Beyond the hard numbers and ruined lives, the biggest mystery facing Ukraine, the U.S. and the world isn’t quantitative but psychological: What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want and how far is he prepared to go to get it?
The unthinkable has become the routine — a shooting war with tanks, trenches, drones and vast waves of refugees playing out in the heart of Europe. Russia’s military invasion of its neighbor is churning into its second year with growing fears that an imminent escalation could lead to a direct clash with NATO and decades of conflict pitting the Kremlin and its allies against the U.S. and Western-aligned democracies around the world.
Beyond the hard numbers and ruined lives, the biggest mystery facing Ukraine, the U.S. and the world isn’t quantitative but psychological: What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want, and how far is he prepared to go to get it? For President Biden, NATO and the rest of the West, the challenge is to hold together the alliance that has armed Ukraine, imposed punishing sanctions on the Russian economy and found ways to undercut Russia’s power as a global energy exporter. For Mr. Putin and his generals, the challenge is to show progress on the battlefield, contain the economic and political costs domestically, and make the cost of continuing the fight unbearable for Kyiv and its allies.Mr.
On a recent visit to Washington, Mr. Salm noted how the West’s predictions about Ukraine have evolved over the course of a year. Alternatively, Ukrainian forces armed by increasingly powerful NATO weaponry could “completely break the logistical supply chains that allow the Russian troops to even exist, and we’ll have a half a million dead Russians,” Mr. Zeihan recently told “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
Rather than recoil and withdraw, Mr. Putin made the perilous decision by late summer to double down. He ordered more targeted missile strikes to cripple Ukraine’s electricity grid and unleashed waves of attacks on civilian targets in hopes of breaking the nation’s will to resist. “Putin saw the breakup of the Soviet Union as one of biggest tragedies of the 20th century, and it’s pretty clear that his goal in this war is to redraw the map as much as possible back to 1991,” Dr. Dekleva said. “His actions are motivated by a desire to disrupt what he sees as an American-led world order.
“He wants Russia to be a great, imperial power ruled by a czar figure — himself,” Mr. Jensen told The Times as Russian troops rolled into Ukraine last year. Ms. Hill and longtime Russia analyst Angela Stent said in an analysis of Mr. Putin’s motivations for the journal Foreign Affairs that Mr. Putin has demonstrated in the past 12 months his ability to get his way no matter the obstacles, foreign or domestic.
In January, Mr. Putin tapped Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, to take direct control.
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