Despite History of Military Success, Ukraine Invasion is Riskiest Move Yet for Putin

“There are no certainties in war.” – Winston Churchill

I am impatient with both those who insist that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a stroke of “genius” and those who insist it is a historic blunder. The truth is we don’t know which it will be. That will depend on what the people of Ukraine — and the nations of the West — do to resist this war of aggression.

Putin does not shy away from the use of military force, and his experience of war over the past two decades undoubtedly makes him confident, even cocky, as Russian forces attack Ukraine.

Putin’s regime began with a successful attack on Chechnya in 1999. Russian forces besieged the capital, Grozny, killing thousands, and soon took control of the entire breakaway republic. While a guerrilla war smoldered for years, Putin was finally able to establish control by installing a mini-dictator, first Akhmad Kadyrov, then his son Ramzan Kadyrov.

Putin invaded a sovereign country, Georgia, in 2008. In just five days, the Russians drove to the outskirts of Tbilisi but did not take the capital. Instead, the invaders secured the Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which remain under Kremlin control. Georgia’s ambitions to join NATO lay shattered.

In 2014, after the overthrow of a pro-Russian ruler in Kyiv, Putin launched his first invasion of Ukraine. “Little green men” — i.e., Russian troops in uniforms without insignia — took control of Crimea. Meanwhile, Russian-backed separatists launched a war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that has continued to the present day and now serves as a pretext for a wider invasion of Ukraine.

Then came the 2015 Russian intervention in Syria. With Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad on the verge of being toppled, Putin sent in the Russian air force and a small number of Russian mercenaries and special forces to rescue him. With indiscriminate bombing of urban areas and even hospitals, the Russians killed thousands of civilians — but they did help save a murderous regime. Putin defied predictions from then-President Barack Obama that Syria would turn out to be a Vietnam-style “quagmire” for Russia. Instead, it turned into a training ground for the kind of high-tech war that Putin is now unleashing on Ukraine.