Putin is not just trying to win a war. He is also trying to win the battle for history. Through speeches and essays, he has built a narrative that is intended to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine – and which has also gained traction in parts of the Western debate.

Of course, we should try to understand how an opponent thinks. But there is a crucial difference between understanding what Russia says and accepting Russia’s description of reality.

For anyone who reads what Vladimir Putin himself has said and written about Ukraine, it is difficult to accept the notion that the attack is primarily forced by Russian fear of NATO. Putin’s worldview is about something more fundamental. He disputes Ukraine’s right to exist as a nation fully independent of Russia.

PUTIN TELLS HIS OWN OWN WORDS
In July 2021, Putin published the essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In it, he stated that Russians and Ukrainians are in reality “one people,” and presented the modern Ukrainian state as the result of historical coincidences, Soviet border demarcations, and foreign interference. Ukraine’s movement away from Russia is, in Putin’s view, a Western-created “anti-Russia.”

On February 21, 2022, three days before the invasion, Putin claimed that modern Ukraine was in fact created by the Bolsheviks and questioned the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood. Three days later, he announced the invasion. Now, the justification was supplemented with accusations about NATO, “Nazis” in Ukraine, and the need to “demilitarize and denazify” the country.

If you read Putin’s texts and speeches in context, it becomes clear that NATO is only one part of the justification. Underlying the notion is that Ukraine has chosen a historical course that Russia will not accept.

500 YEARS OF STRUGGLE
Historian, author and former Moscow correspondent Halvor Tjønn has formulated the historical background as “Ukraine – 500 years of struggle for freedom and independence”. His main point is that the conflict did not begin with NATO expansion, the Maidan in 2014 or the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the 17th century, the Ukrainian Cossacks rebelled against Polish rule and established the Hetmanate. When the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytskyj sought support from the Russian Tsar in 1654, this was later portrayed by the Russian side as a reunification of one people. For Ukraine, the union eventually also marked the beginning of stronger Russian control and a gradual loss of autonomy.

Under the Russian Empire, Ukrainian language and culture were suppressed for periods. When the empire collapsed in 1917, Ukraine declared independence. The attempt to establish a separate state was crushed, and most of the country was incorporated into the Soviet Union.

STALIN
During Stalin’s collectivization from 1928 onwards, an estimated 300,000 Ukrainian peasants were exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union, and many of them suffered an early death due to inhumane living conditions. In 1932 and 1933, Stalin’s secret police confiscated all crops in the Ukrainian countryside. This hunger campaign has been called the Holodomor in Ukraine, and it is estimated that somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million people in the Ukrainian countryside died. This is therefore among the largest genocides in history.

After the Holodomor came the Great Terror, which led to the death of several hundred thousand more Ukrainians. After the war, new periods of Russification followed. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the demand for independence was therefore not invented by the West, but the final expression for the time being of a long historical development.

This is the core of Tjønn’s perspective. Ukraine’s history can be read as a repeated struggle over who should rule the country – the powers that be in Moscow or the Ukrainians themselves. Seen in this way, Maidan and the orientation towards Europe become a new chapter in a much older struggle over Ukraine’s right to choose its own path.

Putin’s portrayal selects the part of history that can be used to substantiate Russian ownership of Ukraine, and ignores the emergence of a separate Ukrainian nation, culture and political consciousness.

Nor does common historical roots give one state the right to rule over another. Norway was in union with Denmark for 434 years, from 1380 to 1814, and from 1537 was effectively under Danish rule. This was followed by 91 years in union with Sweden. No one in modern times has claimed that this should give Denmark or Sweden any right to determine Norwegian foreign and security policy.

THE UKRAINIANS HAVE ALREADY ANSWERED
The strongest answer to Putin’s claim that Ukraine is an artificial construct comes from the Ukrainians themselves.

In the referendum on independence on December 1, 1991, over 90 percent voted for an independent Ukraine. There was also a majority in the east and south for independence. Russia then recognized Ukraine as an independent state.

In the Budapest Memorandum from 1994, Russia, together with the United States and Great Britain, committed to respecting Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders when Ukraine renounced the nuclear weapons the country had inherited from the Soviet Union.

Russia had thus recognized both Ukraine and the borders the country now went to war to change.

THE MYTH THAT NATO EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
In the column “The Myth That Kills and Destroys Ukraine,” Halvor Tjønn directly attacks the notion that the war is primarily a result of NATO expansion.

The countries in Central and Eastern Europe were not conquered by NATO. They themselves sought membership, partly because their historical experiences with Moscow meant that they wanted security guarantees against new Russian expansion.

One can discuss NATO expansion, American policy, and the West’s treatment of Russia after the Cold War. But that does not negate the right of the Eastern European states to determine their own future.

There is a fundamental weakness in the argument that one must “understand Russia” if the countries between Russia and Western Europe are reduced to pieces on the chessboard of the great powers.

THE MIRROR IMAGE OF PROPAGANDA
Former Moscow correspondent and foreign editor Kjell Dragnes has warned in several articles against being fooled by the Kremlin’s narrative that the Ukrainians’ orientation towards the West is due to Western manipulation.

In “Journalists in the Age of Propaganda,” he described how Russian information policy was directed both at its own population and at public opinion in the West. In “Russia Facing Norway,” he challenged the argument that the West is the aggressor. The causal relationship is turned upside down, Dragnes pointed out, if Russian military buildup and use of force are omitted, while Western reactions are presented as the cause of the conflict.

In “Putin’s War is His and Russia’s Revenge,” he shows how the Kremlin links the war to the narrative of the Great Patriotic War. The opponent is labeled as “Nazi”, while Russia assumes the role of the historical liberator. In this way, a war of aggression can be presented as a continuation of the fight against Hitler’s Germany.

The strength of propaganda is precisely that it can be based on elements of reality. One may argue that NATO expansion was a mistake. But that does not make Putin’s conclusions true.

UNDERSTANDING THE COUNTERPARTY
The call to “see the matter from Russia’s side” therefore becomes naive if it means simultaneously adopting Russia’s premises for what the conflict is about.

Russia may perceive NATO as a threat. But that does not make NATO the reason for Ukraine’s desire for independence and Western orientation. Russia may believe that Ukraine historically belongs to a Russian sphere of interest. But that does not give Russia the right to decide on Ukraine’s political choices.

Putin’s own words show what lies beneath. He describes Ukraine as a historical misdevelopment, Russians and Ukrainians as one people, and Ukraine’s orientation towards the West as constructed from outside.

It was not NATO that made more than 90 percent of Ukrainians vote for independence in 1991. Nor was it NATO that forced Russia to recognize Ukraine’s borders.

Understanding how Russia thinks is necessary. But it is something completely different from making Russia’s description of reality your own.

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Photo: On February 21, 2022, three days before the invasion, Putin claimed that modern Ukraine was in practice created by the Bolsheviks and questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian statehood.

By Christian Bugge Hjorth | July 28, 2026