A note to ourselves about the Russia-Ukraine crisis. It is “about” us — in the sense that war waged between Russia and a large landmass whose name literally means “on the borderlands” of east and western Europe is inevitably an area of vital strategic interest.
But watching Vladimir Putin’s lengthy speech last night, the central point was not really about the international order and its weaknesses at all. It was quite simply that there was no version of an independent Ukraine which he will now tolerate. The impending war springs very simply from this position.
