AU CONTRAIRE
Look closely, and it becomes hard to justify. It is increasingly clear that the Biden Administration made a series of policy decisions concerning Ukraine that gave the Kremlin little choice but to either defer to Washington at the expense of Russian security or resist. There is much to say about the background to this conflict, described in depth by such scholars as Richard Sakwa and John Mearsheimer, the latter in a widely cited 2014 article in Foreign Affairs. But the focus here is on former President Joe Biden’s stewardship of the Ukraine crisis leading up to Russia’s invasion in February 2022 and two pivotal moments that followed.
In his 2020 presidential run, Biden took a tough stance against Russia, and against President Vladimir Putin in particular—the two leaders have long had frosty relations. Seeking to distinguish himself from then-President Donald Trump, Biden criticized the Kremlin’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election and expressed outrage at Trump’s inaction on reports of possible Russian bounties paid to Taliban militants for killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Once in power, the Biden administration quickly set the tone in U.S.-Russia relations. The State Department issued a press release on January 23 strongly condemning “the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists … in cities throughout Russia.” The protesters were reacting to the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who had just returned to Moscow from Germany where he had received medical treatment for a near-fatal poisoning. A German military lab determined the poison to be Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent closely tied to Russian security services.
Later in January, Courtney Austrian, head of the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), denounced “Russia’s obstinacy in fueling the fighting in eastern Ukraine and obstructing progress toward a lasting and peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
On February 4, 2021, Biden gave his first foreign policy speech as president and began by extending an olive branch to the international community: “America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” He announced a five-year extension of the New START Treaty, the only remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia. But the president’s tone changed when he came to Putin, the only foreign leader he mentioned by name. He said that he told the Russian president “that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions—interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens—are over.”
Tensions become tangible
In February 2021 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made two moves that sounded the alarm in Moscow, starting with the ban of three television networks in the country that were considered too Russia-friendly. This ban was not without domestic controversy, particularly for residents living in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine where the Russian language is widely spoken. Elsewhere, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed concern about the curb on press freedom. In Washington, however, where free speech issues are sport … crickets.
Second, Zelensky signed a decree pledging to take measures to recapture the Crimean Peninsula, and he began to deploy forces to the south of the country. That same day—the seventh anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Crimea—Biden released a statement that made clear that the United States would never recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea and would continue to support Ukraine against Russian belligerence. Soon after, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new $125 million military aid package that included both equipment and training to enhance Ukraine’s interoperability with NATO.
Tensions continued to rise in March when NATO forces conducted a training exercise with the Ukrainian Navy. This exercise was part of Defender Europe, one of the largest U.S. Army-led military exercises in decades that ran from mid-March to June—with 28,000 troops from 27 countries taking part. March also saw a sharp increase in fighting in the Donetsk Region in eastern Ukraine, bringing an end to the ceasefire that had been negotiated in July 2020.
None of this escaped Russia’s notice. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called the joint maneuvers threatening and confrontational, to say nothing of the longstanding buildup of NATO military forces near Russia’s border. In March and April the Kremlin responded by deploying tens of thousands of Russian troops to Crimea and along the Russia-Ukraine border.
At a time when backchannel diplomacy might have eased tensions and paved the way for a drawdown of Russian forces, Washington and NATO turned up the heat:
- On May 27, 2021, the Biden Administration notified Russia that it would not rejoin the Open Skies Treaty that allowed unarmed reconnaissance flights over participating countries to survey their military activities.
- At the Brussels Summit in mid-June, NATO continued to describe Russia’s actions as “a threat to Euro-Atlantic security” and emphasized the importance of partnerships with non-member countries.
- On June 23, 2021, the British destroyer H.M.S. Defender sailed provocatively close to the coast of Crimea, sparking an international incident. The Russian Navy reportedly fired warning shots at the destroyer with an estimated 20 Russian warplanes buzzing it as a warning to alter course.
- Several days later, the United States and 31 allied countries conducted the largest-ever “Sea Breeze” military exercises in the Black Sea. The Kremlin viewed the exercises as a thinly veiled ruse to transport military equipment into Ukraine.
U.S.-Ukraine agreements signed; Russian security proposal declined
In the fall of 2021 the Biden Administration established two partnership agreements with Ukraine. The first, a Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership announced on September 1, included a $60 million security assistance package. Among the lines in the document: “We intend to continue our robust training and exercise program in keeping with Ukraine’s status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner.”
November’s U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership reinforced the September Joint Statement, calling for “Ukraine’s integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions” and renewing support for the country to join NATO.
In addition to misgivings about these agreements, Russia had sources that reported unusual military maneuvers from within Ukraine as well as suspicious naval activity by U.S. warships in the Black Sea. Moscow’s answer: another major troop deployment along the Russia-Ukraine border beginning in October. At the Valdai Discussion Club that month, Putin said that whether or not Ukraine formally joined NATO, all signs increasingly pointed to a de facto membership of the alliance.
In December 2021, Russia called on NATO, and especially Washington, to respect its security concerns, guarantee an end to the alliance’s eastward expansion, and agree to Ukrainian neutrality. While U.S. State Department officials made clear in their response that they were open to discussing a number of issues with the Kremlin, Ukrainian neutrality was not one of them.
In Putin’s annual news conference on December 21, 2021, he addressed this matter, and his frustration was palpable: “You [the West] promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly: there have been five waves of NATO expansion, and now the weapons systems I mentioned have been deployed in Romania and deployment has recently begun in Poland. This is what we are talking about, can you not see?”
With the Russian troop count continuing to rise, along with military supplies and equipment near the Ukrainian border, Kyiv and Western officials feared that an invasion may be imminent. When asked about the state of play in a January 2022 news conference, Biden said, “My guess is he [Putin] will move in, he has to do something.” With this in mind, the State Department gave the greenlight to the Baltic countries to send U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine.
Several days later, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken submitted a written response to the Russian Foreign Ministry that formally rejected their demands for Ukrainian neutrality. In his public comments, Blinken reiterated the “open door” principle, maintaining that Ukraine was a sovereign country that had the right to choose its own security arrangements and alliances.
Go hard or go home
February 2022 was not an easy month to take in. Biden, Blinken, and former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan each continued to telegraph a possible Russian invasion, increasing the pressure on Putin to either take action or drawdown his forces. At the same time, the OSCE reported a sudden surge in military activity (see below) on Ukraine’s eastern border, most of it coming from the Ukrainian side of the ceasefire line. The United States had considerable leverage with the Ukrainian military, given that it was supplying them with weapons, training, and intelligence. Biden’s team could have called on them to tamp down the hostilities and avoid a more serious confrontation. They did nothing of the sort. As international affairs scholar Nina Krushcheva said in a recent interview: “Joe Biden was baiting him [Putin].”
On February 21, amid unchecked violence, Putin recognized the independence of the two Kremlin-backed separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, signaling that Russian troops would move in to restore peace. Biden condemned Putin’s decision as “a flagrant violation of international law” and imposed new sanctions on the two separatist regions. Three days later, the Kremlin launched a widespread assault on Ukraine, prompting NATO to increase military support to the country and impose additional sanctions on Russia.
Negotiations soon begin
Within a couple of days, delegations from both countries entered into peace talks, initially in neighboring Belarus. The talks soon broke off, though, as Russia’s demands were not acceptable to the Ukrainian negotiators. After more inconclusive rounds of talks in Belarus, the parties moved to the resort town of Antalya, Türkiye, and in late March to Istanbul. Russian negotiators’ central demand was a neutral Ukraine, while the Ukrainians insisted on security guarantees in the event of another Russian attack.
By early April, the negotiators had reached a tentative peace deal, but a surprise visit to Kyiv from former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson nipped it in the bud. According to Davyd Arakhamia, Ukraine’s chief negotiator at the rounds in Istanbul and the leader of Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian Parliament, “Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we won’t sign anything at all with [the Russians]—and let’s just keep fighting.”
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who was invited to Istanbul as a mediator, said much the same thing in a February 2023 interview—that a peace deal was close but was blocked by Washington in consultation with other NATO members. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, another mediator at the talks, reinforced these comments and summarized the essential terms of the draft agreement.
- Ukraine would not pursue NATO membership;
- The Ukrainian bans on the Russian language would be lifted;
- The Donbass would continue to be part of Ukraine but as an autonomous region (e.g., Italy’s South Tyrol);
- The United Nations Security Council plus Germany should offer to supervise the security agreements; and
- The Crimea problem would be set aside for another time.
If Schroeder’s summary captures what the negotiators nearly settled on—the draft agreement had reached the point of being initialed by them on the essential terms—then it becomes difficult to account for the three years since.
Approaching Armageddon
By the late summer of 2022, Ukraine’s counteroffensive had had remarkable success in the southern and eastern regions of the country, reversing many of Russia’s earlier gains. They recaptured Kherson, the regional capital, prompting the Russian military to send forces south. This Russian redeployment left the northeastern region undermanned, and the Ukrainian army took advantage of it with a decisive military operation near Kharkiv—almost certainly the high-water mark of the country’s defense.
But these setbacks for Russia only strengthened the Kremlin’s resolve, evidenced by its partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists and the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts—a dire escalation of the war. In a nationally televised address, Putin was resolute: “If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. This is not a bluff.”
At an October 2022 campaign fundraiser in New York, Biden expressed his uneasiness over Putin’s comments. “We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” Biden said. “He’s not joking when he talks about the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons… I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
The president’s comments prompted the Congressional Progressive Caucus to send the White House a letter urging the administration to pursue negotiations with Russia and try to wind down the conflict. The CPC faced a furious backlash from fellow members of Congress, donors, and the media, and the letter was retracted in a matter of hours.
If there was ever a time to take a principled stand on an issue—regardless of risk—that was it.
A week or so later, General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took another tack with a strategic argument, recommending that now was Ukraine’s chance to capitalize on its battlefield gains and hold talks with Moscow. Blinken and other Biden advisers remained unconvinced, though, and pressed to keep up the fight.
In Bob Woodward’s 2024 book, War, he writes that U.S. intelligence assessed that when Russia was on its back foot in Kherson and Kharkiv, there was about a 50 percent possibility that Putin would use a nuclear weapon to rescue the situation: “The assessment had gone from around a 5 percent chance to a 10 percent chance to now a coin flip.”
The Biden Administration decided to ride out the uncertainty, risking irreversible consequences, not for the sake of an existential threat to the United States, not even a vital U.S. interest, but for a principle—the “open door” policy—and a questionable one at that.
Why did we accept that?
Cory Sinclair is a freelance writer and nonprofit consultant for S. Sutton & Associates. He has done pro-bono work for several nonprofits in the Los Angeles area, and previously worked as a writer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, UCLA Performing Arts, and Habitat for Humanity. His area of research concerns the cultural and nonprofit sectors, public-private partnerships, and related government policy. He holds a Ph.D. in music and nonprofit management from Claremont Graduate University.
