1 According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the
Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian
aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument
4 goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to
resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after
the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern
7 Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for
Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of
10 Ukraine. But this account is wrong: the United States and its
European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly
13 opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have
made it clear that they would not stand by while their
strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.
Internet: <www.foreignaffairs.com> (adapted).
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