Inside Vladimir Putin’s Hall of Mirrors: How the Kremlin’s Miscalculation of Western Resolve Emboldened Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Abstract

Why did Vladimir Putin order the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite numerous warnings from Western countries about the consequences of such an action? This article argues that misperceptions about having the upper hand vis-à-vis Western countries, formed and proliferated among the Russian leadership, emboldened the Kremlin to launch the military invasion of Ukraine, assuming that the West would stand down in the face of the attack. Based on a detailed analysis of Russian elites’ discourse through the theoretical lens of interdependence studies, this study demonstrates that Putin miscalculated Western resolve largely because of two key misperceptions. First, Putin’s elites were convinced that the West was asymmetrically dependent on Russia, viewing it as a strategic resource that would tie the hands of Western and EU countries, eventually making them accept the outcome of the war. Second, the Kremlin believed that Ukraine occupied a secondary role in Western interests that would further limit the West’s involvement in the conflict, as it would not risk exposing its dependence on Moscow for the sake of an issue that, in the Kremlin’s eyes, was marginal to European and American security.

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SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
Inside Vladimir Putin’s Hall of Mirrors: How the Kremlin’s
Miscalculation of Western Resolve Emboldened Russia’s
Invasion of Ukraine
Mikhail Polianskii
Department of International Institutions, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), Germany
Email: polianskii@hsfk.de
Abstract
Why did Vladimir Putin order the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite numerous warnings from
Western countries about the consequences of such an action? This article argues that misperceptions about
having the upper hand vis-à-vis Western countries, formed and proliferated among the Russian leadership,
emboldened the Kremlin to launch the military invasion of Ukraine, assuming that the West would stand
down in the face of the attack. Based on a detailed analysis of Russian elites’discourse through the theoretical
lens of interdependence studies, this study demonstrates that Putin miscalculated Western resolve largely
because of two key misperceptions. First, Putin’s elites were convinced that the West was asymmetrically
dependent on Russia, viewing it as a strategic resource that would tie the hands of Western and EU countries,
eventually making them accept the outcome of the war. Second, the Kremlin believed that Ukraine occupied
a secondary role in Western interests that would further limit the West’s involvement in the conflict, as it
would not risk exposing its dependence on Moscow for the sake of an issue that, in the Kremlin’s eyes, was
marginal to European and American security.
Keywords: war in Ukraine; misperceptions and conflict; Putin; Russian foreign policy
“In the early days of the war, one [Russian] official, told me that …Americans will rush to beg
us for peace.”
Defected former Russian Diplomat Boris Bondarev (2022)
Introduction
One of the most underexplored aspects in the academic debate regarding Russia’s renewed invasion
of Ukraine in February 2022 was the West’s
1
failure to deter it, despite clear and unambiguous
warnings. Consider ex-president Medvedev’s (2022) claim at the infamous National Security
Council session on the eve of the invasion. While supporting the decision to recognize the
independence of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic
(LNR), he asserted that after some minor setbacks, as in 2008 after Russia’s invasion of Georgia,
Western states would “come to Russia and suggest resuming relations across the board”since
“Russia means a lot more than Ukraine for the international community and our friends in the
United States and the European Union.”(Security Council 2022). Re-reading these lines more than
two years after the war began, one cannot help but ask why the Kremlin assumed that the West
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for the Study of Nationalities. This is an Open Access
article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits
unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
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would seek to maintain its relationship with Russia, even though it appeared that Moskow no longer
felt bound by any commitments. Understanding this miscalculation of Putin’s elites can help
uncover why Putin saw the war as a viable course of action. Answering this question would not only
explain why US and European deterrence efforts aimed at preventing Russia’s invasion proved
largely futile, but also provide a better understanding of the strategic context in which the decision
to launch the renewed invasion was made.
In this article, I argue that Russia’s miscalculation that Western involvement would be minimal
and predominantly rhetorical was strongly influenced by two key misperceptions. The first was the
conviction that Western states were asymmetrically dependent on Russia, which Moscow believed
could be strategically used to constrain the West’s response. The second, related idea was that the
West would abandon Ukraine in the event of an invasion, as it would otherwise risk exposing its
“vulnerable”dependent position on Russia over an issue the Kremlin believed played only a
secondary role in the West’s core interests. This is not to say that the miscalculation concerning
Western resolve was influenced only by these two misperceptions. The miscalculation about the
readiness of Western countries to come to Ukraine’s rescue most likely had many ingredients. Yet,
the degree to which Russian decision-makers underestimated the West’s resolve to defend Ukraine
and the role that it played in the Kremlin’s pre-war decision-making deserves particular academic
scrutiny.
To underpin the argument analytically, I use findings from interdependence studies as well as
insights from the literature on misperceptions in foreign policy decision-making. Broadly defining
interdependence as a situation characterized by mutual dependence and reciprocal effects among
international actors in spheres of mutual importance (Keohane and Nye 2012, 7), I show how
interdependence, apart from its material dimension, was misperceived by the Kremlin as its own
strategic resource and a liability on the part of the West. Through this lens, I demonstrate that
Russia expected Western countries to exercise restraint out of self-interest, preferring not to expose
an allegedly asymmetrically dependent position. Through this causal mechanism, interdependence
contributed to the conflict by miscalculation, as its perceived effects led Moscow to pursue a riskier
and more aggressive strategy than it would otherwise have done.
It is not my intention to assert that the misperceptions held by Putin and his elites regarding the
impact of Western dependence were the sole reasons behind Russia’s invasion. Situating this study
in the broader discussion of the causes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I contend, however, that had
Putin had a more realistic understanding of Western resolve, he would not have ordered the full-
fledged attack on Ukraine as he did in February 2022. I also acknowledge that the run-up to the
conflict, as well as its causes, cannot be fully understood without looking at the interactional
dimension: Western countries’assessment of Putin’s willingness to break off ties with the West
should also be carefully analyzed, as it might have prevented them from taking Putin’s escalation
even more seriously (Lieven 2022). However, this article predominantly focuses on Russia’s
rationale, reserving the Western part of the story for future research endeavors. Moreover, since
the motives and goals of the Russian leadership might have shifted since February 24, 2022, this
article only addresses the question of why Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Lastly, given the inherent limitations of attempting to draw lessons from current—and at the time
of writing still ongoing—events, this article should be seen as a stepping stone for a larger discussion
of the causes of and the broader lessons to be drawn from this war, rather than a definitive answer to
the fundamental question of why Putin miscalculated Western resolve to defend Ukraine. Thus, due
to the limited volume of available and reliable empirical data at the moment of writing, the article
does not formulate a new theory but pragmatically uses an established theoretical framework to
shed light on Putin’s decision to launch the invasion.
The article is organized as follows. First, it situates the study in the broader literature of the
Russian-Western conflict and presents a guiding theoretical framework that informs the empirical
part of the article, demonstrating how interdependence and, most importantly, the perception
thereof, can contribute to conflict by miscalculation. The article then briefly explains the
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methodological approach, showing how examining the discourse of Russian elites can be instru-
mental in answering the research question. Next, I proceed to the main part of the article, where I
show how the belief that Russia had the upper hand over the West due to the perceived asymmetric
dependence dominated the Russian elites’discourse. In the next step, the article demonstrates how
this misperception was further strengthened by the Kremlin’s erroneous belief in the secondary
importance of Ukraine at large, as well as the West in particular. The study concludes by
recapitulating its main findings, followed by a discussion on the role of misperceptions borne
out of the interdependence between Russia and the West at the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, and
how this could be better embedded in the analysis of Russian foreign policy.
Situating Interdependence and Misperceptions in the Debates on Causes of Russia’s
Invasion
Vladimir Putin’s decision to start the war in Ukraine in February 2022 baffled countless observers
and analysts, becoming a matter of heated political and academic debates, with some even arguing
that the Russian president might have gone insane (Malek 2022) and that no theory can ever explain
Russia’s offensive (Ganesh 2022). While acknowledging persisting challenges in the research of
Russian foreign policy (Polianskii 2024), the majority of scholars have defied such a self-defeating
position, offering critical insights into the driving forces behind Russia’s renewed invasion of
Ukraine in 2022.
One prominent account suggests that Russia’s international behaviour follows the necessary law-
like regularities of great-power politics, and any major power when confronted with similar external
pressures and opportunities would respond as Moscow did vis-à-vis Western attempts to expand its
influence in Eastern Europe (Walt 2022). According to this school of thought, Russia aims to keep
other great powers and their alliances, such as NATO and the EU, far away from its borders. Against
the background of Ukraine’s drift towards the West in recent years, the argument goes that Russia
decided to stymie this development by military means (cf. Graham and Doris 2022).
Another prominent strand of literature argues that the causes of Russia’s invasion are rooted in
its neo-imperialistic ambitions. Scholars in this tradition suggest that Russia’s invasion was
motivated by Moscow’s desire to reassert control over territories that were once part of the
Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, with Ukraine being the central element (Marples, 2022;
Sasse, 2022; Götz and Staun, 2022). This view is supported by recent works from Alexander Etkind
(2023) and Gwen Sasse (2023), which emphasize the historical, cultural, and economic factors
driving Russia’s expansionist policies in its neighbourhood. Furthermore, Maria Popova and Oxana
Shevel (2024) similarly highlight the key role of Russia’s“re-imperialization”as a way to prevent the
growing regime and identity divergence between Russia and Ukraine, and the role that it played in
producing the invasion.
Through the lens of regime dynamics, some analysts argue that Putin’s actions were primarily
driven by the need to secure his grip on power. According to this perspective, Putin saw the Maidan
revolution of 2013, the annexation of Crimea, and the invasion of 2022 as ways to divert the
population’s attention from domestic issues and to bolster his own regime’s stability against the
backdrop of rising internal problems (McFaul and Person 2022; Gomza 2022). Michael Kimmage’s
recent book (2024), while acknowledging the Western mistakes of not taking Ukraine’s concerns
seriously, puts Russia’s domestic political imperatives and the personalistic nature of Putin’s regime
front and centre in the discussion of the ingredients of Putin’s eventual decision to go to war.
Finally, it is essential to note that some researchers advocate for a more integrated and eclectic
approach to understanding Russia’s foreign policy vis-à-vis Ukraine. These scholars argue that the
causes of Russia’s aggressive behaviour towards Ukraine are complex and should be examined at the
intersection of internal affairs in Ukraine and Russia, their bilateral relationship, as well as their
relationships with the West (cf. Kuzio 2017). Arel and Driscoll (2023), for instance, highlight the
multifaceted nature of the conflict, blending geopolitical, imperialistic, and regime-centric
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explanations of the growing conflict between Russia and Western countries, as well as the conflict in
Ukraine in this context. D’Anieri (2023), in his turn, advances a three-pronged argument,
contending that i) the security dilemma, ii) the impact of democratization on geopolitics, and iii)
the incompatible goals of a post-Cold War Europe played a pivotal role in producing Russia’s
aggression towards its neighbor. A similar multi-causal view of the roots of the invasion is also
observed in Hal Brands’recent edited collection (2024), which not only prominently discusses
various domestic and international driving forces of Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, but also
elaborates on its broader implications on global instability and strategic rivalry.
While all the above-mentioned explanations address the crucial question of the goals behind
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, no theory can claim to single-handedly account for Russia’s aggression
(Polianskii 2024). Without seeking to make a final call in this debate, my article turns to another, no
less crucial question: why did Putin and his elites expect to achieve their goals with the invasion in
the first place? In addressing this question, I argue that it is necessary to factor in the role of
misperceptions at the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine. As I show in the following, mispercep-
tions about the level of economic interdependence between Russia and Western countries in
particular have played a significant role in producing the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With
this in mind, I briefly review the scholarly debate on the interrelation between interdependence and
conflict, and how its misperceived effects can lead to war by miscalculation.
After the end of the Cold War, many believed that Russia’s unprecedented level of intercon-
nectedness with the West and its markets for energy exports would encourage Moscow’s restraint.
Yet, this increased economic interdependence has not turned out to be a panacea for maintaining
peace in Europe (Haas 2022). What is more, apart from failing to prevent the relapse of Russian-
Western confrontation, I argue that interdependence has in fact contributed to the increased
belligerence of Russia vis-à-vis the West, as its effects have influenced Putin’s elites’misperceptions
in a decisive tension-producing manner in the late 2010s.
Early interdependence theorists posited that increased trade and interconnectedness would
eventually procure peace in international relations. Sir Robert Angell (1969) was among the first to
emphasize that the reduction of distance and difference would directly, though unintentionally,
pacify world politics (cf. de Wilde 1991). This mechanism has been developed and discussed in both
qualitative and large-N studies, becoming a matter of heated debate among International Relations
scholars (cf. Barbieri, 1996; Dorussen, 1999). Proponents of the liberal school, for instance, argued
that the prospect of inevitably high costs of terminating interdependence would prevent the
involved parties from initiating direct confrontation (Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer 2001). In a
globalized world, where the costs of disrupting relations have risen to prohibitive levels, any major
conflict between highly interdependent states would be practically suicidal (Mastanduno 1999).
States, liberals argue, would eventually come to recognize this and conclude that they can no longer
afford wars (Mousseau 2019).
Realists, on the other hand, assert that interdependence leads to diametrically opposite outcomes
and propose two central mechanisms. The first mechanism posits that interdependence produces
not only new venues for cooperation but also numerous issues because of competition, which can
eventually lead to conflict (Doyle, 2005; Maoz, 2009). For instance, Pevehouse (2004) finds that
states with higher levels of economic interdependence experience more nonviolent conflict with
their trade partners than with other countries. The second mechanism suggests that states, fearing
losses in relative power through trade cut-offs, will scramble to reduce the vulnerability that
dependency brings, which can also lead to increased tensions (cf. Gelpi and Grieco 2008).
Similarly, theorists within Marxist and neo-Marxist traditions view economic interdependence
as a cause of conflict, as it creates tensions between developed and developing states. They believe
that the economic relationships created through this interdependence are fundamentally exploit-
ative, hindering the growth of poorer states and promoting the economic and political domination
of the more developed states (Cardoso and Faletto 1979). In short, the literature on the interrelation
of interdependence and conflict has not yet produced a definitive answer, and scholars tend to agree
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that the net impact of economic interdependence on peace within a dyad is theoretically indeter-
minate (cf. Levy and Mulligan 2022). Depending on case-specific factors, situations of dependence
can cut both ways (Copeland 2014; Mattlin and Wigell 2016). Below, I elaborate on a few of these
factors, focusing on the strand of literature that posits that interdependence can indeed lead to more
inter-state tensions.
Numerous scholars contend that interdependence can become a particularly lucrative source of
power when there is a disbalance or asymmetry in trade activities. Since trade tends to produce
reciprocal but rarely “perfectly symmetrical”effects of transactions, asymmetrical interdependence
has become commonplace in international politics (Barbieri 1996). With economic and political
globalization creating a dense web of international dependencies, asymmetries are argued to have
resulted in numerous “security consequences,”and have increasingly been “weaponized”(Farrell
and Newman, 2019,2020; Gertz and Evers, 2020). Yet, there is no consensus on how exactly
asymmetric interdependence can lead to conflict. Liberals argue that less dependent states are more
prone to initiate conflict since they have less to lose from breaking economic ties (Aydin-Düzgit,
Balta, and O’Donohue 2020). However, realists maintain that the more dependent countries are
likely to start conflicts as they try to escape the economic vulnerability that interdependence brings
(Copeland 1996, 22). Wright (2013) develops this argument, asserting that asymmetric interde-
pendence can potentially create a spiraling crisis cycle if one side attempts to exploit the other’s
dependency, questioning its resolve to defend its interests in a crisis situation. In sum, as Copeland
(2014) encapsulates the dynamic: “In any situation of asymmetrical interdependence, the high costs
of war should give the more dependent state, state Y, a big reason to avoid war. But the less
dependent state, state X, knowing Y’s desire to avoid war, has an incentive to coerce it into making
concessions through the use of military threats.”
Russian-Western relations of interdependence
2
have frequently been described as asymmetric,
but attempts to apply this strand of interdependence literature to this dyad have produced similarly
mixed results (cf. Silva and Selden, 2020; Zheng, 2021). Specifically, several pundits have pointed
out that Russia, due to its dominance in exporting natural gas to Europe, has obtained strategic
leverage vis-à-vis importers of its raw materials and has used its energy resources as an instrument
of political influence (Newnham 2011). Many emphasize that Russia indeed sees import depen-
dence of individual countries as a bargaining chip in its geopolitical calculus, and uses dependence
on critical energy sources as a weapon (Harsem and Claes 2013; Balmaceda, 2014; Krickovic 2015;
Schmidt-Felzmann 2016). After 2014 in particular, Russia is argued to have been expanding its
energy cooperation with Europe and others in order to later capitalize on its strong position, and
erode Western solidarity with Ukraine (Gustafson, 2020; Kanet and Moulioukova 2022). Others,
however, underline that the trade in natural gas has provided mutual benefits and dependencies,
highlighting that the costs of a supply disruption to both the recipient and the supplier actually kept
the parties from conflict (Casier 2011; Romanova 2012). Notwithstanding extant research on this
topic, there is still little agreement on whether trade in natural gas with Russia provides it with a
source of foreign policy power (Stoelzel, Chadwick, and Long 2023).
Drawing from the recent findings of interdependence studies and their practical application to
Russian-Western relations, this article advances the argument that beyond the objective measure-
ment of interdependence and its features, to understand the roots of interstate conflict, particularly
between Russia and Western countries, one must go beyond the classic understanding of political or
economic interdependence and examine the more intangible effects it produces. Special attention
should be paid to how involved states can misperceive interdependence and its effects.
For the purposes of this article, I define misperceptions as the gap between the world as it actually
exists and the world as it exists in the mind of the perceiver (Duelfer and Dyson 2011). Decision-
makers have been found to regularly misrepresent the information available to them, leading to
inaccurate inferences, miscalculations of consequences, and conflicts (Huddy, Sears, and Levy
2013). Given that misperceptions are quite common in foreign policy decision-making, and
different causal mechanisms have been identified as to how they could lead to war (Jervis 2017;
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Liberman 2007), this article focuses on the strand of literature that demonstrates how
interdependence-related misperceptions can potentially lead to conflict.
Recent findings in interdependence studies emphasize the need to explore the consequences of
subjective perceptions on the outcomes of interdependence, as some argue that war and peace
“critically depend”upon how leaders perceive interdependence (Jing et al. 2017). The traditional
argument of interdependence theorists is that it reduces the likelihood of war driven by mis-
perceptions. The suggested mechanism is quite straightforward: trade increases contact, commu-
nication, familiarity, and understanding, which in turn reduces the misperceptions that contribute
to war (cf. Deutsch 1957). Increased contact is good for peace—contact reduces misperceptions,
increases understanding, leads to a convergence of cultures, fosters formal and informal institutions
to facilitate trade, and has spillover effects into other areas that lead to greater cooperation (Levy
2003). It has also been argued that interdependence decreases the possibility of misperceptions that
lead to war because it creates additional channels through which resolve can be signaled (Levy
2003). Instead of rhetorical threats, parties can signal their resolve by sanctions and voluntary halts
of trade flows, thus lessening the risk of escalation by mistake. Because economic sanctions are
costly to the initiator as well as to the target, only states that are highly resolved will be willing to
incur those costs and go to war (Morrow 2003).
But do these factors completely eliminate the possibility of war driven by misperception between
interdependent states? I argue that interdependence cannot completely solve the problem of
eliminating ambiguity. What is more, as I show in the following, interdependence can, in fact,
magnify ambiguity, especially if the conflict constellation includes more than two parties. As Levy
(1983) suggests, misperceptions about third-state involvement have frequently been found to be a
reason for wars by miscalculation. Specifically, he argued that if the likelihood of third-party
intervention in a conflict and its anticipated impact on the conflict’s trajectory significantly
influence the expected costs of war, any misperceptions concerning this variable could contribute
to the outbreak of war. Moreover, failure to comprehend that third states may interpret a non-
interventionist stance in a given conflict as harmful to their interests can exacerbate such mis-
understandings (Levy 1983, 92). This is a critical moment to consider in examining the roots of
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the Kremlin underestimated Western resolve precisely because it
believed that defending Ukraine would not be an issue where non-intervention would be harmful to
their core interests (cf. Kupchan 2022).
In short, apart from its material dimension, interdependence should also be seen as a more
intangible phenomenon that leaders tend to misperceive, from which they draw incorrect conclu-
sions. Specifically, if the conflict involves more than two interdependent actors, the probability of
misperceptions rises dramatically due to the added complexity. Situations of interdependence are
prone to give rise to misperceptions, leading one of the parties to miscalculate the resolve of the
other side and adopt a more aggressive strategy than it would otherwise have employed. In the next
section, before proceeding to the empirical analysis, I will show how examining the official
discourse of Russian elites can help us track misperceptions about interdependence to understand
one of the central causes of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
Methodological Approach
The study employs discourse analysis as its primary methodological approach, a method frequently
utilized in foreign policy research (cf. Hansen and Waever 2001; Neumann, 2008). Specifically, this
paper places the perceptions found in official Russian discourse at the forefront of the study. It
assumes that official rhetoric and the perceptions driving it are crucial constructs for understanding
specific foreign policy decisions (Herrmann and Keller, 2004, 560). While official discourse is often
seen as masking reality in authoritarian states like Russia, it also reveals the interests and motives of
decision-makers (Waever 2001). As asserted by Duffy and Frederking (2009), official statements
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not only express genuine beliefs, but when continuously repeated over time, they form patterns of
practice that later justify concrete decisions and policies.
As briefly introduced in the paper, the focus primarily lies on statements made after Russia’s first
invasion of Ukraine in 2014 up to February 2022. Post-war outbreak evidence is included, but
mainly limited to explanations of the war’s origins. Given the president’s pivotal role in the Russian
political system, his statements carry significant weight. These speeches primarily originate from
official sources such as the President of Russia’s website, major newspapers (for example, the
Rossiskaya Gazeta), and other leading news outlets that provide Russian decision-makers with a
platform to articulate their perspectives (TASS, RIA Novosti, etc.). These statements are triangu-
lated by analyzing secondary sources authored by reputable Russian and Western scholars and
commentators on Kremlin decision-making, providing further insights into the rationale and
considerations of the Kremlin. This diverse array of resources is justified by the principle that
“discourses should be accessed at many different points”(Neumann, 2008).
Discourse analysis further holds great promise for understanding the interplay between inter-
dependence and conflict, as this paper argues that it is not solely the objective level of interdepen-
dence that defines this relationship but, rather, the (mis)perceptions thereof. Accordingly, if we are
to study the misperceptions that have contributed to Russia’s decision to start the war, looking
closely into the statements
3
of Russian decision-makers seems methodologically justified. Existing
empirical research in Russian foreign policy also underscores the necessity of studying quotes from
Putin and Russian elites to track their (mis)perceptions. Fyodor Lukyanov (2022), chief editor of the
Russia in Global Affairs Journal, highlights that Putin has been notably candid about his intentions
and beliefs regarding Ukraine, which are particularly evident in his article on “The Unity of
Russians and Ukrainian People”(Putin, 2021a); this foreshadowed the rhetoric used to justify
the war. While acknowledging that the Kremlin engages in targeted propaganda both domestically
and internationally, dismissing Putin’s entire communication strategy as pure deception seems far-
fetched. Despite criticisms of his morality and worldview—like Merkel’s assessment that he lives “in
another world”(quoted in Weber 2015)—Putin often publicly expresses his genuine convictions
(Laruelle and Limonier 2021). Therefore, decisions based on these (mis)perceptions should not
come as much of a surprise. If Putin genuinely believed Western countries were asymmetrically
dependent on Russia and indifferent towards Ukraine, it logically follows that he expected minimal
Western intervention in the conflict.
However, focusing solely on Putin’s statements could be misleading, as the attack on Ukraine
required broader support among Russian elites and, without the “militarist consensus,”in their
ranks, the attack on Ukraine would not have been possible (Stratievski 2022). Therefore, beyond
direct statements from Putin, this analysis incorporates the broader discourse of Russian elites
3
—
individuals who have been entrenched in Russian power structures for decades—who interpret,
contextualize, and reinforce the signals and ideas emanating from the president (Bashkirova,
Litikova, and Smeltz 2019). Including the discourses of Russian elites and their (mis)perceptions
is essential, as they constitute a key audience for Putin’s war rhetoric, shaping and endorsing these
(mis)perceptions within Russian society.
In sum, this study focuses on the (mis)perceptions held by Putin and the Russian political elite, as
reflected in their statements leading up to the invasion, to elucidate why they miscalculated Western
resolve to support Ukraine. While it does not pinpoint the exact origins of these (mis)perceptions,
the study aims to demonstrate that Putin and his elites actively propagated misconceived ideas that
significantly influenced the decision to launch the war. Future historians, with access to archival
materials, will delve deeper into other dimensions and roots of Putin’s misperceptions that drove his
decision to go to war.
If this analysis holds true, it suggests that had Putin and his elites possessed a more realistic
perception of Russian-Western dependence and Ukraine’s importance to Western interests and
thereby Western resolve to sever ties with Russia, the invasion might have been averted or at least
mitigated. Conversely, compelling evidence that Putin and his lieutenants were fully aware of
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Western resolve yet proceeded with the attack despite these warnings would undermine the main
argument advanced in this article.
Empirical Part: Russia’s Fatal Misperceptions
The central argument of this contribution posits that the Russian leadership significantly misjudged
Western resolve to defend Ukraine before February 2022, a miscalculation that was profoundly
influenced by their belief in the West’s asymmetric dependence. To substantiate this claim of
misperception, I present concrete evidence that the Russian leadership, despite obtaining ample
information suggesting strong Western resolve, ultimately disregarded it and decided to proceed
with their war plans. The premise is that, despite available information indicating a robust Western
commitment to Ukraine’s defence, the Russian leadership chose to discount or ignore these
indicators due to the entrenched belief in Western dependency, which played a pivotal role in
the escalation toward the renewed invasion.
Russia’s full-scale incursion into Ukraine in February 2022 brought about an unprecedented
sense of unity in the West. Yet, it would be an exaggeration to state that Western resolve to defend
Ukraine from renewed Russian aggression only materialized with Russia’s attack in February 2022.
Despite Russia’s extensive contacts with the far-left and increasingly popular far-right political
forces inside numerous European governments (cf. Fagerholm 2024), EU and NATO member
states were resolute in forming a united front in support of Ukraine long before Russian tanks rolled
over the Ukrainian border in 2022.
4
In this vein, during the Munich Security Conference in 2022, on the eve of the invasion, Western
countries forged a robust coalition to support Ukraine in case of an attack (Plokhy 2023, 236). As a
result, when Putin declared on February 21, 2022 that he was abandoning the Minsk Agreements
and recognizing the “independence”of two unrecognized states in Donbas, sanctions began to roll
out. The United States and the EU swiftly agreed on sanctions targeting nearly 400 Russian
individuals and institutions, which included banning Russian access to EU and US capital markets
and prohibiting the trade in Russian State Bonds (Bown 2023). Shortly thereafter, the German
government halted licensing for the $11 billion Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline, a project Berlin
had previously been reluctant to terminate (Länder-Analysen 2023).
All these steps, taken before Russian tanks and troops crossed the Ukrainian border
on 24 February underscore that Western resolve to counter Russian aggression was significantly
higher compared to 2014 when Russia caught the West off guard with its annexation of Crimea.
Prominent Russian security experts, such as the Director of the Russian International Affairs
Council, Ivan Timofeev (2022), noted this shift in Western resolve prior to the invasion, believing it
would deter Russia from invading. Leading figures within Russia’s“systemic liberals,”including
Central Bank head Elvira Nabiulina and Sberbank CEO Herman Gref, reportedly advised Putin in
the days leading up to the war, cautioning him about the potentially disastrous impact of Western
sanctions on the Russian economy (Seddon and Ivanova 2022).
In short, despite the uncertainty regarding the exact scope and form of the Western response to
the Russian attack, which some experts argue was intentionally ambiguous (cf. Drezner 2022),
Western decision-makers were resolute in their decision to stand by Ukraine’s side in any event.
This suggests that, even in the counterfactual scenario of less resolute and successful Ukrainian
resistance to Russian invaders, there were strong indications that the West would not have accepted
the fait accompli as it did in 2014. Moreover, in the event of a complete takeover of Kyiv by Russian
forces, the West would likely have supported Ukrainian resistance from unoccupied territories. The
fact that Western countries were even considering establishing an exile Ukrainian government in
Poland in the early days of the war supports this hypothesis (Bertrand and Atwood 2022).
However, the question remains: Why did the Kremlin ultimately dismiss all of these signals,
despite several prominent members of the Russian political and intellectual elite publicly warning
against such a step? The following section addresses this question by demonstrating how deeply
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ingrained misperceptions about Western alleged dependence and its perceived effects on Western
policies towards Ukraine were, and how, as a result, they prevented the Kremlin from taking
Western warnings more seriously.
Misperception of Western Asymmetric Dependence on Russia
The belief that Russia is indispensable for Europe and that Europe is politically inert has arguably
been ingrained in Russian elites’worldviews for several decades (Kurnyshova and Makarychev
2022). One of the most illustrative examples of this perception came from Putin in 2010 when
addressing a German investor forum, he remarked: “I don’t understand; how will you heat your
houses? You do not want [natural] gas, you do not want to develop nuclear energy. Where will you
get your heat from then? From firewood? But even for firewood, you will need to go to Siberia.”
(Translated from Putin 2010.) Despite remaining heavily dependent on revenues from energy
exports and high-tech imports from the West even after 2014, the Kremlin was evidently convinced
that the West is inevitably dependent on Russia and, therefore, would not risk exposing its
vulnerability.
5
As I discuss below, this conviction largely stemmed from the perception of the
asymmetric nature of their mutual dependence.
Less than a month before the war broke out, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated in an
interview that severing relations with Russia “would be detrimental to Western interests,”implying
that the West would be ill-advised and likely reluctant to impose threatened sanctions in the event
of a Russian invasion (Lavrov 2022a). Similarly, Vladimir Dzhabarov (2022), First Deputy Chair-
man of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs, asserted that if the West did impose
sanctions, they “would be shooting themselves in the foot”and would finally understand “who is
more dependent on whom (kto ot kogo bol’she zavisit).”These statements from senior Russian
politicians betray their misperception that, even in the event of a Russian invasion (which both
publicly ardently denied as a possibility), the West would refrain from serious actions due to
perceived greater negative consequences for their own interests than for Russia’s.
Russian elites were further convinced that Western states would avoid involvement in the
conflict because isolating Russia would destabilize not only their own economies but also the entire
Western-led global order. Prominent Russian analyst Andrey Kortunov suggested that in the event
of a Russian military attack on Ukraine, Western sanctions would likely not exceed what Russia had
previously experienced, as harsher sanctions “would destabilize the global financial system, which
the Biden administration is not interested in”(Kortunov 2021). Therefore, Russian decision-
makers not only overestimated their own significance to the West and the broader international
community, as evidenced by the overwhelming condemnation of Russia’s invasion by the UN
General Assembly shortly after the war’s outbreak (UN News 2022).
Furthermore, the Kremlin’s belief in Western dependence, and thus the expectation of a limited
response, was driven by its perception of previous Western reactions to Russian aggressions.
Admittedly, parts of this calculation were not completely unfounded. Despite enduring a 2.5 to
3 percent annual GDP loss due to sanctions post-2014 (Åslund and Snegovaya 2021), the backbone
of Russia’s economy—the oil and gas sectors—largely remained intact (Rutland 2022). One of the
leading Russian sanctions experts, Ivan Timofeev (2021), while deeming a war scenario as rather
unlikely, asserted that the political and economic consequences from Russia’s previous invasions
(Georgia 2008, Syria 2015) “were quite insufficient,”so the Kremlin did not see any “major
constraints on a new military campaign.”This demonstrates that Russian elites could not imagine
that fully annexing Ukraine and installing a pro-Russian government in Kyiv could have provoked a
much stronger response from the West than during previous military campaigns.
Moreover, the Kremlin was convinced that even if Western states responded with economic
sanctions, Russia had the necessary buffer to withstand the storm. Through programs such as
import substitution (importozameshenie), Russia was progressively reducing its dependence on
Western countries, bolstering the perception of economic resilience. Russian finance minister
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Anton Siluanov declared shortly before the war, “We have a financial shield in the form of gold and
forex reserves, budget surplus, and …low debt. The Western attempt to punish us for annexing
Crimea failed,”(quoted in Ostroukh and Korsunskaya 2022). Similarly, Prime Minster Mishustin
reported to Putin on the eve of the invasion that “[Russia] has been preparing for months for a
potential response,”talking at length about the resilience of the Russian economy, stating that all
possible risks are “thoroughly reviewed (riski horosho prorabotany),”alleging that the Russian
economy was watertight against any Western sanctions and restrictions (Security Council 2022).
Indeed, Russia’s dissociation from the Western economic and political system had been ongoing for
decades, demonstrating Moscow’s readiness to continue this path (Polianskii 2021). In early 2022,
the Central Bank of Russia conducted a “stress test”with major financial institutions, preparing
them to manage new economic restrictions and disconnection from SWIFT (Prokopenko 2022).
Yet, no expert or politician foresaw the scale and speed of the actual Western response and its
ramifications for the Russian economy.
Lastly, heightened self-confidence was reinforced by the perception of growing Western depen-
dence on Russia (Meister 2019). Despite a sharp decline in trade after the initial wave of sanctions
following the annexation of Crimea, with overall exports decreasing by 28 percent from 2014 to
2015 (Giumelli 2017, 1070), overall economic relations between Russia and the West gradually
returned to near-normal levels in subsequent years (Polianskii 2022). This trend was interpreted in
Russia as a necessary step by the West to support the competitiveness of their companies globally,
despite geopolitical tensions. Additionally, many Russian businesses and state enterprises engaged
in profitable projects with their Western counterparts, generating substantial tax revenues for
European states. Even after Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, Russian companies—at the peak,
around the mid-2010s—owned about three percent of the firms registered in the EU, further
reinforcing the Kremlin’s belief in its own indispensability (Movchan 2016). Putin and his advisors
were convinced that Western companies, trapped in the country in case of Russia’s isolation, would
dissuade the West from taking strong action against his aggressive policies. The fact that none of the
approximately $300 billion of Russian national reserves deposited in Western countries were
repatriated (or moved out of Western reach) serves as a clear indicator of Putin’s confidence that
the West would refrain from significant actions (Hueiling 2022). Putin’s strong reaction to the
freeze of these reserves underscores his false sense of impunity, as he remarked, “it’s robbery! […]
our American friends are quite simply sawing off the branch they are sitting on!”(Putin 2022a).
In summary, Moscow’s (mis)perception of Western asymmetric dependence on Russian
resources was deeply embedded in Russian elite circles leading up to the February 2022 invasion.
The Kremlin believed that while Russia’s dependency on the West had been minimized, Western
vulnerabilities had increased. This faulty perception about the nature of interdependence with the
West further persisted due to previous underwhelming Western responses to Russia’s aggression,
fostering misplaced certainty among the Russian leadership regarding likely Western reactions.
Misperceptions about Ukraine and its Importance to the West
As noted above, interdependence theory asserts that interdependence should facilitate mutual
signaling of interests in specific issues and resolve to defend them. Coupled together, these factors
are believed to decrease the chances of a war driven by misperceptions. Accordingly, one could
assume that Russia should not have miscalculated the importance of Ukraine being defended by the
West, and thus should not have started this war. Yet, given that the interdependence theory has
traditionally focused on dyads of states rather than more complex arrangements, the question of
how mutually dependent actors perceive the effects of interdependence when a conflict concerns a
third country has been frequently overlooked. Against this background, this subsection elucidates
how signaling between interdependent actors works in multilateral settings, and how it can
eventually lead to war driven by miscalculation.
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Russian decision-makers were convinced that the West would not defend Ukraine out of fear of
exposing its dependent position and that it would eventually adapt to a new status quo. Two factors
drove this (mis)belief. First, the Kremlin was sure that Ukraine was not “important enough”for the
USA and its European allies, and the latter would choose Moscow over Kyiv out of self-interest.
Secondly, Moscow was convinced that the West realized Ukraine and its geopolitical positioning
were a “matter of life and death”for the Russian regime, as Putin put it on the morning of the
invasion (Putin 2022a). Thus, even if the West were to respond in some way to Russia’s invasion,
Moscow believed the United States and European states would not be willing to pay a higher price
than Russia, viewing Putin’s actions as protecting Russian core national interests (cf. Stanovaya
2022).
As briefly mentioned above, the (mis)perception that Ukraine is not “important enough”for the
United States and its European allies was profoundly shaped by Russia’s previous experiences with
the West, especially in the sphere of energy trade (Bugajski 2006). In the Kremlin’s eyes, Western
countries frequently ignored Ukraine’s interests in favour of upholding interdependence with
Russia. The most vivid example was the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, signed in 2015 after the
annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of hostilities in Donbas, which would bypass Ukraine and
eliminate Russia’s dependence on Kyiv in gas transportation to Europe. Russian elites widely
believed that when the moment of truth finally arrived, the West would acquiesce to Russia’s
demands and eventually abandon Ukraine, as in 2015 with the Minsk Accords.
Furthermore, as one Russian ex-intelligence officer argues, Moscow’s hopes were pinned on “the
prospect that the energy crisis in Europe would force the EU into talks with Moscow”(Frolov 2022).
Russian decision-makers expected that, against the backdrop of rising energy prices and the
domestic instability that comes with it, Western governments would not risk endangering the
political situation in their home countries over a state that is not even formally part of trans-Atlantic
institutions. Just consider Putin’s words in October 2021 during price spikes in European gas
markets: “You see what is happening in Europe, there is hysteria and confusion in the markets.
Why? Because no one is taking the green transition to renewable sources of energy seriously”(Putin
2021b). What Russian elites largely misrepresented, however, was that Western governments would
face far greater domestic risks and criticism if they abandoned Ukraine and did not follow up on the
very concrete warnings they delivered in late 2021 and early 2022. Moscow therefore failed to see
that non-intervention and failure to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty would do far more harm to
Western interests than losing Russian oil and gas shipments.
Apart from the economic dimension, the Kremlin was further convinced that Ukraine was also
of secondary strategic interest to the West and that, similar to Russia, Western capitals viewed Kyiv
as a bargaining chip in European affairs. This belief was continuously emphasized by Russian
decision-makers long before the onset of the 2022 invasion. For instance, in his infamous article
about the “unity”of the Russian and Ukrainian people, Putin wrote in the summer of 2021 that
Western powers instrumentally used Ukraine to create another “anti-Russia project”(Putin 2021a).
Similar messages were continuously spread by other Putin lieutenants in the run-up to the 2022
invasion. For instance, at his annual conference at the end of 2021, Sergey Lavrov asserted that
“Russia’s wishes should be more important for Europe than Ukraine’s”(Lavrov 2021), later adding
that in a “hybrid war”with the Russian Federation, the West “does not really need Ukraine,”and
that it is “expendable material”for Western powers (Lavrov 2022b). On the eve of the invasion, one
of the leading Russian diplomats posted at the UN argued along similar lines, asserting that
“Western countries only use Ukraine as a pawn to achieve their geopolitical interests”
(Strizhizhovskiy 2022). These quotes not only demonstrate an absolute dismissal of Ukraine’s
agency but also, most importantly, reflect the prevailing view among Putin’s elites that if Russia
pressured the West strongly enough or offered a more attractive alternative, it would abandon
Ukraine without further consideration.
For Moscow, the question of Ukraine and its geopolitical positioning was a matter of the utmost
importance, which the West fully recognized. For instance, despite condemning Putin’s“criminal
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policy of provoking a war”and calling for President Putin’s resignation, retired Colonel-General
Leonid Ivashov claimed that “Europe does not really want …to meddle in our Slavic quarrels”
(Ivashov 2022). Moscow assumed that, after numerous crises and disruptions in Russian-Western
relations over Ukraine, Brussels and Washington would acknowledge that Moscow was resolute in
its pursuit of its dominance over Ukraine and would eventually step aside. The Kremlin was
therefore prepared to pay a disproportionately higher price than the West if push came to shove
(Istomin, Neklyudov, and Sushentsov 2022). Even if the West were to respond in some way,
Moscow believed that the costs it assumed the West could inflict would be acceptable in exchange
for what it construed as protecting Russia’s core national interests.
Lastly, the misperceptions regarding not only Ukraine’s importance to the West but also
Ukraine’s sovereignty as such, played an important role in producing Russia’s renewed invasion
in 2022. This becomes particularly evident when one revisits public appeals from 2014 onwards by
Russian decision-makers, which contain continuous allegations that some Western countries were
plotting to organize Ukraine’s partition. After the outbreak of the war in February 2022, Putin
asserted that Poland could not wait to “take back the Western territories, which Ukraine received
after World War II”(Putin 2022c). The Secretary of the National Security Council at the time,
Nikolay Patrushev, similarly claimed that Poland would use the turmoil in the neighboring country
to “occupy the Western part”of Ukraine (Patrushev 2022). Similar speculations were voiced by
former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky and Russia’s Ambassador to the EU, Vladimir
Chizhov. Given the sheer volume and frequency of these absurd allegations produced by Russian
elites, it does not seem far-fetched to assume that these misperceptions about Western neglect of
Ukrainian statehood existed in the Kremlin long before the outbreak of the war, and were deeply
ingrained in the decision-making process.
Owing to such a blatant dismissal of Ukrainian agency, it comes as little surprise that the Kremlin
grossly underplayed Ukrainian military capacities and its resolve to fight against Russian invading
troops (Driedger and Polianskii 2023). While hard evidence regarding war-related decision-making
inside the Kremlin remains elusive, several plausible reasons are discernible for this critical
misperception. First, prior to February 2022, Russian armed forces had only one significant battle
encounter with the Ukrainian army, in 2014, which at the time was vastly under-equipped and
disorganized. Drawing from those lessons, Russian commanders likely assumed that Ukrainian
resistance to a multi-directional invasion involving combined forces would similarly be minimal
and that its defenses would collapse within days.
Second, the Russian leadership vastly overestimated its own capabilities to conduct modern
warfare in the 21
st
century, while simultaneously underestimating Ukraine’s adaptability to engage
in such conflicts. Reflecting on limited war campaigns, such as in Syria in 2015, the Russian
command may have wrongly assumed that it could swiftly suppress enemy air defenses and achieve
air superiority, facilitating seamless ground operations. The failure of Russian air forces (VKS) to
disable Ukraine’s air defenses and the significant combat losses incurred in the initial weeks of the
war underscore how the Russian General Staff’s overconfidence in their tools exacerbated poor
judgement in the Kremlin (Cranny-Evans and Kaushal 2022). Lastly, and relatedly, the Russian
leadership likely overestimated the efficiency and reliability of its intelligence services within
Ukraine during the war preparations. Many believed not only that the Ukrainian population would
welcome Russian “liberators”and that Russian agents in the country would disable Ukraine’s
defenses when the invasion commenced (cf. Dalsjö, Jonsson, and Norberg 2022).
In summary, when faced with the choice between Russia and Ukraine after the invasion, Moscow
was confident the West would prioritize its interests over Kyiv’s, fearing exposure of its supposedly
vulnerable position on an issue that (allegedly) few in the West cared deeply about. Coupled with a
general disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty and a significant underestimation of the importance of
defending Ukraine for the West, it is unsurprising, as Daalder and Lindsay (2022) put it, “Putin
would have assumed that the West would respond to a [renewed] Russian invasion of Ukraine with
harsh rhetoric but not much more.”
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Conclusion and Discussion
With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident that Putin’s attempt to “call the perceived bluff”of the
West has spectacularly failed (Bahenský 2022). To the shock of Russian decision-makers, Western
countries interpreted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a direct threat to its core interests (Gould-
Davies 2022) and swiftly implemented extensive economic and political sanctions against Russia.
The USA and the majority of European states followed through on their threats, imposing a range of
unprecedented economic sanctions, including the exclusion of most Russian banks from the global
SWIFT system (The Economist 2022). Never before has a permanent member of the UN Security
Council been “unplugged from the world economy”so swiftly, as Russia became the most heavily
sanctioned country globally soon after the invasion (Manning 2022).
While the Russian economy did not collapse under the weight of multifaceted Western
sanctions, and as of the present moment appears to be weathering financial crises better than
many analysts predicted (Disney 2023), its future prospects are far from optimistic (Prokopenko
2024). Despite establishing alternative supply routes for strategic goods and partially offsetting the
loss of European energy markets by selling oil at reduced prices to countries like China and India
(Abb and Polianskii 2022), returning to pre-war export volumes of strategic commodities remains
exceedingly challenging due to limited logistic capacities.
Beyond the economic impact, Western governments significantly expanded military aid to
Ukraine, bolstering the Ukrainian armed forces and compelling Russian forces to largely shift from
offensive to defensive positions, abandoning their initial plans (Marples 2022, 214). Internationally,
Russia has faced increasing international isolation,
6
with even its closest allies and neighbors
distancing themselves from Putin and his decision to initiate the war. The level of support for
Ukraine has surpassed nearly all predictions made by Russian officials prior to the war, prompting
President Putin to liken it to “a declaration of war”by the West and its allies (Putin 2022b).
This article aims to illustrate how misperceptions stemming from situations of interdependence
can escalate into inter-state conflict. Russia’s misrepresentation of Western asymmetric depen-
dence, coupled with the belief that defending Ukraine was a secondary concern for the West,
decisively contributed to the miscalculation of Western resolve and emboldened Russia to launch its
invasion in February 2022. These misperceptions were driven by the core notion that interdepen-
dence could serve as strategic leverage for Russia to coerce the West into limiting its response and
eventually accepting the outcomes of what Russia anticipated would be a short military campaign,
akin to the Crimean operation of 2014. Admittedly, this analysis merely scratches the surface of why
Putin decided to initiate a full-scale attack on Ukraine, laying the groundwork for further debates on
the role of interdependence calculations in the war’s causes.
By believing the West was more dependent on Russia than vice versa, the Kremlin likely fell
victim to its own propagated myths regarding European irrelevance and the purported artificiality
of Ukrainian statehood, potentially shaping its foreign policy decisions on these fundamental
misperceptions. If this interpretation holds true, however, it suggests that more explicit Western
warnings in late 2021 and early 2022 would probably not have altered the Kremlin’s assessment of
Western resolve. These entrenched beliefs and misperceptions within Russian decision-making
circles would likely have led the latter to interpret heightened Western apprehensions as further
evidence of the West’s fear of abruptly severing ties with Russia and, perhaps, moving on with their
war plans even faster.
Looking ahead, it is imperative to delve deeper into the interrelation of interdependence and its
effects on the decision-making processes in interstate conflicts, against the backdrop of the West’s
evolving strategy of decoupling and “de-risking”from nations like China. While economic inter-
dependence was once seen as central to Western global dominance, the Russian case demonstrates
that efforts to preserve economic ties at any cost may not always prevent conflict. In fact, attempts to
maintain economic interdependence can inadvertently heighten tensions, as Russian elites increas-
ingly viewed Western dependence as a strategic asset influencing their war-related decisions. While
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complete decoupling and eliminating dependence across entire systems may not always be feasible
without viable alternative structures, it is crucial to acknowledge that misperceptions surrounding
interdependence can potentially escalate rather than mitigate conflict.
Acknowledgements. The author would like to thank Matthias Dembinski, Hans-Joachim Spanger, Jonas Wolf, Jonas
Driedger, and Dirk Peters for their invaluable support and individual comments on various drafts of the article.
Disclosure. None.
Notes
1For the purposes of this article, albeit recognizing certain restrictions coming with it, the term
“West”is defined as NATO (without Turkey) and EU member states. Although this might be
seen as too broad an interpretation, it corresponds both to the understanding of the term in
Russian foreign policy studies (Tsygankov 2007) and in broader academic literature (Neumann
1999).
2This study uses this term with regard to Russian-Western relations as it is commonly employed in
the academic literature on Russian foreign policy analysis (Sushentsov and Ofitserov-Belskiy
2019).
3I use the notions “Putin’s elites,”,“the Kremlin,”“Moscow,”and “Russian leadership/decision-
makers”interchangeably.
4For instance, in late January 2022, 8,500 US military personnel in Poland were placed on
heightened alert status, and, starting in February 2022, the United States deployed additional
forces to the Ukrainian border. The United States also relocated a Stryker squadron from
Germany to Romania in February 2022, adding 3,000 personnel to Poland (Graff et al. 2023).
Furthermore, the US Cyber Command was deployed to Kyiv in early December 2021 to assist
Ukraine in defending against Russian cyberattacks. In terms of military aid, the United States
significantly enlarged the spectrum of lethal aid to Ukraine, including such items as helicopters,
anti-tank systems, coastal patrol boats, sniper rifles, reconnaissance drones, radar systems, and
air defence systems. On the eve of the invasion, numerous Western countries also intensified their
engagement in training programs for the Ukrainian Armed Forces and organized a series of joint
military exercises in Ukraine and neighboring states (Lanoszka and Becker 2023).
5Arguably, Russia was actually more dependent on the West than the other way around. For
instance, Russia accounted for roughly 10 percent of the EU’s trade balance in the pre-2014
period, while the EU’s share in Russia’s trade fluctuated around 50 percent at the same time
(Tajoli 2022).
6More than 140 UN member states condemned Russia’s invasion in two General Assembly
resolutions (in 2022 and 2023), while only 2 percent supported Moscow. By comparison, almost
12 percent of UN member states supported the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan
(Gould-Davies 2022).
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Cite this article: Polianskii, Mikhail. 2024. “Inside Vladimir Putin’s Hall of Mirrors: How the Kremlin’s Miscalculation of
Western Resolve Emboldened Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine”.Nationalities Papers:1–19, doi:10.1017/nps.2024.76
Nationalities Papers 19
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