I spent a good part of the week looking for good background reads on Russia/Ukraine, knowing that anything news-related could be rendered outdated at any moment. I found this piece particularly insightful. It connects the current situation with the NATO intervention in former Yugoslavia. It concludes: An attack on Ukraine would (obviously) be Putin’s responsibility, but «the world in which such a war is possible has been forged jointly by Russia and the United States».

Two key quotes from two other articles I found helpful:

• «Putin is indeed to be feared – but as a dangerously delusional mediocrity, not a grand strategist. If the West cannot stand up to Putin, it should not be in the business of geopolitics at all.» (The West can and must rediscover its strength)
• «Despite all of that power and all of that money, despite total control over the information space and total domination of the political space, Putin must know, at some level, that he is an illegitimate leader. […] He knows, in other words, that one day, prodemocracy activists of the kind he saw in Dresden might come for him too.» (The Reason Putin Would Risk War)

From Weekly Filet #382, in February 2022.