Ukrainian historians New York Times On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made two major miscalculations regarding the invasion of Ukraine.
“A master tactician but an incompetent strategist,” he said he made his most serious miscalculation by not anticipating a reaction from Western and Ukrainian resistance.
“First, as in the case of the war with Georgia, the West wanted to implicitly swallow the attack on Ukraine. The unified response from the West was not what he expected. Second, in his mind Russian and Ukrainian Putin believed that Russian troops rarely needed to enter Ukraine to be welcomed by flowers. This never happened. ” rice field.
Despite Putin’s potential to exacerbate the conflict, Hrytsak wrote, “It’s far from the military victory he was looking for.”
He added that Putin believes that “he is at war with the West on Ukrainian lands, not on Ukraine.”
“It’s essential to understand this. The only way to defeat him is in a nightmare that awakens his belief that Ukraine is fighting as part of the West with the help of the West, not alone. It’s about changing, “writes Hrytsak.
This work is more than three weeks after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the capital of Kyiv has not yet been occupied.
According to Hrytsak, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 saw the merger of Crimea and the occupation of part of the Donbas region by Russian-backed separatists, distinguishing between Ukrainians and Russians. Language, religion, culture-relatively close here-but in a political tradition. “
“Simply put, a victorious democratic revolution is almost impossible in Russia, but a viable authoritarian government is almost impossible in Ukraine,” he wrote.