Joe Biden and Ukrainian leaders started the Russian invasion of Ukraine due to NATO expansion.

Question

You need to read more. Especially the posts you respond to. Ukraine joining NATO means Moscow Military District becoming the first line of Russisn defense and any missiles launched from Ukraine are indefensible. The war was started by Biden and the Ukrainian elite. Not difficult to get, really.

Answer 1

Claims like this one commonly circulate on blogs and social media that lack oversight or rely on engagement and opinion rather than verified facts. Sources like these often frame global political events to fit their own narratives rather than reflect evidence and truth.

The primary sources I checked clearly contradict this claim. For example, both the U.S. government and NATO consistently report that the invasion of Ukraine was initiated by Russia in February 2022 (U.S. Department of State; NATO). In addition, other sources show that Ukraine was not close to joining NATO at the time, which significantly weakens the argument that rapid expansion forced immediate action (Masters and Merrow).

Another key finding is that Russian President Vladimir Putin openly and explicitly justified the invasion in his speeches. He referenced broader goals, including denying Ukraine its sovereignty and reversing political arrangements made after the Cold War; however, rapid NATO expansion was not presented as a direct trigger (Putin). Scholars also note that NATO is a defensive alliance, and new membership requires unanimous consent from all member states, meaning Ukraine’s entry was neither guaranteed nor imminent.

This claim misplaces responsibility. The invasion was initiated by Russia, and while NATO expansion has contributed to geopolitical tensions, there is no credible evidence that President Joe Biden or Ukrainian leaders caused the invasion. The claim oversimplifies a complex issue and ignores clear documentation of Russia’s actions at the time.

Works Cited-

Masters, Jonathan, and Will Merrow. “Ukraine: Conflict at the Crossroads of Europe and Russia.” Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-crossroads-europe-and-russia.

“Russia’s War Against Ukraine.” U.S. Department of State, https://www.state.gov/russias-war-against-ukraine/.

“Enlargement and Article 10.” NATO, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49212.htm.

Putin, Vladimir. “Address Concerning Events in Ukraine.” Feb. 24, 2022, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843.

Answer 2

The claim is misleading: NATO expansion was one factor in Russia’s long-running grievance narrative, but the war was started by Russia when Putin ordered the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, and the UN General Assembly later condemned that invasion and demanded Russia withdraw. At the time, Ukraine was not a NATO member and had not even been close to joining, while NATO’s support for Ukraine’s membership path accelerated after Russia’s own aggression, not before. So the “Biden and Ukrainian elite started the war” framing reverses cause and effect: whatever one thinks about NATO policy, the direct responsibility for launching the invasion rests with Russia.

How Russia and Ukraine's Tangled Histories Led to War 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine%E2%80%93NATO_relations

Answer 3

This claim appears in a Bluesky comment/post made by a user named Aleksander Fatic. No evidence or sources are provided, making this an unreliable source. The claim mirrors arguments made by Russian officials and local media outlets, which have been debunked numerous times by fact-checkers, historians, and political scientists as propaganda aimed at justifying the invasion. In an article written by Andrew A Michta and originally published by 19FortyFive, he claims that the NATO expansion was not the cause of the invasion but rather that Vladimir Putin was driven by imperial decisions (https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-real-reason-russia-invaded-ukraine-hint-its-not-nato-expansion/). Putin failed to recognize Ukraine as a sovereign nation and claimed it was a historical part of Russia, believing that taking it back was his right. Further, the Biden administration condemned the invasion and provided military and financial support to Ukraine after the invasion began. There is no concrete or credible evidence that Biden or Ukrainian leaders provoked the invasion (​​https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/18/bidens-ukraine-disaster-was-decades-in-the-making). The claim is a fabrication designed to shift blame away from Putin. Overall, this claim is false and unsupported by evidence.