I Was Wrong About Ukraine
How rethinking my assumptions helped me see the bigger picture
After eight years of frozen conflict, in the early morning hours of February 24th, 2022, the sky above Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities lit up with explosions. Tanks rolled across the nation’s borders with Russia and Belarus, confirmed by a simultaneous speech by Vladimir Putin announcing the start of a “special military operation”. Thus ended months of discourse by everyone from social media users to the most respected experts on international relations.
Next, the very same experts, many of whom failed to predict Russia’s full-scale invasion, predicted that Ukraine would quickly collapse and relinquish its independence. Incredibly, even part of the US intelligence community maintained this belief, likely contributing to the Biden administration slow-walking high-end lethal aid. On the flip side, wildly optimistic predictions that Ukraine would push Russia back to pre-2022 lines or even liberate the entire Donbas and Crimea after their September 2022 counteroffensive didn’t pan out in the slightest.
I also fell into many of the same analytical pitfalls, and failed to foresee Russia’s moves. But as the situation progressed, I learned a few lessons: about how to weigh new developments against old assumptions, about the importance of systematic approaches, and above all about intellectual humility.
Since the war began I’ve visited Ukraine twice with my friend Jeremy, and we did some original reporting from there. That’s helped me understand the realities on the ground much better. But talking to Ukrainians made it clear that many of them too did not expect the invasion. It’s hard to be comfortable with ambiguity, especially when your country is at stake.
Why I Was Wrong
When I was first asked by a group of friends, in December 2021, whether Russia would invade Ukraine beyond the areas it already occupied from 2014, I was skeptical. A brazen move like attempting to decapitate the Ukrainian government was surely beyond the pale even for Russia.
It’s not an accident that even Russia’s most brutal interventions occupied a grey zone in international politics — Chechnya (1990s) was internationally-recognized Russian territory, Georgia (2008) came at the request of separatist entities, and Syria (2010s) was conducted with the full support of the country’s internationally-recognized government. Russia had always been a bit more shameless about slicing up Ukraine, but even there felt the need to organize sham referenda. And no one not already thoroughly propagandized-to was about to believe residents of Kyiv would obediently line up and cast their votes for a glorious Russian future.
Then there were the more abstract reasons to consider. War between a superpower and a major European country — one integrated into the global economy with powerful allies — seemed impossible in the 21st century. Another pop history distillation of this idea is the Golden Arches Theory, presented by Thomas Friedman in 1999, positing that no two countries with a McDonald’s ever went to war (Russia and Ukraine both had numerous outposts of the chain). Months later, NATO bombed Yugoslavia and protesters destroyed McDonald’s restaurants in Belgrade in response.
International relations theory brings us the bargaining model of war where, given the painful costs involved, war is irrational unless the countries involved have mismatched information about each other’s capabilities and resolve. Russian policymakers had to have been informed about Ukraine’s massive military buildup since 2014, and the impact of broad US sanctions on countries like Iran and Cuba would have given them pause before risking the same against their own country. There was always the possibility Ukrainians would defect and treat the Russians as liberators, but nothing from polling to even a cursory glance at the post-2014 Ukrainian media environment would predict this.
Although I had no illusions about Putin’s imperialist fantasies, I imagined they served as a justification for Russian power projection rather than the primary motivation behind Russian actions. The idea of thousands of Russian soldiers dying for cities the median Russian has never heard of, all while their family back home faces worsening economic conditions brought on by sanctions seemed like a scenario any world leader would want to avoid.
Indeed, since the full-scale invasion, life has gotten measurably worse for Russians, the Russian passport unlocks far fewer doors, Russian military capacity has been weakened, and Russian influence worldwide has almost universally declined. From Armenia dropping CSTO (Russia’s regional military alliance), to the fall of Assad in Syria, Russia’s image as a superpower is irrevocably shattered. Everything analysts said would hold back Putin from making this reckless move, short of regime change in Moscow, has actually happened, and yet he did it anyway.
What I Missed
Putin and Russian Elites Believe Their Own Lies
I never doubted that Putin saw post-Soviet countries, chief among them Ukraine, as rightful Russian possessions which should be returned to their motherland. Yet I was wrong about his convictions to right these perceived wrongs.
In July 2021 Putin published an essay titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. In it, he invokes Mongol khans and Cossack hetmans to expound on his belief that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians constitute a single nation, torn apart by Bolsheviks and Western machinations to transform Ukraine into an “anti-Russia”.
Clearly, publishing this article on the Kremlin website, with authorized translations into English and Ukrainian, represented not only Putin’s ideology but his guiding impulse. He believes on a spiritual level that his legacy will be judged by his ability to “gather the Russian lands”. As former CIA director William Burns put it:
His conviction was that without controlling Ukraine and its choices, it’s not possible for Russia to be a great power and have this sphere of influence that he believes is essential. And it’s not possible for him to be a great Russian leader without accomplishing that.
Russian elites also likely assumed that, given an exceptionally cold winter, a Europe reliant on Russian energy would not be able to mount an effective front of sanctions in defense of Ukraine. Some, like one of the most widely-followed political scientists, Ian Bremmer, assumed this meant Russia’s strategy was merely to divide Europe from the US.
At the time, I assumed this was plausible too. It turns out, years of Russian state broadcasting about a weak and fractured Europe actually began to shape how Russian elites viewed the world. They did not merely seek to weaken Europe and its ties with the US, but assumed this was a foregone conclusion.
Putin Is a Gambler, and His Past Bets Paid Off
Throughout his career, Putin has made a series of increasingly risky geopolitical bets. Sure, he’s received some Western sanctions in response, but he’s also seen them paired with GDP growth and high approval ratings after every invasion. From quashing a rebellion in Russian sovereign territory in Chechnya, to securing the autonomy of separatist republics in Georgia, to entirely fabricating new independence movements in Ukraine, Putin has been rewarded each time.
Chechnya is firmly under Russian control, the occupations of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are accepted as facts on the ground, and before 2022 Ukraine was functionally frozen out of NATO. A purely rational Putin would consolidate his gains. But Putin the gambler, driven by a historical mission, would settle for nothing less than the riskiest move of all.
Military Buildups Don’t Just Happen
In March and April 2021, Russia amassed a force of 100,00-120,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, before partially withdrawing but keeping a force of around 80,000. In November, Russia did it again, reaching a peak of 127,000 by January 2022 according to Ukrainian estimates.
Moving, housing, and sustaining this many soldiers was no doubt extremely expensive. If Russia intended a military buildup to serve merely as a tool of coercive bargaining, moving troops on this scale, twice in the span of a few months, was excessive, especially with the lack of an actual Russian negotiating position. And it was no drill either. Even Vostok 2018, Russia’s largest-ever wargame which included troops from China and Mongolia — only likely required 75,000-100,000 combat troops. In hindsight, it’s impossible to see the massive military buildups as anything but staging for an invasion.
What I Got Right
Follow the Blood Trail
On January 29th, 2022, unnamed US officials told Reuters that Russia moved blood supplies to the troops camped outside of Ukraine. For me that was the definitive moment when I became confident an invasion was likely. Blood is difficult to store and useful in civilian life. You don’t move blood supplies anywhere unless you’re planning on losing a lot of it. In hindsight, Russia absolutely was.
Window of Opportunity
Although launching a war of conquest against Ukraine was never in Russia’s pragmatic interest, I understood early in the prelude to the invasion that Russia’s window of opportunity was open but shrinking. If US aid to Ukraine continued only at the pace it did from 2014 to 2022, with over $2.7 billion in funding over that period, the military gap between Ukraine and Russia would continue to narrow.
Additionally, Russia was poised to reap the demographic dividends of a birthrate increase starting in 2000, which would give it eleven years of increasing manpower to fight a long war until a plateau in 2033. And despite NATO bonds being stronger than Russian elites assumed, there were signs, like Macron’s call for separate negotiations with Russia, that the alliance could fracture.
If Russia was going to invade Ukraine at all, the time was right.
Ukrainian Resistance
Remarkably, “three days to Kyiv” was not a Russian propaganda slogan (although it was repeated by Belarussian president Lukashenko), but an assessment by the US intelligence community. With that in mind, whether this interaction actually happened or not, it’s no wonder Zelensky was initially offered evacuation over ammunition.
Fortunately, I was fairly certain by the start of the full-scale invasion that it would not be an easy victory for Russia. Ukraine’s military in 2022 was orders of magnitude larger than in 2014, armed to the teeth with billions of dollars of Western equipment. Ukraine’s military was drastically reformed as it gained combat experience fighting in the Donbas for eight years, during which it halted any meaningful Russian or separatist advance.
And the Ukrainian people stepped up too, fashioning Molotov cocktails and signing up in droves for the territorial defense. I did not see any indication that a meaningful part of Ukrainian society would defect to the Russian side, and Russia had no constituency to welcome their forces as a liberating army.
This was not a country Putin would easily crush.
Long War
In September 2022, Ukraine wiped out months of Russian gains in Kharkiv Oblast in a matter of days. This left some to suggest full Ukrainian victory was imminent. Perennial Russian commentator Anne Applebaum suggested Ukraine would soon restore its 1991 borders and Putin’s regime would collapse entirely.
I made no such assertions, and understood that Russian elites signed on to this war from the beginning, knowing its cost. Russia stockpiled foreign exchange reserves for years in anticipation of this war, and its manufacturing capacity remains formidable. Even a major setback, like the loss of nearly all of Kharkiv Oblast followed by Ukraine’s recapture of Kherson two months later, would not doom the Russian war effort only in its first year.
Lessons Learned
Ideology Matters
It can be tempting to chalk up how leaders behave purely to rational interests. But we don’t live in a post-ideological world, and Putin’s ideology runs deep. He was willing to plunge his country into economic hardship, diplomatic isolation, and military quagmire to fulfill a dream of imperial conquest — a massive risk without corresponding rewards.
On the flip side, Ukraine’s defense was and is held together by sheer force of will and a sense of Ukrainian nationhood strengthened by the Russian threat. Advanced weaponry may sustain this defense, but that would be useless without a motivated citizenry. Meanwhile, Russia lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the population it seeks to subjugate, a severe constraint to holding battlefield gains.
Wars Are Easier to Start Than to End
Since both Russian policymakers and Western intelligence officials predicted Ukraine’s government would fall swiftly, it is unclear how much Russia prepared for a protracted war. This, in turn, caused Russian forces to perform worse than expected. Now the war persists in an uneasy equilibrium—not a stalemate, but a conflict Ukraine struggles to win outright while Russia conquers tiny parts of Ukrainian territory at tremendous cost. Of all the predictions made in early 2022, this was an outcome many failed to consider.
Humility Is Essential
My main takeaway as an analyst is that I need to write more in pencil — being ready to adjust as new information emerges, to ingest new information faster, and to be more comfortable in asking what the consensus might be overlooking or misjudging. And when I’m wrong, as like anyone I will be in the future, to be able to reflect on what I’ve missed and take a good look at my priors before rushing to my next best guess.
Three years later, we know what’s happened so far. Ukraine was invaded, but defended itself and didn’t fall. Certainly, this reality was not unforeseeable. I, like many others, just indexed on the wrong signals. There’s no perfect cure for this, since the real world defies models, expectations, and predictions. But I hope through both my travels and interviews I can enlarge my worldview and fine-tune both how I think and feel.
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