The provided sources detail a series of interviews with historian Serhii Plokhy regarding the deep-seated origins and escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War. He argues that Vladimir Putin operates as a dictator driven by 19th-century imperial ideologies, viewing Ukrainians and Russians as a single people to justify his aggression. The discussion highlights how the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in the Donbas were met with a Western policy of appeasement similar to that of the 1930s. This lack of a forceful initial response, combined with NATO’s military unreadiness and the failure of the Minsk agreements, allegedly emboldened the Kremlin to pursue a full-scale invasion in 2022. However, the sources note that Putin severely miscalculated by assuming Ukraine remained as divided as it was in 2014, failing to realize that his previous actions had actually unified the Ukrainian nation. Ultimately, the text explores how intelligence failures, historical delusions, and shifting political landscapes transformed a regional struggle into a global catastrophe.

1855 CRIMEA