This is of more than academic interest. If we don’t agree on why Putin decided to invade Ukraine and what he wants to achieve, we can’t determine what would constitute victory or defeat for either side and the contours of a possible endgame. At some point, like all wars, the present conflict will end. Geography condemns Ukraine and Russia to live next to each other and that is not going to change. They will eventually have to find a modus vivendi. This also applies to Europe and Russia, although it may take decades to undo the damage. So why did Putin bet so much on a high-risk venture that will at best bring him tenuous control over a damaged land? Initially, he was said to be undisturbed – “crazy”, in the words of Defense Secretary Ben Wallace. Putin was pictured lecturing his defense chiefs, hunched over the other end of a 20-foot-long table. But a little later, the same officials were shown sitting at his side. The long table turned out to be theatrical – Putin’s version of Nixon’s “crazy” theory, to make him look so absurd that anything was possible, even nuclear war. Western officials then argued that Putin was horrified at the prospect of a democratic Ukraine on Russia’s border, which would threaten his power base by showing Russians that they, too, could live differently. At first glance, this seemed plausible. Putin hated the “color revolutions” that, from 2003 onwards, brought about regime change in the former Soviet bloc states. But Ukraine’s attractions as a model are limited. It is deeply corrupt, the rule of law is non-existent and its billionaire oligarchs wield disproportionate power. If that changes, the Russian intelligentsia may take note, but the majority of Russians – the state propaganda feeds that make up Putin’s political base – wouldn’t give two hoots. The invasion has also been portrayed as an outright imperialist land grab. A passing reference to Peter the Great earlier in the summer was seen as confirmation that Putin wanted to restore the Russian empire or, failing that, the USSR. Otherwise reasonable people, mostly in Eastern Europe but not only, argued that Ukraine was just a first step. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” a former Swedish minister told me last week, “if, in a few years, Estonia and Latvia are next in line.” Given that Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century,” this might seem reasonable. But he also said: “Whoever does not repent [its] Destruction has no heart. anyone who wants to see it recreated is out of their mind.” Leaving aside the fact that the Russian military is already under pressure to achieve even modest successes in Ukraine, an attack on the Baltic states or Poland would bring them into direct conflict with NATO, which is the last thing Moscow (or West) wants. In fact, Putin’s invasion is driven by other reasons. He has been fixated on Ukraine long before he came to power. Already in 1994, when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, he expressed his anger at the union of Crimea with Ukraine. “Russia won Crimea from the Turks!” he told a French diplomat that year, referring to Russia’s defeat by the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century. But it was the possibility, raised at a 2008 NATO summit, of Ukraine becoming a full member of the Western alliance that turned his stance toxic. Bill Burns, now the head of the CIA, who was then the US ambassador to Moscow, wrote at the time in a secret cable to the White House: “Ukraine’s entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite ( not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from the sick in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s most irascible liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who sees Ukraine in NATO as anything but. rather than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests… Today’s Russia will respond.” Successive US administrations ignored Burns’ warning, and Putin responded. In 2014, it annexed Crimea. He then instigated a separatist uprising in the Donbass. Finally, in February of this year, he unleashed a brutal, undeclared war to bring Ukraine to the brink. NATO enlargement was just the tip of the iceberg. Many other grievances against the West had accumulated in Putin’s two decades in power. By the end of 2020, when planning began for a new push against Kiev, the wheel had come full circle. The young Russian leader who had impressed both Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, who had backed George W. Bush to the hilt after 9/11 and who had insisted that Russia’s place was with Europe and the Western world, had slowly transformed slowly to a merciless opponent. convinced that the US and its allies were determined to bring Russia to its knees. Western politicians dismiss this as paranoid. But the problem isn’t Western intentions, it’s how the Kremlin interprets them. Putin’s goal is not only to neutralize the regime in Kyiv, but, more importantly, to show that NATO is powerless to stop it. If along the way it destroys Ukrainian culture in Russian-held territories, that’s not collateral damage: it’s a bonus. Whether it succeeds will depend on the situation on the battlefield, which in turn will depend on the extent of Western support in the autumn and winter, when energy shortages and rising living costs risk putting under severe pressure Ukraine’s Western partners. Moscow does not need to achieve much for Putin to claim victory. It would be enough for Russia to control all of Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea. He would definitely like more. If Russian troops occupy Odessa and the adjacent Black Sea coast, it would reduce Ukraine to servitude. But even more modest gains would show the limits of US power. It is likely that Ukraine, with strong Western support, will be able to prevent this. But it is far from certain. The war in Ukraine is not being fought in isolation. While Russia challenges the US-led security order in Europe, China challenges it in Asia. A geopolitical transition has begun, the effects of which may not be fully apparent for decades. But the post-Cold War order that has ruled the world for the past 30 years is coming to an end. From its collapse, a new balance of power will emerge.
Philip Short has written authoritative biographies including Putin: His Life and Times, Mao: A Life and Pol Pot: History of a Nightmare, following a long career as the BBC’s foreign correspondent in Moscow, Washington and other world capitals
