Former Russian foreign minister lays out 3 key false things Putin believed before invading Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn’t acting irrationally in his invasion of Ukraine, but he made several flawed assumptions beforehand based on bad information and wishful thinking, Andrei Kozyrev, foreign minister of Russia from 1991 to 1996, argued on Twitter Sunday.

To understand why the invasion was rational for Putin, we have to step into his shoes. Three beliefs came together at the same time in his calculus:
1. Ukraine’s condition as a country
2. Russian military’s condition
3. The West’s geopolitical condition

— Andrei V Kozyrev (@andreivkozyrev) March 6, 2022

On Ukraine, Putin has long believed the country is not really a country at all and, “at best, should be a satellite state,” Kozyrev writes. His hopes for indirect control of Ukraine were dashed in 2014’s Maidan uprising, so force was his only other option, and “he also started to believe his own propagandists that Ukraine is run by a Nazi-Bandera junta.”

2. Russian military. The Kremlin spent the last 20 years trying to modernize its military. Much of that budget was stolen and spent on mega-yachts in Cyprus. But as a military advisor you cannot report that to the President. So they reported lies to him instead. Potemkin military

— Andrei V Kozyrev (@andreivkozyrev) March 6, 2022

3. The West. The Russian ruling elite believed its own propaganda that Pres. Biden is mentally inept. They also thought the EU was weak because of how toothless their sanctions were in 2014. And then the U.S. botched its withdrawal from Afghanistan, solidifying this narrative.

— Andrei V Kozyrev (@andreivkozyrev) March 6, 2022

So, “if you believe all three of the above to be true and your goal is to restore the glory of the Russian Empire (whatever that means), then it is perfectly rational to invade Ukraine,” Kozyrev argues. “He miscalculated on all three, but that doesn’t make him insane. Simply wrong and immoral.” Read his entire thread to see how Kozyrev arrives at concluding Putin won’t use nukes.