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 already incurred vastly exceed any plausible strategic benefit under realist calculation. The 2022 invasion therefore exposes fundamental theoretical limits in realism’s capacity to explain behaviour driven by identity constitution rather than security maximisation. The framework treats identity as exogenous and stable, preferences as given, and policy as optimal means selection (Mearsheimer 2014; Walt 2022). It cannot theorise situations where policies constitute preferences themselves or where actions validate identities rather than achieve pre-existing objectives. The theory identifies relevant background conditions in NATO expansion and Western democracy promotion but mistakes background for sufficient cause, leaving the invasion’s timing, scope, and persistence weakly addressed.
Critical IR Theory: Fantasy, Identity, and Apocalyptic Discourse
Critical IR theory, drawing on psychoanalytical concepts (Morozov 2015; Mälksoo 2018), demonstrates how Russia’s great power claims constitute a fantasy requiring Ukraine as necessary object of completion. Before examining how this fantasy operates in Russian discourse, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between the psychoanalytic concepts employed here and the broader IR traditions from which they draw. Constructivism established that state identities are intersubjectively constituted through recognition and social interaction as opposed to material conditions (Wendt 1999). This is a foundational insight, but constructivism generally assumes that identities, once formed, remain relatively stable and revisable through resocialisation (ibid.). The post-structural psychoanalytic strand of critical IR extends this logic where constructivism reaches its limit, drawing on Lacanian theory to argue that identities are structured around fundamental lacks that no material acquisition can resolve (Morozov). In Lacanian terms, the fantasy object is something whose imagined possession promises to fill an irresolvable gap in the subject’s self-image. Applied to IR, this means that Russia’s great power identity is less a stable possession than a perpetually deferred achievement requiring external object, Ukraine, to function as the site of its imagined completion. This distinction carries significant explanatory weight. An identity structured around a fantasy object does not revise itself when that object becomes unattainable. It escalates its pursuit, because the alternative is not a strategic setback but the collapse of the self-image that gave the pursuit its meaning in the first place (Morozov 2015; Forsberg, Heller and Wolf 2014).
Morozov argues these aspirations are psychologically constructed through Russia’s ambiguous international position as “subaltern empire” (2015:3-4). Russia simultaneously reaches for European great power status while being “positioned as Europe’s constitutive outside” (ibid.). This structural position is generative of fantasy in the Lacanian sense because the subaltern subject cannot achieve recognition through the very frameworks of modernity it reproduces, leaving great power status permanently deferred rather than attainable (Morozov 2015:28, 163). The fantasy of commanding a sphere of influence therefore does not function as a straightforward policy objective but as a compensatory structure, one that promises to resolve the tension between self-image and international recognition without ever being able to deliver that resolution.
Parallel to this, Forsberg, Heller, and Wolf demonstrate how Russia’s status-seeking creates emotional dynamics that drive policy beyond rational calculation (2014:262). Great power identity is not an objective geopolitical fact but an intersubjectively constructed status requiring recognition from other states (ibid.). When Ukraine actively rejects Russian leadership, the emotional response transcends strategic adjustment and becomes a crisis of identity. This explains why Russia would risk comprehensive isolation for territorial gains that worsen its international standing, behaviour that contradicts realist predictions about rational cost-benefit analysis. This is the dynamic that ontological security theory captures. Russia’s relationship with Ukraine is constitutive of its self-narrative, and the “Russian World” framework depends on Ukraine’s inclusion for its internal coherence. Ukrainian independence accordingly destabilises the narrative framework through which Russian elites understand their state’s historical role and civilisational mission.
The persuasiveness of critical IR emerges when examining how Russian discourse constructs Ukraine itself. Realism conceptualises territory as instrumental asset providing security or economic benefits, but Mikhail Suslov (2018) and Valentina Feklyunina (2016) demonstrate that Russian discourse constructs Ukraine as internal component whose separation constitutes incompleteness of Russian identity. The concept of the “Russian World” operates through logic whereby Ukraine’s “reintegration” would restore wholeness to a fragmented civilizational self. Putin’s July 2021 essay exemplifies this by constructing Russians and Ukrainians as unified descendants of the Ancient Rus, branding Ukraine’s contemporary separation from Russia as historical aberration requiring correction rather than a geopolitical reality requiring management. This is qualitatively different from instrumental territorial acquisition because the value lies in what Ukraine’s possession would symbolically confirm about Russian identity. This framework directly explains the invasion’s timing in ways realism cannot, provided we examine the specific developments that made the fantasy of Ukrainian reintegration increasingly untenable between 2019 and 2022.
Maria Mälksoo illuminates how Ukraine’s accelerating Westernisation creates a mirror reflecting Russian developmental failure rather than civilisational distinctiveness (2018:143). Kuzio reveals how this trajectory contradicted the fantasy’s foundational assumption that Ukrainian identity remained artificial and unsustainable without Russian framework (2022:796). Several concrete developments between 2019 and 2021 intensified this contradiction beyond the point of denial. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s election in 2019 brought a president openly committed to Euro-Atlantic integration who refused to implement the Minsk accords on Russian terms, signalling that Ukrainian political culture had shifted decisively against accommodation with Moscow. Ukraine’s 2019 constitutional amendments enshrining NATO and EU membership as strategic objectives formalised this irreversible orientation in foundational legal documents. The August 2021 Crimean Platform international summit, attended by dozens of countries supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, demonstrated Ukraine’s successful cultivation of Western diplomatic support that extended beyond mere rhetorical gestures. These developments revealed that Russian influence over Ukrainian political trajectory had fundamentally collapsed, making the fantasy of natural reintegration psychologically unsustainable for Russian elites invested in the “Russian World” concept.
When Ukraine’s democratic consolidation and Western integration can no longer be dismissed as temporary or externally imposed, the fantasy of great power through Ukraine becomes structurally untenable. Realism struggles to explain why constant structural pressures suddenly produced total war in 2022 rather than earlier, but the psychoanalytical framework identifies what changed. The moment when the impossibility of Ukraine-as-fantasy becomes undeniable produces crisis requiring immediate resolution rather than gradual adaptation. This explains not only the timing but also why limited measures like economic pressure or continued frozen conflict in Donbas became psychologically insufficient responses. The collapse of fantasy generates urgency that transcends cost-benefit calculation because the issue concerns identity validation rather than instrumental goal achievement.
Critical IR gains further explanatory power when integrated with analysis of apocalyptic discourse in Russian official rhetoric. Maria Engström demonstrates how contemporary Russian foreign policy incorporates messianic themes, with official discourse framing Russia’s position as defending traditional values and sovereignty against an aggressive and expansionist West (2014:357). This apocalyptic register is analytically continuous with the fantasy structure identified by Morozov, functioning as its intensified expression. When the fantasy object becomes unattainable, the subject re-frames its pursuit as metaphysical necessity, investing the drive to recover what has been lost with salvific and civilisational meaning (Morozov 2015; Engström 2014:370). Actions become invested with historical mission, displacing strategic calculation altogether (Engström 2014:370). Extending this, Charles Clover traces how these themes draw on Orthodox tradition and nationalist philosophy, constructing scenarios where Russia fights for its very existence, with Ukraine positioned as the decisive battlefield determining Russia’s survival (2016:316-317). Putin’s invasion announcement exemplifies this, declaring that the West seeks to weaken and divide Russia as part of historical pattern, framing the invasion as a struggle for historical survival rather than as response to immediate security threat.
The integration of fantasy and apocalyptic discourse provides superior explanatory leverage by revealing the causal mechanisms operating across the invasion’s timing, scope, and persistence. Regarding timing, Ukraine’s Westernisation destroys the fantastical premise that Ukrainian identity remains artificial and unleashes an ontological crisis. As Suslov argues, Ukraine’s trajectory undermines the very foundations of the Russian World concept (2018), while apocalyptic discourse elevates a foreign policy challenge into the realm of existential threat, transforming what might otherwise remain manageable tension into crisis demanding immediate resolution. Regarding scope, the collapse of fantasy generates apocalyptic temporality where gradual policy adjustment becomes psychologically unavailable because self-image requires immediate vindication. Total war becomes necessary not despite its costs but because of them. Limited operations like the annexation of Crimea could be dismissed as opportunistic land grabs, but total war demonstrates a willingness to sacrifice everything for Ukraine, thereby validating the fantasy’s premise that Ukraine possesses civilizational rather than merely strategic significance. Regarding persistence, Russia must continue demonstrating this willingness to sacrifice because the fantasy constructed Ukraine as worth any cost, and abandonment would confirm that great power status was illusory. Critical approaches reveal how policy serves identity performance when recognition is at stake, making realist cost calculations irrelevant to performative imperatives. The theory thus predicts continued escalation even as material costs mount, accurately describing Russian behaviour since 2022.
Unit-Level Factors: Decision-Making Under Personalist Authoritarianism
While critical IR theory explains the symbolic and ideational dimensions driving the invasion, unit-level analysis illuminates why Putin’s regime specifically embraced maximalist apocalyptic discourse in 2021-2022 rather than maintaining more limited responses to Ukrainian Westernisation. The timing puzzle requires attention to how Russia’s increasingly personalist and centralised decision-making structure filtered external events through a particular ideological lens that magnified their threatening character. Putin’s political consolidation accelerated dramatically after 2020. The constitutional amendments passed that year, ostensibly allowing Putin to remain in power until 2036, concentrated authority further while eliminating remaining checks on presidential power. This consolidation coincided with the suppression of remaining independent media and civil society, creating an information environment where alternative perspectives on Ukraine became increasingly marginalised within elite circles. The COVID-19 pandemic amplified this isolation, with Putin reportedly spending extended periods in reduced contact even with advisors, receiving information through increasingly narrow channels dominated by security service officials. These structural changes in decision-making architecture meant that by 2021, the interpretive frameworks through which Ukraine’s trajectory was assessed had become substantially more threat-oriented and ideologically homogeneous than in earlier periods.
This connects to the growing influence of the siloviki, security and military elites, in Putin’s inner circle. Throughout Putin’s tenure, former KGB and FSB officials came to dominate key advisory positions, but their influence became particularly pronounced after 2014 as pragmatic voices advocating economic integration with the West lost credibility following sanctions (Galeotti 2016). These figures brought distinctly threat-oriented worldviews emphasising Western hostile intent and viewing Ukraine through the lens of geopolitical competition and civilisational conflict. The marginalisation of more pragmatic economic and diplomatic advisors created an echo chamber where apocalyptic interpretations of Ukraine’s trajectory faced limited internal challenge. Personalist authoritarian systems exhibit particular vulnerabilities to radicalisation precisely because leaders become insulated from information contradicting their worldview. As autocratic consolidation progresses, subordinates face incentives to reinforce rather than challenge the leader’s preconceptions, a dynamic that creates conditions where ideological narratives can shift from rhetorical tools to genuinely believed frameworks guiding policy.
The timing of invasion thus reflects not merely external events in Ukraine but the internal political trajectory of Putin’s regime toward more extreme positions as decision-making became more centralised and ideologically homogeneous. Furthermore, the failure of the Minsk process by 2021 represented a concrete policy collapse that likely accelerated radicalisation within this increasingly closed decision-making system. Russia had invested significant diplomatic capital in the Minsk accords as a mechanism for maintaining influence over Ukrainian politics through federalisation provisions favourable to Donbas. When it became clear that Ukraine would not implement these provisions and that Western powers would not compel Ukrainian compliance, this represented a failure of the more limited approach Russia had pursued since 2014. For a regime that had staked its legitimacy partly on restoring Russian geopolitical influence, this failure in combination with Ukraine’s continued Western integration created urgent pressure for more drastic measures. The unit-level perspective thus complements rather than contradicts critical IR theory. The symbolic and ideational factors identified by Morozov, Mälksoo, and others explain what made Ukraine psychologically constitutive for Russian identity. The unit-level analysis explains why, at this particular historical moment, Russia’s decision-making system selected maximalist military response rather than continued limited pressure or diplomatic manoeuvring. The concentration of power in Putin’s hands, the dominance of threat-oriented security elites, and the isolation of decision-making from alternative perspectives created structural conditions enabling apocalyptic discourse to become operationally decisive in 2021–2022 specifically.
Conclusion
Realist scholars might object that these approaches overinterpret rhetoric as causal rather than justificatory, with Mearsheimer likely arguing that symbolic discourse serves material interests rather than constituting independent drivers of behaviour. Sakwa (2015) too cautions against dismissing structural pressures entirely, noting that geopolitical realities constrain even identity-driven policies. However, this misunderstands how symbolic and material dimensions interact in decision-making. The symbolic realm does not float above material interests but structures how actors perceive interests themselves, determining which costs become bearable for particular outcomes. Four years into the invasion, its continuation testifies that no territorial acquisition resolves the ontological crisis Steele and Mitzen theorise (2008; 2006), because the problem resides in recognition and identity, conditions that territorial control cannot satisfy.
The theoretical implications extend beyond regional studies. Realism’s explanatory failures in this case are structural, rooted in its foundational assumption that state preferences are stable and that policy is the rational selection of means toward pre-given ends. When ontological crisis takes hold, as the psychoanalytic framework demonstrates, that assumption dissolves. The fantasy framework reveals that Russia’s pursuit of Ukraine was the performance of an identity that required Ukraine as its condition of possibility. The apocalyptic discourse layered onto this fantasy removed the psychological availability of limited responses, while the personalised and ideologically sealed decision-making structure ensured no internal corrective could moderate the resulting policy. Realism correctly identifies the structural context but cannot explain why, at this moment, within this regime, that context produced total war.
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Further Reading on E-International Relations
