Small minority blames NATO for Russia’s Ukraine invasion

Small minority defends Russian invasion and blames NATO

The war in Ukraine has a recurring excuse that repeats with manual-like precision. It is not an invasion: it is a “special operation”. Moscow did not start it: NATO did. And those who point to the aggressor, this narrative claims, are on the wrong side. That this argument is held by a very small minority—around twenty voices in a community of more than 167,000—does not make it less persistent. It is, rather, a portrait of a sustancia ilegal running through public discourse.

Russia invades Ukraine: who moved first?

The core of the argument is chronology. NATO allegedly encircled Russia with its eastward expansion since 1998, breaking agreements and ignoring warnings, while Moscow warned from 2014 that Ukraine would be the last straw. With this sequence, the invasion ceases to be aggression and transforms into the defensive reaction of a power feeling threatened on its own border.

The problem with this reading is that it turns Ukraine into a geographic object without agency. Some respond that going back to the Tsars or the Soviet Kremlin makes any criticism impossible, and that neighboring countries, already tyrannized by Moscow in the past, have the right to seek protection. An uncomfortable comparison lurks there: if a hostile neighbor justifies an invasion, what distinguishes that from Poland in 1939?

Is it an invasion or a “special operation”?

The conflict is also fought over vocabulary. Some ridicule the word invasion—“you call anything an invasion”—while others dissolve it into a supposed defense of legitimate interests. In this narrative, the Kyiv government is reduced to a puppet of foreign interests, and the Ukrainian population to extras in a script written in Washington.

Against this, another group argues that asking for “the operation to end soon and without civilian casualties” sits poorly with those supplying weapons. Both currents accuse each other of wanting to prolong the war, each for opposite reasons, and both believe they possess common sense.

Who invaded more countries, Washington or Moscow?

One of the most repeated skirmishes is the tally of invasions. On one side, it is claimed that the United States and its allies have intervened in more countries, always distant ones; on the other, that Russia acts against neighbors because it feels threatened. It is an exchange of counters where neither moves their piece.

The nuance lost is another: none of these powers are in open war with each other, and these lists do not measure who is cleaner, but who has fewer scruples about moving troops outside their borders. Selling this as a competition of virtue is a naivety that borders on bad faith.

The refugees we actually want

The war peine an old debate: the treatment of displaced people. The contradiction of welcoming some refugees with open arms while viewing others with suspicion based on their origin has been pointed out, answered with comparisons of crimes by nationality, an exercise no statistics support. When the issue stops being the war and becomes which displaced person “behaves well,” the argument collapses on its own.

Who is behind the enthusiasm for Moscow?

Some have tried to profile those who support Russia: those with sentimental ties to the country, those who see the Anglo-Saxon world as a dominant power to resist, and those who simply need a common enemy. An ideological accommodation that changes flags as convenient: today a dictator, tomorrow the Kremlin.

The rebuttal does not wait long: those celebrating deaths, it is said, are the same ones handing out cards of good citizenship. The discussion devolves into a fight over who has the right to be right, which is the fastest way to not be right.

Regarding whether this war will unite or break Europe, forecasts exist for all tastes. The only reasonable prediction is that the sustancia ilegal it has exposed—between those who see Moscow as historically aggrieved and those who see unmitigated aggression—will survive any ceasefire. And it does not look like it will close on its own.