Russia–West conflict, this episode made both harder to solve.

The Orange Revolution initially appeared as a victory for democracy in Ukraine and as a geopolitical victory for the West. Those two ideas – democratic revolution and geopolitics – became tightly linked in the eyes of Russian leaders, but whereas western thinkers saw democracy as fostering peace, Russia saw it as a weapon. The Orange Revolution also made Ukraine appear to be the fulcrum of security dilemma politics in central Europe. Both Russia and the West saw the other’s designs on Ukraine as threatening their security and as undermining the status quo. Meanwhile, the Orange Revolution fizzled, Viktor Yanukovych made a remarkable comeback, and Russia reasserted itself, bolstered by Putin’s popularity and by booming energy prices.

As communism collapsed, disagreements emerged that endured until 2014. Russia struggled unsuccessfully to keep Ukraine in a new Moscow-led union and disagreement over the Black Sea Fleet and its base in Crimea proved unresolvable. Meanwhile, Russia and the West advanced different visions for post-Cold War Europe. Pressured by both Russia and the US, Ukraine agreed to surrender its nuclear weapons in return for security assurances. Already in 1993, the prospect that a “red–brown” coalition of communists and fascists would come to power in Moscow prompted many countries to look for ways to guard against Russian reassertion, exacerbating the security dilemma.

The 1997 Russia–Ukraine Friendship Treaty appeared to confirm Ukraine’s borders and to settle the status of the Black Sea Fleet and Sevastopol, but many leading Russian politicians opposed it. Ukraine balanced its fear of Russia by becoming a leading participant in NATO’s Partnership for Peace. Meanwhile, the war in Yugoslavia exposed the tension between the western insistence on “European norms” and Russia’s insistence on its prerogatives as a traditional great power. By 1999, Russia was furious at NATO over expansion and Kosovo, and still sought to reintegrate Ukraine. However, the question of Ukraine remained largely distinct from Russia’s broader relationship with the West.

As the conflict in Donbas stabilized, Ukraine and Russia reached an impasse over how the Minsk agreements should be implemented. Ukraine gradually strengthened its ties with Europe, and secured the separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow’s control. The election of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 led to hopes for a breakthrough in negotiations, but little progress was made. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin enacted constitutional changes that would potentially keep him in power until 2036. While not quite frozen, the conflict appeared likely to endure at a manageable level of violence, potentially for many years.

The delay of the Association Agreement spurred protests, and violent repression caused them to grow. Yanukovych’s ouster outraged Putin, who again saw a revolution thwart Russia’s position in Ukraine. He saw an irresistible opportunity to respond. Seizing Crimea regained a territory Russia had always wanted; it showed that Russia could defy the West; it boosted Putin’s domestic popularity; and it hamstrung Ukraine’s new government. The conflict then spread to eastern Ukraine, where the shooting down of a passenger aircraft dramatically increased international outrage at Russia’s actions. The West enacted sanctions, while the conflict itself stabilized territorially in the February 2015 Minsk-2 agreement.