Strategic Consequences of the War in Ukraine for Europe

On February 24th the looming crisis in Ukraine escalated: Regular Russian troops invaded Ukraine on multiple fronts, causing death, suffering and disaster in the process. The conflict was simmering since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s support for two separatist regions in Eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of the regime change triggered by the Maidan protests in 2014. The President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has trivialized this large-scale military attack on a sovereign country as a “Special Military Operation”. Even before the invasion, Vladimir Putin has sought to mislead not only the international community, but also the vast majority of the Russian people about the bloody war he was preparing.