What the media gets wrong about Putin and Ukraine

Western warnings of an ‘imminent’ Russian invasion of Ukraine have grown more insistent in recent weeks with different voices, from the media to politicians, needlessly stoking the fires of war with their aggressive and inaccurate rhetoric. 

Part of the reason for this is because the grainy satellite images of Russian troops poised on Ukraine’s border, just waiting for their orders to attack, conformed so well to every western stereotype: an aggressive Russia under a dictatorial leader, ready to bully, if not annihilate, poor little – well, actually not so little – Ukraine and snuff out its entirely legitimate aspirations to join the western world. You did not need to know anything about Russia or even to have a very good idea of where Ukraine is, let alone its history, or what it looks and feels like, to speak pretty confidently about Russia’s malign intentions.