title: Structural Realist Analysis of NATO–Russia Geopolitical Competition in Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Ukraine War
abstract: This study, drawing on a structural realist analytical approach, investigates the systemic drivers of the NATO–Russia confrontation and its ultimate outcome in the form of the Ukraine War in 2022. Through a combination of comparative historical analysis, process tracing, and discourse analysis, it reconstructs the evolution of threat construction, strategic misperceptions, and entrapment in alliance patterns from the post–Cold War period to the present. The findings indicate that the gradual exp