“When Vladimir Putin shattered the peace in Europe by unleashing war on a democracy of 44 million people, his justification was that modern, Western-leaning Ukraine was a constant threat and Russia could not feel ‘safe, develop and exist,'” BBC News says (here).
That’s consistent with other explanations I’ve read, but puts it more plainly than anything else I’ve read.
My own version is, he went to war to make eastern Europe safe for authoritarian kleptocracy. I tend to think of Russia as a country run by gangsters.
Putin insisted, “We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.” This might be true. He may be a serial killer who stalks and kills people for fun, especially helpless women and children hiding in basements.
An alternative explanation is he intended to “overrun Ukraine and depose its government,” and install another Moscow puppet in Kyiv, like the one overthrown by a popular revolt in 2014. That revolt was sparked by the puppet’s refusal, under prodding from Moscow, to join the European Union. Putin reacted by seizing Crimea and the Donbas region, where low-level fighting has festered ever since.
He seems to have miscalculated, overrating Russia’s army and underestimating the Ukrainians’ determination to fight him off.
The question now is whether he’ll settle for less, as young dead Russians come home in growing numbers (story here and photo below).
