NATO Was the Alibi, Not the Cause

I watched a Vlad Vexler YouTube chat recently that put into words something that has been bothering me for a while. The idea that Putin invaded Ukraine because of NATO expansion has the causality neatly backwards. NATO is the excuse. Ukraine was always the problem.

Look at the timeline, not the slogans.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became independent with borders Russia formally recognised. Moscow signed up to that settlement repeatedly, including the Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine even gave up nuclear weapons on the back of it. If this was about Russian insecurity, that should have been the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

Putin’s worldview hardened long before Ukraine was anywhere near NATO membership. His grievance was never missiles in Poland. It was the loss of empire. He has said as much himself. The “geopolitical catastrophe” line was not about NATO bureaucracy. It was about territory, status, and control.

When NATO expanded in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia complained but cooperated. It worked with NATO in Afghanistan. It accepted the reality. Ukraine was not part of this, and not a serious candidate. If NATO expansion were an existential threat, this period makes no sense.

Then came Georgia in 2008. Not a NATO member. No NATO troops. Still invaded. The lesson was clear and it was not about defence. Drift away from Moscow and force will follow.

Ukraine learned that lesson the hard way. And here is the point that destroys the reactive narrative entirely. In 2010 Ukraine explicitly dropped its NATO ambitions. Non-aligned. Neutral on paper. If NATO were the cause, pressure should have eased. Instead Russia turned the screws harder.

When Ukraine finally slipped out of Moscow’s political grip in 2014, Russia took Crimea and lit the Donbas fuse. Again, no NATO membership. No NATO bases. No imminent threat. Just a neighbouring country refusing to stay in its assigned box.

From then on, the NATO argument became louder and more theatrical, precisely as Russia armed itself, rewrote history, and denied that Ukraine was a real nation at all. That is not the language of a state worried about security buffers. It is the language of an empire nursing a grievance.

By 2021 the demands were so sweeping they gave the game away. Not just “no Ukraine in NATO,” but a rollback of NATO itself and a veto over other countries’ choices. That is not defensive realism. It is a claim to dominion.

And when the invasion came, it went straight for Kyiv. Regime change. Erasure of Ukrainian statehood. Occupying Ukraine would not have reduced NATO’s border with Russia. It would have doubled it. That alone tells you what this was not about.

Vexler’s point is a simple one, and it holds. NATO did not cause the invasion. The invasion made NATO expansion inevitable. Finland and Sweden are not joining because they suddenly fell in love with Washington. They joined because Russia demonstrated, beyond doubt, that neutrality is only respected when Moscow finds it convenient.

So when people say “Russia was provoked,” what they really mean is that Ukraine tried to exist independently and Russia objected. NATO is the alibi. Empire is the motive. The timeline is not complicated, unless you are trying very hard not to see it.