Since the beginning of the Russian aggression on Ukraine, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has constantly been repeating that all Europe is under threat. If many believe this to be Zelensky’s rhetoric aimed at obtaining military support from European countries, the Ukrainian leader has serious and well-founded reasons to make these claims. In his address to the Swedish Parliament in March, Zelensky stated, unequivocally: “Russia went to war against Ukraine because they want to advance further in Europe, they want to destroy freedom in Europe.” It is not by chance that he expressed himself so clearly in Sweden, one of those countries, together with Finland, recently threatened by Putin with “serious military and political consequences” in case they joined Nato.

Let us go back, then, to the early days of the aggression, which is actually only just over a month ago but seems like a century.

In the first speech pronounced on the occasion of the invasion, Putin talked about the supposed casus belli. In a public address, he described what, in his view, had made it ‘necessary’ for Russia to invade and destroy Ukraine. The reason was, in his words, Nato expanding to the East. The explanation was, of course, welcomed with jubilee by a myriad of antimperialists who, instead of denouncing Russian crimes in Ukraine, started calling this war “a Nato war.” After more than a month, in front of a destroyed country, over 4 million refugees and proof of atrocities beyond the conceivable, it is quite clear that Putin’s first explanation was nothing more than a joke. It is also adamant, that, even had this been the real reason (but it’s not), the amount of barbarities, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed would infinitely outweigh the gravity of the presumed offense.

Actually, Putin revealed the true colors of his military operations in one of the subsequent addresses to the nation, where he denied Ukraine to ever have had “real statehood” and where he described the country as an integral part of Russia’s “history, culture and spiritual space.” ‘Blaming’ Soviet leaders for the creation of Ukraine, in that speech he insisted in trying to prove the intrinsically Russian nature of Ukraine. This colonialist approach, animated by an aggressive “cancel culture,” fully betrays Putin’s real intent: to complete the russification of Ukraine by erasing Ukraine and its people.  The word ‘genocide,’ repeatedly mentioned by Zelensky in the last few weeks can be, in this context, used in its real etymological sense as the ferocity and magnitude of Russian crimes in Ukraine denote the clear intent to delete a whole nation.

Ukraine, however, as Zelensky himself has often tried to explain, is just a step preparing the further expansion of Russian power and influence even to the threshold of the European Union. This is, after all, Putin’s ‘nationalist imperialism,’ whose rhetoric puts Russia and its grandiosity at the center of the discourse. This form of imperialism has its ideological roots in the thought of people like Surkov, the theorist of the “sovereign democracy” doctrine, considered as an alternative to Western liberalism; of Ilyin, who encouraged a form of Christian authoritarianism; and, most of all, of Dugin, a philosopher and political analyst whose thought, integrating the most diverse and apparently opposed elements and tendencies, has the purpose of countering Western liberalism. In particular, in his book The Fourth Political Theory (first published in 1997), Dugin argued that Russia, in order to go back to its splendor and strengthen its global influence, should make sure ‘Atlanticism’ loses its influence over Eurasia.

So, maybe, has the invasion of Ukraine really been caused by Nato expansion to the east or, on the contrary, it is a veritable act of imperialistic expansion and aggression aimed at diminishing Atlantist influence and at eroding the European Union and its power?

In the last years, Russia has done everything in its power to destabilize Europe, trying to influence several countries’ national elections and encouraging Brexit for example. At the same time, it has tightened commercial and economic relations with many European countries and made a continent dependent on its gas. Even the Belarus refugee crisis, exploded between October and December 2021, was clearly staged by Putin and his allies (Bashar al Assad included) to pressure European borders and expose the Union’s weaknesses, mainly the lack of a common policy on migration, as well as the meandering racism of countries like Poland. In short, Putin’s Russia is deeply anti-European and its repeated attempts to undermine the European project is evident. The invasion of Ukraine, and of Crimea 8 years ago in the first place, is part of this overall plan,

At the end of 2013, Ukrainians peacefully took to the streets when filo-Russian president Yanukovich refused to sign an agreement that would have integrated Ukraine more closely with the European Union. The protests of what has been called “The revolution of dignity”  continued in 2014 in Kyiv’s Independence Square (or simply Meidan) but were met with extremely violent and repressive measures. In February 2014 the Parliament ousted Yanukovich , who fled the country, and elected Poroshenko. It is not, of course, a coincidence that the Russian invasion of Crimea began in February 2014. According to many, Euromeidan was not simply about Ukraine getting closer or being integrated into the European Union, but it was about Ukrainians affirming their identity, their desire to leave behind the Sovietic legacy and fully embrace democratic and liberal values. In a way, Ukrainians have been punished for their Europeanistic aspirations.