When he launched the invasion in 2022, Vladimir Putin gave a speech on Russian television declaring that his goal was to"demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. He meant turning Ukraine into another Belarus: with a weak identity, a controllable military, and a subordinate, unpopular government. More than three years of war have caused problems for Russia, but Putin's problem remains Ukraine, not the war. That's why, after meeting Donald Trump in Alaska, he said his biggest concern was not how to end three and a half years of bloodshed. Rather, it was what he called the"situation around Ukraine," calling for "a fair balance to be restored in the sphere of security in Europe and the world as a whole."

Only by addressing all this would we be able to eliminate what Putin repeatedly calls "the root causes of the crisis" in Ukraine. The cause of this perception is Russia's loss of status after the end of the USSR. The solution is to somehow regain Moscow's hegemony over Central Europe, which had been liquidated in favor of multiple democracies, but—in his view—recoverable by redesigning a buffer zone and a captive market there. Again through the use of force, or through a new pact under the threat of further escalation.

While Russian propaganda in other languages speaks of negotiations with Moscow and avoiding European rearmament, its Russian-language propaganda summons citizens to a sacred war that, through the erasure of Ukraine, promises the liquidation of past grievances. Its war of conquest is the negative of the Nazi extermination of the Jews: coincidental, but inverted. Hitler aimed to annihilate the Jewish people, taking advantage of their lack of a state; Putin is preparing the annihilation of the Ukrainian state under the pretext that they are not a people.

The reasons why these ideas, contrary to maps and history books, have settled in his head are in how Vladimir Vladimirovich has been building his vision of the world, from his first experiences as an adult and spy to his emergence and consecration in the Kremlin, where his visions were increasingly less nuanced by the circle of sycophants that surround him.

BREZHNEV'S BOY

Putin was a child, a teenager, and a man under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader who imposed the idea of limited sovereignty on the countries of Central Europe, first tested in 1956 in Hungary and, above all, in 1968 by suppressing the Prague Spring. This measure of discipline is only possible through subjugated dictatorships, and that is now the adventure Putin is immersed in.

His first readings about Ukraine were not historical, but fiction: spy novels promoted by the KGB of the time, which sought to make them popular again by adapting them into films. These novels feature Ukrainian Nazis and Soviet agents single-handedly saving the country. His ideas about Ukraine and the Nazi role in World War II come from there, not from historical narrative. But as the Russian Eurasianist theorist Aleksandr Dugin says,"Postmodernism shows that any supposed truth is a matter of belief."

THE KGB MAN

Marveling at "how one man can change the course of history," Putin joined the KGB in 1975: first in counterintelligence and then in surveillance of the near abroad, in his case the German Democratic Republic. The objective was to prevent anything from moving at home and, later, to promote dynamics abroad. Therefore, in Putin's mind, the desire for change in Russia is the result of foreign interference, and Ukraine's course can be changed through increasingly violent Russian interference.

"His years in the KGB deepened his hostility toward the West and toward any attempt at popular sovereignty or national liberation," notes Anton Shekhovstov, a visiting professor at the Central European University. The special military operation he launched in Ukraine in 2022, without consulting almost anyone, is the product of that fantasy micromanagement, inspired by how a man can single-handedly change history by acting at the right moment, catching everyone off guard.

THE POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE

Putin's fears about political developments in its surroundings are well-founded."For a time, Eastern Europe was seen by the Soviets as a buffer, but in the long run, it proved to be a gateway that failed to protect the USSR from foreign influences," explains Jakob Mikanowski, author of the essay 'Goodbye Eastern Europe'.

Posted to the German Democratic Republic, Putin experienced a scenario similar to Ukraine in the 2000s: a country under Moscow's control, but with a bit more openness, which increasingly drifted apart until it led to a rupture and contributed to the fall of the Soviet regime. His intervention in Ukraine in 2014 attempted to repair that situation, this time avoiding that obstacle.

When Putin witnessed the riots following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, from his sentry box in Dresden, Moscow failed to react, and he was forced to return to the USSR, which was collapsing. Putin tried his hand at politics and became deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, but his boss lost the election. Since then, Putin has been skeptical of open and recurring electoral competition, and as president, he views with irritation the constant turnover of leaders in Ukraine, which prevents him from making deals and forging clienteles and alliances against the EU.

THE LITTLE PRESIDENT

When Putin arrives at the Kremlin, he is challenged by extremism in the Caucasus and reacts by cancelling regional elections within Russia. But he cannot cancel elections in other countries of the former USSR (which in his mind are also regional elections). And Putin loses those elections: Georgia in 2003; Ukraine in 2004. One of the"causes of the conflict" is that the soft dictatorship he wields in Russia is functioning less and less in the outskirts.

Putin presides over the largest country in the world, which, however, has never been so small. He arrives as a young president, pays off the debts, and rides the rise in hydrocarbon prices. Putin's resentment toward NATO is feigned, as it begins to show not when European nations join, but when he begins to have the money to challenge it. The interference in Ukraine in 2014 is merely a continuation of the 2008 experiment in Georgia .

The victory of the people over the party is, for the Chekist Putin, a humiliation. The KGB's job is to ensure that power prevails over the people. Ukraine symbolizes this failure, which must be righted.

THE OLD PRESIDENT

Upon his return to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin faced anti-establishment protests for the first time, which he blamed on the United States—as well as Ukraine's European turn. Suddenly, Putin was unpopular in 2013, but he managed to regain his popularity with the clean invasion of Crimea in 2014. Even in sectors dissatisfied with him, it became inappropriate to promote the idea of returning Crimea to Ukraine. Crimea is the kryptonite that prevents liberals from connecting with the people. In 2021, the Crimea effect has evaporated; that's why he's considering a similar, but more ambitious, plan: to take over Ukraine and challenge Europe.

During Covid, Putin remains isolated, visited by a couple of nationalist friends. Reading and writing with them, he becomes even more radicalized about Ukraine and the West, bored with the tasks of government, while the idea of death becomes more present due to the pandemic and the passage of time. And he conceives of the reconquista as a way to prolong his regime amid the threats of discontent, constitutional limits, and, above all, old age.

Anton Shekhovtsov is one of the authors who has written the most about Putin's reasons. The atheistic USSR could not sell an afterlife, but after the Second World War a collective eternity is presented, which is achieved by contributing to the glory of the eternal State."The trauma of Dresden in 1989 and the collapse of Soviet power seem to have taken Putin's anti-Western prejudice to a new level, shattering the psychological armor that had protected him from the fear of death with the promise of survival through the permanence of the Soviet State." In this way,"for Putin, the elimination of Ukraine represents a way to strengthen Russia and, by extension, to reinforce the illusion of his own permanence". As he grew more powerful as Russia's president—and neared physical death—Putin increasingly viewed the West's victory in the Cold War, along with the existence of the Ukrainian national project, as historical ruptures that could be reversed through war, claiming the promise of his symbolic immortality.

A central part of Putin's effort to reshape the post-Cold War order has been his attempt to weaken or destroy the transatlantic relationship created after World War II and expanded since 1991 with the admission of Central European nations to NATO. By this logic, even the first round of NATO enlargement in 1999, which incorporated Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, should be seen as the cause of Russia's current war against Ukraine. Putin was not even in power, yet he presents himself as a leader whose patience has run out.

As he approaches 70 and faces constitutional limits on his mandate—while all his enemies are much younger than him—his decrepitude has made him distrustful of nations or people who may be more powerful in 10 years, when their vigor fades. That's why he tried to destroy Ukraine and killed Alexei Navalny: before they become a little stronger and he a little weaker.