Notes

By late January, 100,000 Russian troops were massed on Russia’s border with Ukraine, as tanks and military helicopters swarmed in behind them. With tensions mounting, diplomats raced to head off a possible invasion, and the United States—a committed ally of Ukraine—threatened a decisive response if Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, attacked his neighbor.

“I made it very clear: If, in fact, he invades Ukraine, there will be severe consequences,” President Biden said, following a long-distance virtual summit meeting with Putin in December, “severe consequences—and economic consequences like none he’s ever seen or ever have been seen.”

The Ukraine crisis set up what may be the most heated confrontation between the U.S. and Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War three decades ago, Russia experts say. The standoff is rooted in Putin’s longstanding anger over Russia’s diminished status since the days when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were the world’s two superpowers; now only the U.S. remains.

“Putin sees an opportunity to reverse everything that’s happened in Europe in the last 30 years, to push the West out of Eastern Europe, and they’re using Ukraine as a hostage in this,” says Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank.


Jim McMahon


Europe has changed a lot in the past three decades. Many Eastern European countries—places that were either part of the Soviet Union or within its sphere of influence—have become Western-leaning democracies. Fourteen of them have joined NATO, the security alliance that was formed in the aftermath of World War II to contain Communism. Several other Eastern European nations, including Ukraine, have asked to join NATO in the future.

As a price for ending Russia’s threats on Ukraine, Putin wants the U.S. and its NATO allies to remove all weapons and forces from countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. And the West must promise that Ukraine and other former Soviet states will never be allowed to join the NATO alliance. In other words, Putin is trying to “re-create the old sphere of Soviet influence,” as historian Niall Ferguson puts it.

Despite indications in late January that an invasion could be imminent, the U.S. wasn’t backing down. The Biden administration called Russia’s demands “nonstarters” and said it was considering sending thousands of U.S. troops to Eastern Europe as a deterrent.



The Cold War
Struggles between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991
Russia-U.S. Tensions

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have a long history (see timeline slideshow below). During the Cold War—a four-decades-long conflict between Soviet Communism and Western democracy that began in the years after World War II (1939-45)—the two superpowers struggled for global supremacy and several times came close to outright head-to-head war.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a new democratic Russia was born, and it looked briefly like the U.S. and Russia might become allies. But Russia—which before the 1917 Communist revolution had been ruled by autocratic czars for more than 350 years—had no experience with democracy. In the mayhem of the transition period in the 1990s, when capitalism and private enterprise replaced government ownership of most businesses, prices soared and the economy crashed. That left many Russians impoverished and disillusioned.

So when Putin came to power in 1999 promising security and prosperity, many Russians welcomed the idea of having a new strongman in charge. Since then, Putin has consolidated power and eliminated his opposition. Life for many Russians has improved, mostly because of global demand for oil from Russia’s vast reserves.

Putin is trying to ‘re-create the old Soviet sphere of influence.’

But, in a throwback to the days of Soviet dictatorship, most of Putin’s critics and political rivals have been imprisoned under sketchy circumstances or even killed. Many more have fled the country. The protests that erupted last year against Putin’s growing authoritarianism have been quashed. Putin’s United Russia party claimed a sizable victory in September’s parliamentary elections, and despite evidence of electoral fraud, there were few protests.

Putin’s approval rating now stands above 60 percent. And last year, Putin signed a law allowing him to run for two more six-year presidential terms, potentially extending his rule to 2036.

All the while, Putin has increasingly portrayed the U.S. as an enemy of renewed Russian greatness. The government has promoted a steady militarization of Russian society, including a propaganda program aimed at young people (see “A Growing ‘Youth Army,’ ” below).