Ukraine’s crisis is a clash of two worldviews.

The Ukraine crisis is far from over, and it represents a clash of two worldviews that has the potential to upend Europe. It has Cold War overtones and resurrects a 1945 Yalta Conference idea: that the West should recognise a Russian zone of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.

Since taking office in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin has worked deliberately and methodically to undo what he sees as the Soviet Union’s humiliating disintegration 30 years ago.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine be permanently barred from exercising its sovereign right to join NATO, and that other NATO actions, such as stationing troops in former Soviet bloc countries, be curtailed, while massing troops along Ukraine’s border and holding war games in Belarus, close to the borders of NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

The conditions are untenable, according to NATO, which claims that joining the alliance is a right of any country and does not pose a threat to Russia. Putin’s detractors think that what he actually fears is the creation of a democratic, prosperous Ukraine, which may provide an appealing alternative to Putin’s increasingly dictatorial authority.

Putin’s current demands are based on a long-standing sense of grievance and his rejection of Ukraine and Belarus as truly separate, sovereign countries, rather than as part of a much older Russian linguistic and Orthodox motherland that should be united with, or at the very least friendly to, Moscow.

Last summer, Putin tipped his hand in a millennium-spanning dissertation titled “The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” He argued that the current division of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus is artificial, owing to political mistakes made during the Soviet era and, in the case of Ukraine, a malignant “anti-Russia agenda” backed by Washington since 2014.

His Russocentric view of the region will be a key test for US President Joe Biden, who is already dealing with crises on multiple fronts at home, including the coronavirus pandemic, resurgence of inflation, a divided nation where a large segment of the electorate refuses to acknowledge his presidency, and a Congress that has blocked many of his social and climate goals.

Biden has ruled out military intervention in Ukraine in favor of intensive diplomacy and rallying Western allies to support what he predicts will be heavy and punishing sanctions against Russia if it invades the country. He has admitted, though, that depending on how the situation plays out, he may have difficulty keeping all of his allies on board.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already invaded Ukraine once, with minimal retaliation. In 2014, Russia reclaimed Crimea from Ukraine and has backed pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels battling the Kyiv government in the Donbass region, a silent war that has claimed the lives of 14,000 people, including over 3,000 civilians.

Putin’s goal has been to try to reclaim the authority and defined sphere of influence that Russia lost when the Berlin Wall fell, at least in the former Soviet Union.

He has objected to what he perceives as Western incursions into the former Warsaw Pact countries, which had served as a pro-Soviet buffer between the USSR and NATO.

In 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were granted NATO membership, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia in 2004.

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the countries were keen to join the Western defensive alliance and the Western free-market system in order to secure their independence and prosperity.

Both Ukraine and Georgia seek entry for identical reasons, and NATO has recognized them as prospective members of the alliance.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has requested Western leaders to act more quickly on Ukraine’s proposal for membership as a signal to Moscow that the West will support Ukraine’s independence.

Russia claims that NATO expansion violates agreements made to it following the fall of the Berlin Wall in exchange for Moscow’s backing of Germany’s reunification. Officials from the United States deny that any such commitments were made.

Putin did not exhibit a strong hostility to NATO early in his term. In a 2000 BBC interview, he stated that Russia would be interested in joining; years later, he claimed that he had discussed the possibility with US President Bill Clinton before Clinton’s departure in 2001.

Putin, on the other hand, now sees the alliance as a threat to Russia’s security.

The newer NATO countries, on the other hand, have the opposite viewpoint. They see Russia, which has the greatest military in the region and a massive nuclear arsenal, as the true threat, which is why they raced to join NATO, fearful that a stronger Russia will try to reimpose its supremacy in the future.

A disputed election in Belarus sparked months of protests against long-serving Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko has been drawn closer to Putin’s protective embrace, alienated from his own people and unrecognized as a genuine president in the West.

Similarly, following political upheaval in Kazakhstan a few weeks ago, Russia dispatched soldiers to assist the former Soviet republic’s president in restoring order as part of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization alliance’s peacekeeping operation. Since then, the troops have left the nation.

Putin’s goal has been to re-establish connections with Russia’s former Soviet neighbors while simultaneously challenging and dividing the West. Rather than steering Russia in a more democratic path, he now appears to reject liberal democracy as a viable model, seeing it as a ruse used by the West to further its own interests and humiliate its adversaries.

He came to power with the promise of restoring Russia’s greatness. He reclaimed economic power from the oligarchs, crushed Chechen separatists, suffocated independent media, and increased military spending. He has just outlawed the few remaining human rights organizations in Russia.

Beyond Russia’s borders, his secret services have carried out assassinations of critics and meddled in foreign elections, including secretly supporting Donald Trump’s 2016 election, the pro-Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom, and various right-wing European parties opposed to European integration.

“Liberalism is outmoded,” he told an interviewer in 2019, meaning that the mainstream Western ideology of liberal democracy no longer had a place in the world. To him, the idea that Ukrainians are self-sufficient and can choose their own allies is a farce.

“We are fully aware of all the deceptions linked with the anti-Russia project. And we will never allow Russia to use our historical territories or the people who live there against us.

And to those who will attempt such a feat, I would want to warn them that they will destroy their own country in this manner,” he said in an article last summer.

“I am certain that true Ukrainian sovereignty can only be achieved through cooperation with Russia.”

The question for Biden, NATO, and the European Union is whether their united resolve and cooperation can safeguard Ukraine’s vision of itself as a Western country, and if Putin’s regional nationalist objectives will succeed or fail.