Putin’s fatal miscalculation over Ukraine

It is a full year since Vladimir Putin started his latest war against Ukraine, and only optimists expect that the next anniversary will occur in peacetime. There is little comfort to be taken from the twin possibilities of victory or defeat for the Ukrainian forces. If they win, Russia will remain a potent threat on their borders even though Putin would be likely to fall from power. And if Ukraine loses, it will sink back into the corruption and maladministration that plagued the country before 2022 – with the additional curse of a Russian colonial oppression.

Many people had assumed that such invasions could no longer be perpetrated by one European state against another. But it did not shock opinion in the countries of eastern Europe that broke away from the USSR’s grasp in 1989. Their peoples never believed in the permanent benevolence of the new Russia. Throughout the 1990s, these countries badgered the US administration to ease their entry into Nato.