I don’t think this is the inverse at all. As long as Ukraine remained independent and non-aligned, the situation was tense but manageable. The real inflection point wasn’t Ukraine’s existence, it was Ukraine’s commitment to joining NATO.
The moment that commitment became credible, the clock started. From a realist perspective, NATO membership isn’t symbolic, it’s permanent. Once Ukraine entered that pipeline, Russia lost any future ability to maintain influence, leverage, or even a neutral relationship with Ukraine without confronting the entire NATO alliance.
That created a narrow window between political commitment and actual accession. After accession, Ukraine would no longer function as a buffer but as a fully protected military outpost, permanently closing the door on Russia’s strategic depth and its historical sphere of influence.
This isn’t a moral defense of invasion, but an explanation of incentives. Russian leaders across decades, going back to the George H. W. Bush era, consistently stated that NATO expansion into Ukraine was a red line. The West dismissed those warnings and treated NATO expansion as cost-free. From a realist lens, the war wasn’t caused by “fear of NATO invasion,” but by the certainty that NATO membership would foreclose all non-military options. Ukraine became the proxy arena where those unresolved security dilemmas finally collided.
I know this isn’t a popular take, but provocation doesn’t mean justification. It means understanding how great powers behave when buffer zones disappear. youtube.com/watch