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Russia’s violent aggression in Ukraine — and elsewhere along its periphery — was not provoked.

March 28, 2025:
Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, now also the de facto broker of the Russia-Ukraine peace process, recently gave an interview in which he recited many of the Russian government’s talking points — plus, a gushing account of Vladimir Putin’s sterling qualities. Instead of doing a point-by-point rebuttal, I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief recap of the history of U.S.-Russia relations.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the United States, far from humiliating Moscow and isolating it, did the opposite. It tried to integrate the newly democratic state into the highest counsels of global power. It eventually expanded the Group of Seven into the Group of Eight to let Russia in, even though Russia was by no stretch an advanced industrial country. International lending assistance to Moscow between 1989 and 1998 totaled about $66 billion by one U.S. government estimate. (For comparison, total U.S. aid to Israel in those days was about $3 billion per year).

The collapse of the U.S.S.R. created a security vacuum in Eastern Europe. The countries of the region, long dominated — some even occupied — by Russia, were insecure and deeply suspicious of Moscow. The United States put some of them on a path to NATO membership but worked hard to address Russian concerns. It created a new organization, the Partnership for Peace, which was designed as an association between NATO, Russia and other Eastern Bloc countries. It planned joint military exercises and other such activities to build confidence between Russia and the West. Perhaps most significantly, the U.S. did not put pressure or sanctions on Russia as the Kremlin waged a brutal war in Chechnya, a Muslim republic conquered in the 19th century that was desperate to break away.

Putin came to power in late 1999. A brutal terrorist attack in Moscow, which was blamed on Chechen separatists, gave the faceless bureaucrat national support and allowed Putin to wage the savage Second Chechen War, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and leveled the Chechen capital of Grozny to the ground. Many believe that Russian intelligence was behind the terrorist attack. Since then, Putin is thought by many experts to have been behind the assassinations of most of his prominent opponents from the journalist Anna Politkovskaya to political leaders such as Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny.

The key to understanding Putin’s imperial ambitions is his famous statement that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. He elaborated on why: It left millions of Russians’ “citizens and fellow countrymen” outside of the motherland, he said. Putin has sought to gather back together, not the Soviet Union, but the Tsarist empire. That is why he seeks to dominate not just Ukraine, but also Belarus and the various states of Central Asia. That is why he waged war on Georgia and threatens Moldova. That is why he has complained about the status of Russian-speaking people in the Baltic republics. Central to his new Russian empire is Ukraine, which Putin has often argued is a fake country, created by the Bolsheviks. (In fact, more than 90 percent of Ukrainians voted to become independent in 1991, with large majorities voting for independence even in areas now occupied by Russia.)

In his decades in power, Putin has sought to expand Russia’s sphere of influence in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia and, of course, in Ukraine, where Russia has interfered massively, once poisoning a presidential front-runner and eventually getting a pro-Russian president elected. By 2008, Putin realized Georgia was moving closer to the West, with President George W. Bush even urging NATO to welcome its aspirations to join (even though NATO gave no concrete timetable or support). So, Putin invaded Georgia, falsely claiming that the Georgians had instigated the attack. Russia encouraged two of its provinces declare themselves independent countries.

In 2014, Putin was alarmed to see that even under his handpicked pro-Russian president, the country was close to concluding an “association agreement” with the European Union. There had been no further movement toward NATO; the issue was that Ukrainians wanted to strengthen their economic ties with Europe. That led Putin to invade Ukraine, ignoring his own country’s guarantee of Ukrainian sovereignty and borders provided in 1994 when Kyiv agreed to let its nuclear arsenal — then the world’s third-largest — be destroyed.

By the start of Joe Biden’s presidency, Ukraine was no closer to NATO membership. In fact, during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first meeting with him, Biden largely rebuffed Zelensky on the issue. A few months later, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, designed to conquer the country and take its capital.

The Soviet Union was the world’s last great multinational empire. Under Putin, Russia has for a decade been trying to rebuild that empire — against the desires of the people of Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and others.

Putin is on the wrong side of history, freedom and human aspirations. The tragedy is that the United States appears to have now joined his side.

Excerpts: The washington post

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. Prior to his current roles, Zakaria was editor of Newsweek International, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a columnist for Time, an analyst for ABC News and the host of Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria on PBS. He is the author of “Age of Revolutions” (2024),