THE WAR THAT NOBODY WANTED TO SEE COMING

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine wasn’t inevitable, but we have been moving toward it since the collapse of the Soviet Union

- Keith Gessen

FOR THREE MONTHS everyone argued about whether there would be a war, whether Vladimir Putin was bluffing or serious. Some of the Russia experts who had long told people to take it easy were telling people to get worried. Others, who had long criticised Putin, said he was just trying to draw attention to himself, that it was all for show. Among the analysts, there was a debate between the troop watchers and the TV watchers. The troop watchers saw the massive concentration of Russian forces at the border with Ukraine and in Crimea and warned of invasion. The TV watchers said that Russian TV was not ramping up war hysteria, as it usually does before a Russian invasion, and that this meant there would be no war.

The question was settled on the night of 24 February, when Russian missiles hit military installations and civilian targets inside Ukraine, and armoured convoys crossed the border. Then everyone began arguing about why. Was Putin crazy? Was he genuinely concerned about Nato expansion? Was he thinking in amoral categories – as longtime Putin scholar Fiona Hill suggested – that were fundamentally historical, along timescales that made no sense to ordinary mortals? Was he trying, bit by bit, to reconstruct the Russian Empire? Was Estonia next?