How Vladimir Putin Keeps Everyone Guessing
As the Ukraine crisis deepens, three Bloomberg Opinion columnists unpack the Russian president’s motivations.
He’s got his ambitions all mapped out.
Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/BloombergThe standoff between Russia and the West is growing ever more fraught, with knuckles whitening on both sides amid the buildup of troops and weapons along Ukraine’s eastern borders. The questions the Biden administration and European leaders are grappling with are: What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want, and what will he do if he doesn’t get it? In a Twitter Spaces discussion, Bobby Ghosh put those and other questions to Bloomberg Opinion columnists Clara Ferreira Marques and Andreas Kluth. This is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Ghosh: I’ll start with a brief overview from the United States. The Biden administration is signaling it might send more American troops into Europe, to enlarge the existing U.S. presence and add to the NATO Response Force. This is intended to deter any further Russian aggression in Ukraine.