On November 7, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the audience at the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi that Kyiv provoked Moscow into going to war with Ukraine.
Putin claimed Russia stopped recognizing the sovereignty of Ukraine’s borders only after Kyiv violated a treaty with Russia by revoking the country’s neutral status.
“[W]e have always recognized the borders of Ukraine within the framework of our agreements after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” Putin stated, referring to a treaty that formalized the dissolution of the USSR and become known as the Belovezha Accords.
“But I draw your attention to the fact that the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine states — and Russia supported this — that Ukraine is a neutral state. And on this basis, we recognized the borders,” Putin continued.
“But later, as is known, the Ukrainian leadership amended the basic law and announced its desire to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and we did not agree to this.”
The claim is false.
Ukraine adhered to the treaty with Russia and pursued a nonaligned policy for decades. Kyiv only abolished the neutral status in its constitution and declared a desire to join the European Union and NATO in 2019 — five years after Russia annexed Crimea and provided military, financial and other support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
While NATO-Ukraine relations began in early 1990s when Ukraine broke off from the Soviet Union and declared its independence, the alliance decided to consider Ukraine’s membership in 2008, after Russia’s military invasion of Georgia and annexation of its South Ossetia region. Observers called that “the start of Europe’s first 21st century war,” and predicted that Putin’s next target would be Ukraine.
In February-March 2014, Russian forces occupied Crimea, seizing key sites and ousting the regional government. Russia held a tightly controlled referendum, after which Kremlin-appointed authorities claimed an overwhelming vote to join Russia. Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17, and the Kremlin declared it part of the Russian Federation the next day.
By annexing Crimea, Russia violated several international agreements that guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Apart from the Belovezha Accords, these include the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Russia and Ukraine, and the 2003 Treaty on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
In September 2018, Ukraine’s then President Petro Poroshenko proposed a constitutional amendment to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, seeking to enshrine Ukraine’s commitment to European integration and NATO membership in the country’s constitution.
Two months later, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court greenlit the bill. Verkhovna Rada approved the bill on February 7, 2019.
According to opinion polls, most Ukrainians began supporting the idea of their country joining NATO only after Russia occupied Ukrainian Crimea in 2014 and unleashed war in the Donbas.
NATO and Ukraine intensified cooperation after Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, Russia has been accused of committing war crimes in Ukraine, with hundreds of thousands killed and more than a dozen of cities destroyed.
The Kremlin also claimed three more Ukrainian regions as part of the Russian Federation. Iran, North Korea and China support Russia’s war effort with military aid and manpower.
The United Nations, along with other international bodies and governments, does not recognize Russia’s claims over Crimea and other Ukrainian regions.
The U.N. General Assembly has voted several times to affirm Ukraine’s “territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,” condemn the “temporary occupation” of Crimea, and reaffirm “non-recognition of its annexation.”
