Bankir and his men have been trying to fight off Russian attacks along the Ukrainian front lines for more than two years. But it’s only now that they are finally able to strike where it hurts: Inside Russia’s own territory.
The newly granted permission by the United States and other allies to use Western weapons to strike inside Russia has had a huge impact, Bankir said. “We have destroyed targets inside Russia, which allowed for several successful counteroffensives. The Russian military can no longer feel impunity and security,” the senior officer in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) told CNN. For security reasons, he asked to be identified by his call sign only.
Actually their invasion made a lot of sense in light of the reaction of the West to their invasion and anexation of Crimea - they did the deed, then Europe and American bitched and moaned for a bit and after a few years things were back to normal and Russia was selling their natural gas and oil to them in greater quantities than ever before (remember how well things were with Nord Stream after Russia invaded and anexed Crimea that they were building a second one and how dependent Germany had made itself of Russia gas).
To me it seems that the whole plan was for a quick decapitation attack on Ukraine (using their armored convoy targetting Kijv from Belarus), then endure a year or two of bitching and moaning by the West, then back to normal just like last time.
The very different results were product of 4 big surprises:
Before those things were actually known, it absolutelly made sense for the Russian leadership to think that a military invasion of Ukraine to take it over had a high likelihood of success.
There’s probably also some twisted logic where you can think of Crimea differently - it has natural borders that Russia stopped at, they had a history of it using it for a major naval port, etc …… it’s easier to take the appeasement role when it looks like Russia had a stronger case and they will stop.
It’s a lot harder to make that leap when Russia flat out invades and the goal is subjugation of an entirely independent country. Even Putin must see the difference
Judging by what I’ve heard from the actual Russian authorities over the years, even before this invasion, for Russians Ukraine was seen as a natural part of Greater Russia (remember, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union throughout its entire existence and even some leaders of the Soviet Union were Ukranian).
Even outside Russia you can see this natural acceptance of Ukraine as a place that Russia has a say over, in the arguments of traditional Communists, especially the older ones who learned their version of the ideology from Soviet Union propaganda.
Remember, Putin and those who surround them wouldn’t be reasoning from a Western European point of view, they would be reasoning from a Russian point of view and might very well expect that Western Europe would react to Russia’s invasion as being a natural clawing back of a region that broke away during a period of revolution (for which there is quite a lot of Historical precedent all over Europe).
I mean, if you look at the reaction of several European nations with regards to what Israel is doing in Gaza, a significant portion of the XIX century mindset (which includes Imperialism) is de facto alive and well amongst a significant portion of the European elites if often morphed in the whole “areas of influence” variance that justified US interventions, so it’s hardly surprising that a Russia whose leadership has that same mindset would expect that the reaction of European and in general Western political elites would be the usual perfomative theatre of “Freedom & Democracy” whilst not really doing anything when either is threatenned in “countries which are not like us” (and if you look at how German politicians reacted at the start of the Invasion, that seemed to be very much what they were going for).
PS: Mind you, I do think your point is absolutelly right when it comes to explaining the difference in reactions in the West. My point is that it seems natural that the Russian expectations about the reaction in the West, coloured as they were by their own mindset, underestimated the probability of the kind of reaction that did end up happenning, so the pros and cons considerations about “is it worth it?” before they actually went ahead and invaded, would have tilted more strongly than otherwise towards it being worth the risk.
Further, if Russia did succeed in their original target of a decapitation attack on Ukraine within 3 days, I very much suspect that the reaction on the West would be lots of bitching and moaning quickly followed within a couple of years by a “pragmatic” (read: driven by Economic interests) acceptance of the “facts on the ground” and return to normal.
This could he because they saw how WWII started and realized that the only smart move was stopping it before they built momentum. What surprises me is that Putin thought everyone would just let it happen in spite of the historical outcomes.
Yeah.
I would say that by the XXI century most of Europe (basically the EU and the nations mainly bordering EU nations) has transitioned to being used to Peace and using Trade power rather than Force for prosperity and to achieve its geopolitical aims, and the idea that Russia too had chosen to go with Peace & Prosperity through Trade was quite widespread.
Whatever XIX Imperialistic notions some Power Elites in Europe still have are only ever about “allied nations” (the US, Israel) with the victims being “people who are not like us” in far away lands, with the closest they get to practicing it being following the US into Afghanistan and Iraq.
So when Russia turned out to still behave as a XIX century warmongering imperialist nation, worse, against “fellow nations”, it was quite the wake up call.
I also suspect that the decades of warnings by Eastern European EU member countries about Russia over the last few decades didn’t entirelly fall in deaf ears and when some of those warning started looking like they were indeed right, this pushed the rest of the EU members and partner nations to listen to the rest of the warning coming from those nations, which accelerated the “We must stop Russia before it’s too late” reaction - I strongly suspects that an EU without Eastern European countries would have not at all reacted as forcefully and assertivelly.