, Columnist
What Was Putin Thinking?
The origins of the war in Ukraine offer a warning about what could be a dangerous decade ahead in Asia.
Not a model of transparency.
Photographer: SERGEI BOBYLYOV/AFPThis article is for subscribers only.
Most of the unanswerable questions about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have to do with the future. How will this war end? Will China intervene more directly? Will hostilities escalate into a clash between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? Yet one of the most crucial questions is about the past: Why did Vladimir Putin start this war in the first place?
It’s hard to know exactly what he was thinking: Putin’s regime is not a model of transparency. But piecing together his motives is important, not least because the origins of this war contain clues about how a conflict in Taiwan might start.