Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday morning. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced it on television and described it as a “special military operation”. He declared the Russian military goal as that of “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine. It comes at the end of weeks of threats and counter-threats and failed diplomatic parleys even as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Moscow to confer with Putin. The Western intelligence agencies have been predicting the Russian invasion and until Thursday morning it seemed that Russia would not go to war. But Putin has proved his Western critics right. The speculation remains whether he would sweep across the whole of Ukraine, and what the nature of the occupation would be. Meanwhile NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg made it clear after a meeting of the Atlantic Council on Thursday that NATO troops have been stationed in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and an attack on Ukraine is not an attack on NATO. Western countries are threatening economic sanctions, including freezing of Russian funds in western banks. It is being argued that economic sanctions against Russia would hurt Europe as much as they would Russia. For example, stopping the flow of gas and oil from Russia would no doubt hurt Russia, but it would also hurt European countries which depend on Russian gas and oil.

It appears that Putin took the step of military action because he was sure that it is unlikely to trigger a war in Europe, and that the West would confine its response to economic sanctions. Putin was quite sure that he could get away with military action. Russia wanted an assurance that Ukraine should not be made a member of NATO, but after Thursday’s attack it is clear why Ukraine wanted to be a member of NATO. It would have been difficult for Russia to attack Ukraine if it was already a member of NATO, because then NATO would have been dragged into the war. The Russian president has argued that Ukraine posed a security threat to Russia to justify the attack.

The long-term consequences of the Ukrainian invasion could be that Russia would be economically cut off from Europe, and Moscow will have to look for markets elsewhere. It is to be noted that Russia is facing a COVID-19 upsurge, with daily cases clocking more than 100,000 cases a day. Russia’s military success in Ukraine could mean economic pain for the country. Political experts will continue to debate and speculate as to why Putin has chosen to attack Ukraine. What was the provocation? There will be no clear answers for a long time to come. It is also clear there will be no military counteraction because there is only talk of economic sanctions and nothing more. It is a classic confrontation between Europe and Russia, ideological and even cultural, political and strategic. It is return of the old Cold War.

Interestingly, Putin continues to denounce Bolshevism though many in the West consider the Russian president, a former KGB spy, a product of the totalitarian communist system of Joseph Stalin. But Putin is invoking Russian nationalism and Orthodox Christian Church as the uniting factor of Russia and Ukraine. The people in Ukraine are more inclined towards the liberal, democratic West. Will Ukrainians resist Russian domination as did the people of Poland in 1980, which served as a prelude to the fall of the Soviet system in 1991? The post-Soviet Russia has no place for democratic dissent. Many of the former members of Communist east bloc like Poland, Romania and Hungary are opposed to Russian nationalism championed by Putin. The battle over Ukraine goes beyond Ukraine.