There are now five serious conflicts or antagonisms that involve states possessing nuclear weapons. In this article, I highlight the nuclear dynamics in these five settings.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict began with the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, followed by the invasion of Ukraine starting on February 24, 2022. Of course, there were earlier motivations for the Russia-Ukraine antagonism. In 2014, pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to leave Ukraine and was replaced by Petro Poroshenko, later by Volodymyr Zelenskyy. According to the UN, 14,200 people were killed (including 3,400 civilians) in Ukraine before 2022 in internal fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, particularly in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.
It should also be noted that in 1990-91, there was an explicit, but informal, agreement to limit the expansion of NATO to the territory of (former) East Germany. This agreement was extensively violated through NATO’s expansion to include Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Furthermore, before 2020, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia had also joined NATO. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland and Sweden joined the organisation. NATO’s expansion has significantly contributed to Russia’s sense of isolation and perception of external pressure. All this should not be interpreted as a “justification” for the Russian invasion, which remains a violation of international law. The purpose here is to understand Russia’s motivations in order to explore what a possible peace arrangement could be.
