This is a mischaracterization. He explained Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine, that it felt threatened by NATO's continual eastward encroachment and breaking of promises not to do so. That's different than endorsing the invasion, which he did not.
There were never any promises, and Putin barely even cared that it resulted in Finland and Sweden joining NATO.
Because Russia's stated motivation for invading Ukraine was never Putin's actual reason, which is basically an emotional desire for historical greatness by reclaiming Russia's lost empire, combined with war always being an excellent mechanism for staying in power and distracting from domestic problems.
So it's sad to see anyone falling for Putin's lies so easily. (See also Mearshimer.)
Giving a simple answer is not wrong if the long one takes much longer to explain. Multiple factors can be true, I'm sure Russia was uneasy that Siberia wanted to leave and with Ukraine gone they would have no direct access to water there. And the threat of China slowing taking over Russian land *with Russian permission of course*. Russia has attempted to do something even if extremely poorly miscalculated. That's kinda what Russia is known for, doing something and very often failing at it.
They have been lucky, sometimes clever but often terrible truly terrible at long term long planning. Ask their unpatriotic AI what it thinks, they will get mad about it too.
Even if you reject the "encroaching NATO" narrative, what makes "Putin just woke up one day and decided that remaking the Soviet Union and/or the zarist Russian Empire would be a great thing to do in the 21th century" the more plausible hypothesis?
What information do you have that Mearsheimer doesn't?
The IR community does not share Mearsheimer's take. He is very much known to be the exception. Which is why he's the only one we're referring to by name here, because his analysis is so contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts.
Except from within.
Disagree? Answer my questions below, and explain exactly how you would go about attacking Russia.
As to a more realistic narrative -- it's a bit more nuanced than the formulation you suggest, but even so -- is pretty much obvious once we look at the things Putin and key people around him have been saying, along with the last 350 years of so of Russia's history vis-a-vis its neighbors and Belarus and Ukraine in particular.
The links in the short comment tree below (which answered essentially the same question from just a few weeks ago) might be useful here:
Mearsheimer can be a bit too convincing for his own good, surely. What he has argued that is certainly convincing is that Russia was ready to negotiate a peace at the start of the war, when Russians and Ukrainians met in Belarus and then in Istanbul. If Putin wanted to recreate Imperial Russia, or the Soviet Union, then why would he negotiate for peace?
That's Mearsh's argument, which he articulates, e.g. here in Lex Friedman's show (sorry, I couldn't find a better source):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=2684
Full transcript here:
To distract western military support.
To distract offensive\defensive ukrainian plans.
To construct a peaceful narrative at home or the war mongering west.
To strengthen or pet allies, who mediate.
To gain intelligence about the willingness of territorial sacrifice.
Would Putin ever publicly admit his grand soviet plan? If no, then how would he behave instead? Consider georgia, chechenia, belarus, etc.
Because as he keeps saying over and over -- the only "peace" he will accept is one in which his claims to sovereignty on the territories he is currently sitting are recognized by Western powers. This was his core demand during the Istanbul talks, and it's his current demand now (though he's upped it a bit recently to include regime change in Kyiv).
For a serial territorial aggressor like the modern Russian state, "peace" is simply another mechanism for arriving that same the desired end state.
It's also useful as a propaganda tool, to mollify the opposition to what he's doing ("See, Putin just wants peace -- he even says so!"), get people to start talking about how costly the war is, how the West is the real aggresor and so forth. That's where Mearsheimer et al come in.
Maersheimer and Chomsky are useful idiots of the Kremlin
you don't know for sure. The only evidence is some notes from brit diplomats I think which refer on such promise..
Also, Ukraine is much more considered as Russian inner territory than Finland and Sweden, and Putin likely got freaked out that pro-western movements will move to actual Russia and kill his regime.
Putin's regime wanted heavy-handed control over its neighbors; and the Maidan revolution demonstrated not only that this control wasn't as strong as it appeared, but also that it might be possible to break free from that oppression for others too, including perhaps Russian's. That example was the threat from which Putin was "defending" himself.
As much as Chomsky's well-reasoned talks are worth respect, he never really addressed that well. Putin's defense vs. the NATO threat was about as reasonable as a colonial power's "defense" vs. their subject's freedom; and it's also being executed about as reasonably, too. But to hear Chomsky describe it this is basically irrelevant; anything opposed to American overreach is reasonable - even when it's clearly not, and it's not even clear there's any overreach in the matter at hand.
The way he phrases it, NATO was essentially at fault and the Russian response followed from that. I don't buy that he misspoke or we misheard; the line of reasoning was very clearly stated. We can quibble about what "taking sides" means, but the message he meant to convey was that the current outcome was the US's responsibility.
Chomsky's line of reasoning was clear, but it's always been very weak on this matter (he's said this quite often). It largely ignores the Kremlin's agency; it hardly matters what the US did here since the Kremlin had choices too and those mattered much more. Even more problematically, it ignored both Ukrainian and the wider post-Soviet region's agency as well. NATO expansion was never forced on anyone; to the contrary, it was eagerly sought after, and why? Because the Kremlin wasn't to be trusted, which turned out to be an accurate prediction.
It didn't have to be so; the Kremlin's institutional mistreatment of its neighborhood _caused_ that mistrust and sustain it to this day. The Kremlin could have acted in good faith, and would have continued to receive the warm welcome from western governments that the initial post-Soviet governments did. It could have mended the Soviet-derived mistrust in eastern Europe, and likely easily so given it's richness in natural resources, and the logistical centrality that attracted trade between former USSR nations via Russia, and it's initially warm reception by western powers.
The hint of far-future NATO membership was a "threat" to Putin the way mere talk of bolt-cutters are a threat to a kidnapper. That threat might well have been real, to be clear, but framing it the way Chomsky did isn't helpful; it obscures Putin's (or the Kremlin's inner circle's) choice to be an oppressive, almost colonial power ruling over it's neighbors.
The problem never was talk of bolt-cutters, the problem is that people _wanted_ those for a reason.
All this talk of "poor Russia and its thirteen timezones felt threatened by a defensive alliance" is complete bullshit. It's the "she looked at me wrong so I stabbed her" defense, and the fact that Chomsky could not see right through this is telling.
The explanation is much simpler - Putin wanted to add a slice to the empire, and miscalculated that the West would do nothing, like it did before. And then the bitching and moaning ensued.
Did the neutral Sweden consider joining NATO before the invasion? No. Poor Russia, besieged by all sides by the neighbors who do not want to die defending against Russian recidivist meat waves and in torture cellars.
Just. Stop. It.
That is a total nonsense that has been called as such by people who were in key positions of power in the USSR and pre-Putin Russia. Out of their irrational anti-american hatred, "intellectuals" like Chomsky choose to blatantly ignore when people like Gorbachev directly say that the sob story about NATO promising not to accept Eastern Europe into the organization is a myth that even theoretically isn't plausible and couldn't be true.
