When the Russia–Ukraine war actually began depends largely on where one chooses to draw the starting line. For many, the answer is straightforward: February 24, 2022, the day Russian forces crossed Ukraine’s borders in a full-scale invasion that shattered Europe’s post–Cold War security order. Others point to March 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea following a hastily organized referendum widely criticized as illegitimate. Still others trace the roots further back to late 2013, when Ukraine’s then-president Viktor Yanukovych abruptly abandoned plans to sign an association agreement with the European Union, triggering mass protests that culminated in his ouster during the Maidan uprising.
Each of these dates captures a real escalation, a turning point when latent tensions erupted into visible conflict. Yet taken together, they tell a deeper story: the war did not begin suddenly, nor was it the product of a single decision or event. Rather, it was the outcome of a long, grinding collision between competing visions of Europe’s security architecture, unresolved post-Soviet identities, and a steady accumulation of grievances—particularly on the Russian side—that went unaddressed for decades.
Some analysts even push the origins back to April 2008, when NATO, at its Bucharest summit, formally declared that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members” of the alliance at some future date. For Moscow, this was a red line. Russian leaders had repeatedly warned that NATO’s eastward expansion toward Russia’s borders posed an existential threat. The invitation to Kyiv and Tbilisi crystallized those fears, and within months Russia would go to war with Georgia.
Others go back still further, to February 2007, when President Vladimir Putin delivered his now-famous speech at the Munich Security Conference. In unusually blunt language, Putin denounced what he called a “unipolar” world dominated by the United States and criticized NATO’s relentless expansion eastward.
“I think it is obvious,” Putin said, “that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.”
The speech is often interpreted as Putin’s declaration that Russia would no longer acquiesce to a Western-led global order in which it played a subordinate role. Yet even Munich was not the beginning—only the moment when frustrations long discussed behind closed doors were aired publicly.
Newly declassified U.S. government documents now suggest that the preface to the Russia–Ukraine war was written even earlier, during the seemingly cooperative years of the Bush–Putin era between 2001 and 2008. Released following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the National Security Archive, verbatim transcripts of Putin’s meetings and phone calls with U.S. President George W. Bush reveal a relationship that began with striking warmth and mutual respect but gradually curdled into distrust and confrontation.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Putin emerged as one of Bush’s closest international partners. The two leaders bonded over counterterrorism—Putin in Chechnya, Bush against al-Qaeda—to the extent that Bush famously remarked, “You’re the type of guy I like to have in the foxhole with me.”
At the time, Russia and the United States shared broadly similar positions on a range of global issues, including nuclear nonproliferation, Iran, and North Korea. Moscow was integrating into the global financial system and seeking membership in the World Trade Organization. There was even a brief period when Russian officials seriously contemplated the idea of joining NATO itself.
That moment, however, proved fleeting. By the end of Bush’s presidency, the optimism of the early 2000s had evaporated. The West did not pursue Russia’s inclusion in NATO. Instead, it doubled down on expansion—most provocatively by opening the door to Ukraine and Georgia. Putin, meanwhile, grew increasingly vocal in his criticism of U.S. actions, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the deployment of missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.
Reading those early Bush–Putin conversations today, as the war in Ukraine enters its fifth year with hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced, it is difficult to avoid a sense of tragic inevitability. The warning signs were there, repeatedly and explicitly, yet they were largely dismissed or downplayed.
Earlier this year, British columnist Peter Hitchens wrote that “seldom in history has a war been more provoked.” Writing in the Daily Mail, he argued that Russian objections to NATO expansion were voiced not only by hardliners like Putin but also by liberal reformers such as Yegor Gaidar. Those objections, Hitchens lamented, reached their crescendo with Putin’s Munich speech in 2007—and were ignored.
The newly released transcripts suggest the West received not just one warning, but many.
Consider Putin’s first meeting with Bush in June 2001 in Slovenia. Reflecting on the collapse of the Soviet Union, Putin emphasized what he saw as Russia’s extraordinary concessions.
“What really happened?” he asked. “Soviet goodwill changed the world, voluntarily. And the Russians gave up thousands of square kilometers of territory voluntarily. Unheard of. Ukraine, part of Russia for centuries, given away.”
It is striking that even then, Putin singled out Ukraine—more than Kazakhstan or the Caucasus—as a historical wrong that had yet to be reconciled.
In the same conversation, Putin hinted at another theme that would later become central: Russia’s relationships with states deemed “rogue” by Washington. He explained that his engagement with North Korea was not ideological but tactical—a form of leverage against U.S. policies, particularly Washington’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
More than two decades later, that logic has come full circle. In 2024, Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty, and North Korean troops are now reportedly fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.
Putin was unusually candid about his motivations. “I needed leverage,” he told Bush. “My new friends deserted me. There was no debt reduction.” North Korea, in other words, was a means to an end.
On NATO enlargement, Putin was equally direct. He reminded Bush that Russia had once sought NATO membership itself, referencing a 1954 Soviet application that was rejected—leading, in Moscow’s telling, to the creation of the Warsaw Pact the following year.
“Russia is European and multi-ethnic, like the United States,” Putin said. “I can imagine us becoming allies… But we feel left out of NATO.”
The sharpest warnings came during Bush and Putin’s final meeting in April 2008, shortly after the NATO summit in Bucharest. By then, the tone had shifted dramatically. Putin openly cautioned that NATO membership for Ukraine would create a “long-term confrontation” between Russia and the West.
“Ukraine is a very complex state,” he said. “This is not a nation built in a natural manner. It’s an artificial country created back in Soviet times.”
He warned that Russia would rely on pro-Russian segments of Ukraine’s population to prevent NATO enlargement—an extraordinarily frank admission of intent that would later play out in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Similar warnings were issued about Georgia, where Putin predicted that NATO’s “umbrella” would encourage reckless behavior and lead to conflict. Within months, Russia invaded Georgia in August 2008.
History unfolded almost exactly as Putin had described. Six years later came Crimea. In 2022, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Today, more than a fifth of Ukrainian territory remains under Russian control, and NATO membership for Kyiv is no closer than it was in 2008.
In retrospect, the tragedy of the Russia–Ukraine war lies not only in its devastation but in how foreseeable it was. The conflict did not erupt out of nowhere. It was argued over, warned about, and foreshadowed in speeches, summits, and private conversations stretching back decades.
When the war really began is less a matter of dates than of missed opportunities—and of a world that, as one might say, sleepwalked into catastrophe.
