Root Cause, ©2025 William L. Brown
I’m livid today, not at world news, but on behalf of one of my students. This student has a career in international non-profit agency work. It’s hard, high-pressure work with long hours, but it pays well compared to most jobs in Ukraine.
Not all international agencies are great work environments, however. This student left one such agency, happy to leave behind a toxic work environment. The student’s next agency, funded largely by USAID, had a much better work environment. There, they were working on worthy projects for unemployed youth: job and entrepreneurship training, for example. Then Donald Trump and Elon Musk disintegrated USAID. The job ended.
The student was able to find a job with another international non-profit agency. But, lo and behold, many of the staff are from the first agency, the one with a toxic environment, which they brought with them. So, now my student is sick at heart which is making them sick of body.
Just another unnecessary, careless-yet-devastating consequence of the Trump presidency.
Russian dictator Putin repeatedly states that the “root causes” of the war must be addressed in peace negotiations, as though there were legitimate grievances or provocations in 2024 that could only have been resolved by a military invasion and occupation.
Russia’s need to address these “root causes” is the excuse Putin gives for not entering the 30-day ceasefire deal proposed by President Trump and agreed to by Ukraine in March.
In fact the only root cause of the war is Putin, himself, who illegally attacked and occupied parts of a sovereign nation, violating international laws, borders and norms.
At the core of the root is Putin’s expansionist ambition. The Kremlin helpfully provides an English translation of his treatise “On The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”
During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe.
This was written in 2021, seven years after the initial invasion and occupation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts (states). The essay was Putin’s flowery, pseudo-historical excuse note for that. It was also the set-up for the full-scale invasion a year later.
Again, for many people in Ukraine, the anti-Russia project is simply unacceptable. And there are millions of such people. But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view in fact taken away from them. They are intimidated, driven underground. Not only are they persecuted for their convictions, for the spoken word, for the open expression of their position, but they are also killed. Murderers, as a rule, go unpunished.
In his delusion, “millions” of pro-Russian Ukrainians were underground, awaiting liberation while being persecuted, even murdered, the murderers going unpunished! There’s a root cause! These millions, however, failed to materialize as expected during the full invasion. Instead, it was greeted by civilians waving Ukrainian flags, throwing molotov cocktails, and handing them sunflower seeds to put in their pockets (the implication being that their bodies were about to become plant fertilizer).
Today, the ”right“ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea. Hate and anger, as world history has repeatedly proved this, are a very shaky foundation for sovereignty, fraught with many serious risks and dire consequences.
“As we understand it,” is such a generous term. It makes Putin seem like a reasonable fellow, willing to admit he is wrong if presented with sound differing viewpoint. Such as the fact that Ukrainian statehood is actually built on democracy and freedom. It’s not perfect, but that’s their goal. Hate and anger are indeed a shaky foundation for sovereignty. So are authoritarianism and corruption.
All the subterfuges associated with the anti-Russia project are clear to us. And we will never allow our historical territories and people close to us living there to be used against Russia. And to those who will undertake such an attempt, I would like to say that this way they will destroy their own country.
This is Putin’s argument for hegemony, the multi-polar world aspired to by him, China, Donald Trump, America First and even some hard-left progressives. They all think the world would be better off if the big powers’ lesser neighbors were vassal countries, an unfair, brutal system the world has been slowly dismantling the last 100 years. For those on the hard left and hard right, hatred of neoconservativism, globalism, capitalism, or wokism is more compelling than love of liberty and human rights.
Putin outlines the events leading to what he calls a coup. Ukrainians call it The Revolution of Dignity. This is probabably the biggest root cause in Russia’s view because Russia’s puppet president Victor Yanukovych was replaced. They say the current government is illegitimate.
The coup/revolution was precipitated, Putin says, by western efforts to bring Ukraine into the western European market, and out of Russia’s economic and political influence.
Step by step, Ukraine was dragged into a dangerous geopolitical game aimed at turning Ukraine into a barrier between Europe and Russia, a springboard against Russia. Inevitably, there came a time when the concept of ”Ukraine is not Russia“ was no longer an option. There was a need for the ”anti-Russia“ concept which we will never accept.
In truth, Yanokovych campaigned as a pro-western candidate. He promised to align Ukraine’s economy with Europe. However, his presidency was marred by increased corruption, weakening of rights, and backsliding on his economic policy promises. The Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, voted overwhelmingly to sign an association agreement with the EU. Yanokovych said he would, but under pressure from Russia, he suspended it.
The public was furious and launched the Euromaidan protests. Yanokovych responded by deadly violence against the protestors, which turned more people and institutions against him. He eventually signed an agreement with the Rada opposition to resolve the crisis but before it could be implemented, he fled to Russia in self-exile.
The coup d'état and the subsequent actions of the Kiev authorities inevitably provoked confrontation and civil war. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that the total number of victims in the conflict in Donbas has exceeded 13,000. Among them are the elderly and children. These are terrible, irreparable losses.
There were confrontations, and violence, between Maidan supporters and Yanokovych supporters in some areas of Ukraine in the wake of events in Kyiv, but the “civil war” was a Russian-concocted fake. Russia funded and armed figure-head “separatist groups” in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. These were insufficient to have much effect, so Russia sent in “little green men,” soldiers with insignia removed from their uniforms and military equipment.
The 13,000 victims cited by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights were victims of Russia.
Approximately 1.8 million people fled to other regions of Ukraine after the initial Russian aggression of 2014. Prior to 2022 the EU did practically nothing to help these displaced people. Turkey helped displaced Crimean Tatars who had to flee their ancestral homes. Source: Harvard University and USA for UNHCR.