 You're watching NewsClick, I am on India Chakravarty. This is a one-stop shop for anyone who wants to know the basics of why Putin has invaded Ukraine. And to understand that, we have to understand two things. One is what Russia is and the other is what Ukraine means for Russia and for the rest of the world. To understand what Russia is, we have to rewind some 30-35 years to the Soviet Union when Russia was the dominant partner in one of the world's biggest economic and military superpowers, the Soviet Union. And even today, many people in Russia, Putin is one of them, believe that it's their historical destiny to be a superpower, to revive what the Soviet Union once was. On the other side, there is the U.S. When the Soviet Union had collapsed and when the Cold War had ended, the Soviet Union had actually been assured by the West. There are a lot of records of this that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is NATO, which is the defense umbrella headed by the U.S., will not expand beyond the unified Germany. Germany got unified after nearly 45 years and it was assured, Soviet Union was assured that it wouldn't go beyond that. But what happened? Soviet Union collapsed within less than two years and all the former Soviet republics were gradually picked up by the U.S. into NATO. One specific member which was out of it, an important member for Russia was Ukraine. Ukraine was right next to it, one of its biggest neighbor to the West. The buffer between Europe and Russia, Ukraine remained neutral. It was important for both Russia and for the U.S. and the West NATO to try and control Ukraine because remember, even though Russia today is just a shadow of what it was during the Soviet period, it still has the largest stockpile of nuclear arms. It is the largest stockpile, it is still a big military superpower, even though a power, I won't call it a superpower, but it's still a big military power which can be a problem for the U.S. and the U.S. has its own, you know, military and security establishment which still wants to teach Russia a lesson. The Cold War legacy still continues out there and they want Russia to be humiliated and they want to be able to place nuclear warheads and American bases right next door in Ukraine and Russia doesn't want that. In 2000, Ukraine saw what is called democratic reforms and in that process, the U.S. acquired a certain degree of control. But when Putin came to power, he successfully kept the U.S. and NATO at bay and he managed to keep several successive Ukrainian governments till 2014, more or less pro-Russia. In fact, in 2013, the Ukrainian president of that time basically was under pressure to join EU or at least sign a free trade agreement with EU, but he refused to do that. And that caused a lot of discontentment in Ukraine, young people who thought that a treaty with EU might allow them to look for jobs in Europe. They came out and began protesting in the central square called the Medan, Euro Medan. And at that time, those protests continued for months towards the end of 2013, November, December onwards. And many Western politicians, including Senator McCain, who would later, John McCain would later, I mean earlier, had stood for president and lost to Obama. He actually visited and not only met and dined with several opposition leaders, pro-America opposition leaders, but he also addressed the protesters at the Medan. And right next to him was this man who, I'm going to look up the exact pronunciation because I really don't, I don't want to get this wrong. This man's name is Oleg Tianibok. Oleg Tianibok, and he is an open anti-Semite and leader of the Neo-Nazi Party Swoboda. So McCain was standing right next to him. And there's increasingly it became clear that this CIA, the US administration, the Obama administration was involved, closely involved in these protests and were kind of popularizing it, promoting it, and maybe even funding it, and definitely organizing the opposition. At one point, the protest turned violent, and there were reports at that time that the police snipers, police snipers had started firing at the protesters. Many protesters died, but also some policemen died. It was believed that some protesters who had guns had shot the policemen in retaliation, in anger, and that was how the media reported it. But later on, a conversation, a leaked phone conversation between a EU diplomat and a minister from Lithuania, it was on YouTube and it was covered in the media, revealed that the snipers actually, the same bullets killed the protesters and the policemen. Doctors said that it was the same bullets and they'd been fired from the same guns by snipers. And it was later believed that the snipers were from the opposition coalition who had been in some way created the level of anger which would then lead to a direct uprising, a rebellion, a coup in which the elected, lawfully elected government of Ukraine would be overthrown. The president would have to escape and would actually ultimately be in exile in Moscow. This regime change literally engineered by, in some ways, by the US because another phone conversation which again appeared on YouTube, between a top diplomat of the Obama administration, Victoria Newland, and the US ambassador in Ukraine, that conversation clearly was about who would be part of the new government even when the elected president was still in office. They were discussing who would be in power and they were also discussing how Svoboda must be consulted. So here was the US keen on a regime change in Ukraine without caring that they were empowering a neo-Nazi entity while doing that. And at the same time what happened was that there was a rise of extreme Ukrainian nationalism, not fascist or anti-Semite. But one of the big heroes of the opposition and later the new government was a person who was at one time a collaborator with the Nazis. And this collaboration with the Nazis, this collaborator with the Nazis actually became a hero of the Ukrainian, new Ukrainian government. And this is essentially the reason why today, Radhimer Putin is talking about a denazification. Obviously, this is a humbug on his part because the separatist armies, he supports, Russian separatists that he supports in southern Ukraine which have now become independent in the Donbass region. Many of them are openly anti-Semite, many of them are supremacists, many of them are Russian extreme nationalist jingoists. So this is just humbug about denazification, but it's given him that opportunity to talk about it. And also what happened is when Biden won the elections again and the same group of people who had brought about the regime change in 2014 came back to power, came back in office including Victoria Nuland. The same thing started about Ukraine being part of the American Alliance or being part of NATO. Last year, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State of the Biden administration almost promised Ukraine that it would become part of NATO and the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who you've all seen on TV now, had eagerly wanted to be part of that. This was in some senses a mistake that he made because Ukraine is a buffer region. It is between two powers, West and Russia. And Zelensky has effectively chosen a power which is far away, the USA, to cock a snook at its neighbor, its nuclear armed powerful neighbor with whom it has a strong, very important trade alliance right next door, Russia. So this is the pretext that Putin used to enter and invade Ukraine. And interestingly, as Zelensky has said, no one from NATO has actually come to help him. They're talking about sanctions on Russia. But Russia probably calculates that, you see, Russia is one of the biggest suppliers of oil and natural gas to Europe and US. And currently, the US is facing the mother of all inflationary cycles. The prices of goods are very high and it cannot really afford to stop Russian supplies of oil. Europe can't stop Russian supplies of natural gas to it without facing the consequences of another cycle of inflation on top of what it already has. And maybe that is the thing that Putin has calculated and that is why he's entered. And he's also probably thought of a short engagement. He just wants to ensure that Zelensky and Ukraine says they will not be part of NATO permanently. They'd say, never be part of NATO. Everything will go back to normal. He'll install a Russia-friendly government there, give them some aid and probably withdraw. But that is what might ultimately lead to peace, the fact that Russia has so much oil and the West needs it. Russia has so much natural gas with the West need. Ironically, this is a natural resource which has caused a lot of wars across the world. It might end up being the cause for peace for the world and the Ukrainian people.