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Russia’s Path To Victory In Ukraine
It is exceedingly narrow and relies entirely on Western fecklessness
When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022 he had every reason to believe Russia would win a quick and easy victory. Although the USA, the UK, and Russia itself had in 1994 signed a legally binding Agreement to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine handing over the 1,000+ nuclear weapons it inherited when the USSR collapsed, in 2014 Putin had sent his troops to invade Ukraine twice and the West had done precisely nothing in response. Everyone magically forgot about the legal undertaking and although Ukrainians in the occupied territories suffered atrocities at the hands of the Russian invaders, no one outside of Ukraine itself gave a damn.
And so hubris, combined with grotesquely misleading claims from Russian security services, triggered Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine again in 2022 in order to re-establish the Russian Empire. Infantile lies about NATO “forcing” Russia to act, and the endless babble about “Ukrainian nazis,” provided a threadbare cover suitable for domestic consumption and good enough to gull the legions of hopelessly naïve and ignorant people around the globe who are reflexively anti-Western.
