Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has generated competing explanations that emphasise different perceived threats. Realist frameworks focus on NATO expansion and material security concerns; post-structural and constructivist approaches highlight Russian identity crisis and symbolic anxieties; domestic politics explanations point to regime legitimation needs. Each addresses a genuine dimension of Russian decision-making, but they differ significantly in their explanatory power. This essay argues that realist accounts in particular struggle to explain three critical features of the invasion: first, its timing in 2022 specifically; second, its maximalist scope beyond limited territorial objectives; and third, its continued escalation despite costs far exceeding strategic gains. To demonstrate this, the essay will compare realist arguments against approaches under the umbrella of critical IR, particularly those concerned with the messianic character and psychoanalysis around the implicit anxiety in Russian official discourse, which offer more persuasive frameworks.

A concept running through this analysis is ontological security, understood following Steele (2008) and Mitzen (2006) as the need of states, like individuals, not merely for physical survival but for a stable sense of self and narrative continuity across time. While realism addresses material security, ontological security addresses the psychological dimension of state behaviour as the need to preserve a coherent identity that anchors foreign policy choices. Within this theoretical lens, Ukraine functions as a fantasy object through which Russia performs its great power status on the international stage. The essay will subsequently address unit-level variables, particularly decision-making structures under personalist authoritarianism, which help explain the timing and radicalisation of Putin’s discourse.

(Neo)Realism’s Explanatory Limitations

The realist interpretation accepts NATO expansion as existential security threat. Mearsheimer (2014) argues that Western attempts to integrate Ukraine into NATO and the European Union directly challenged Russia’s sphere of influence. He maintains that great powers inevitably dominate their regions and react predictably to threats in their near abroad, concluding that the West pursues “a fatal addiction to liberal hegemony” (Mearsheimer 2014:77). Stephen Walt emphasises that liberal democracy promotion posed dual threats to Moscow through strategic encirclement via alliance expansion and regime threat through demonstration effects (2022). Compared to Mearsheimer who locates causation in structural power dynamics, Walt emphasises perceived threat, suggesting “Ukraine’s geopolitical alignment is a vital interest for the Kremlin” and advocating for Ukrainian neutrality as the solution. Both converge on Western liberal overreach as provocation.

Applied to the 2022 invasion, this framework confronts three failures that expose its theoretical limits. The timing contradicts realist predictions because NATO expansion effectively paused after the 2008 Bucharest summit, which declined to offer Ukraine a Membership Action Plan (Mearsheimer 2014:78-79). By 2022 Ukraine’s NATO accession was considerably less likely than in previous years given German and French opposition and the alliance’s reluctance to admit states with active territorial disputes (Walt 2022). Mearsheimer’s framework requires states to respond when threats intensify, yet the invasion occurred when the NATO threat had substantially receded. Structural pressures remained relatively constant throughout the preceding decade, leaving realism unable to explain why 2022 became the threshold moment for total war.

Elias Götz attempts to address this through strategic culture, arguing that two strands created permissive conditions for invasion: profound vulnerability toward the West stemming from historical invasions across Ukrainian plains and entitlement to great power status including spheres of influence in post-Soviet space (2022:485). After Ukraine’s continued Western orientation following Crimea, these pre-existing narratives underwent progressive radicalisation among Kremlin officials. These transformed modest Western actions into existential threats through interpretive lenses emphasising geography, historical memory, and status anxieties (Götz 2022:488-490). But if strategic culture shaped threat perception throughout this period, the framework provides no mechanism explaining when radicalised narratives trigger maximal rather than incremental responses. Götz identifies radicalisation as a process but cannot distinguish between conditions producing limited intervention versus total war (ibid.:493). The question of why 2022 specifically remains unanswered because the cultural variables he identifies were operative throughout the entire post-2014 period.

The problem of scope exposes realism’s inability to explain the invasion’s maximalist character. Mearsheimer’s framework predicts calculated responses proportionate to threats, but total war across multiple axes targeting Kyiv for regime change exceeds what defensive security logic requires. Russia already possessed buffer zones through Crimea and frozen conflict in Donbas that blocked NATO membership (Kuzio 2018). The decision to pursue regime change risked eliminating these buffers through Ukrainian resistance and Western support, a consequence that realism cannot adequately theorise. Götz cannot answer this because strategic culture explains threat perception, not why particular responses get selected when multiple options exist. Richard Sakwa (2015) observes that the Ukraine crisis extends beyond security competition to encompass fundamental disagreements about the nature of the international system, yet realism reduces conflicts to security dilemmas, treating buffer zones as instrumentally valuable for defence. The framework lacks conceptual tools to explain how territorial arrangements become psychologically constitutive rather than instrumentally valuable. Mearsheimer treats Russia’s sphere of influence as axiomatically natural, but this tautology assumes what needs explanation.

Four years into the invasion, Russia has suffered enormous military casualties, economic isolation, and strategic setbacks including NATO expansion to Finland and Sweden. Realist logic predicts that rational actors reassess policies when costs dramatically exceed benefits, yet Russia continues to escalate while remaining reluctant to negotiate. Strategic culture cannot rescue this failure because even if culture shaped initial threat perception, it cannot explain why Russia persists when the invasion has demonstrably worsened its security position (Götz 2022). While territorial gains in Ukraine’s southern regions might eventually be viewed as long-term security assets, the costs........

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