In his article Putin Sees Ukraine Through a Lens of Grievance Over Lost Glory in the NYT, Andrew Higgins analyzes the bizarre views of the Russian dictator that made his aggression against Ukraine inevitable.
His main concern is not at all to end three and a half years of bloodshed. Returning to the grievances he first aired with irritation at the 2007 Munich Security Conference and which he revived in February 2022 by announcing and justifying a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin, in his final statements in Alaska, demanded that "a fair balance be restored in the sphere of security in Europe and the world as a whole." Only this, he said, will eliminate the "root causes of the crisis" in Ukraine—Russia's declining status after losing the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the end of Moscow's hegemony over Eastern Europe.
Putin stated that he is "sincerely interested" in stopping "what is happening" because Russians and Ukrainians "share the same roots" and "for them, this is a tragedy and great pain." Journalists emphasize that portraying Russia as a "victim of a war" it started has become a key element of Kremlin propaganda since the onset of the full-scale war.
"Putin and Russia are revisionists; they can't accept that they lost the Cold War," said former Lithuanian Defense Minister Laurynas Kaščiūnas. According to him, the Russian despot never directly refers to the war, instead referring to "the situation around Ukraine" in order to "present it as a Western conspiracy against Russia, where Ukraine is merely a pawn and a tool."
The media also reported that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov "rather transparently hinted at the Kremlin's ambitions" by appearing at his Alaskan hotel wearing a sweater emblazoned with the word "USSR." Trump, meanwhile, once again attempted to soothe Putin's wounded pride by calling Russia "number two in the world," ignoring China and the EU.
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