TWO YEARS ON, STALEMATE IN RUSSIA'S WAR ON UKRAINE

Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine two years ago has been a disaster for both sides.

- JOHN DOBSON

OK I was wrong. Like almost every other commentator, I forecast that Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine two years ago. It just didn’t make any sense that in this day and age a European country should invade a neighbouring sovereign state. But when you try to analyse the mind of President Vladimir Putin you have to cast common sense aside. He lives in the bubble of his own version of reality.

For months, the Russian military had been occupying much of its border with Ukraine, a presence that most believed was simply a method of applying pressure on Kiev not to join NATO or the European Union. Then on 18 February 2022 reports came in that Russia had amassed up to 190,000 personnel on the border, an increase of 90,000 in less than a month. News that the Russia-supporting republics of Donetsk and Luhansk had announced a mass evacuation of the region’s residents to Russia and reports of a car bomb in Donetsk close to the separatists’ headquarters (the predicted “false flag” incident giving Moscow a pretext to invade), added to fears of an impending assault. As western diplomats gathered for a major security conference in Munich there was a growing sense of foreboding that their efforts to avoid a war in Europe were doomed and that Putin had irrevocably chosen the path of conflict. They were right, as just days later, on 24 February 2022 (Ukraine’s 9/11), Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine from land, sea and air.