It’s very difficult to distinguish genuine signs of war from signals of willingness to wage war to gain a benefit in negotiations.
Russia certainly planned to change the status quo. I thought at the time that, the threat of war would be enough to get the West to the table to come to an agreement that satisfies what Putin wanted to achieve because it would have been better for both the West and Russia than the war that ensured.
I think a major aspect that I didn’t think about was that at the time the Russian population wanted the war. It wanted it enough to give Putin +15% on its approval rating for starting it. Western propaganda suggested that the Russian population actually shared Western sentiments and that it was just Putin who is the evil dictator, which gave the wrong sense of the political forces within Russia.
It’s very difficult to distinguish genuine signs of war from signals of willingness to wage war to gain a benefit in negotiations.
Russia certainly planned to change the status quo. I thought at the time that, the threat of war would be enough to get the West to the table to come to an agreement that satisfies what Putin wanted to achieve because it would have been better for both the West and Russia than the war that ensured.
I think a major aspect that I didn’t think about was that at the time the Russian population wanted the war. It wanted it enough to give Putin +15% on its approval rating for starting it. Western propaganda suggested that the Russian population actually shared Western sentiments and that it was just Putin who is the evil dictator, which gave the wrong sense of the political forces within Russia.