| Summary: | This article examines why Ukraine's struggle between 1990 and 2014 to act as a buffer state between East and West collapsed and what this reveals about the conditions under which buffering can succeed or fail. It argues that Ukraine's post-independence trajectory is a case of an immature buffer state: one that recognized the need to balance between powerful neighbours but was unable to institutionalize that practice. Building on the buffer state literature, the article introduces the concept of buffering as a strategic practice—the process through which political leadership, diplomacy and institutions must be aligned to translate structural vulnerability into strategic agency. Applying this framework to Ukraine, the analysis traces how such alignment was never achieved. Although there were moments of opportunity, buffering remained weakly institutionalized and vulnerable to reversal, leaving the country exposed to mounting external pressure. The article concludes that Ukraine's failure in buffering was neither inevitable nor solely caused from without. Instead, it was the result of the interaction between an inhospitable external environment and domestic institutional fragility. This highlights why buffering, when pursued without durable institutional anchoring, is unlikely to mature into a sustainable strategy.
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