With tensions between Ukraine and Russia at breaking point, all eyes are on the man at the centre of the crisis.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin shows no sign of pulling Europe back from the brink, despite international condemnation and sanctions.
He has now authorised a special military operation in Ukraine's Donbas region, claiming any bloodshed would be entirely the fault of the Ukrainian "regime".
So what does he actually want from this situation?
While Mr Putin has long been vocal about his belief that Ukraine sits on ancient Russian lands, all-out war is still a risky proposition.
Opinion polling suggests there is little appetite for an invasion of Ukraine among the Russian people.
The vast majority of Russians still support the Kremlin and blame the West for the current crisis, according to Lavada, the only independent polling agency.
But a poll from last year found only 43 per cent of respondents believed Russia should intervene in a conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In comparison, about 86 per cent of respondents supported Vladimir Putin when he annexed Crimea — another Ukrainian region — in 2014.
"It's not about Russia. It's about Putin … and this small circle of people around him who dominate this country," Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russian security affairs, told Vox.
"This is a view of a bunch of old men who can't quite get over the fact that they're no longer running a superpower."
Mr Putin appears to be motivated by three main factors: a passionate belief in Russian supremacy, a fear of rising Western influence on his doorstep, and an inability to resist a high-stakes gamble against seemingly impossible odds.
Fighting the end of an empire
Mr Putin has always been open about his feelings on the collapse of the Soviet empire.
"The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," he said in 2005.
The disintegration of the once-mighty USSR into 15 independent states left the former KGB agent personally destitute.
Last year, he revealed he was forced to drive a taxi to make ends meet in the 1990s as Russia economically struggled.
Now as the nation's leader, Mr Putin appears determined to restore Russia's status on the world stage as a major power.
"No-one should doubt that Putin seeks to revive what he imagines to have been the glory — and the geographical reach — of the Soviet Union," said Olga Lautman, an analyst with the Centre for European Policy Analysis.
Ukraine has always been key to Mr Putin's dream of a modern Russian superpower.
"A nation of over 40 million, Ukraine is home to the world's largest ethnic Russian population outside of Russia itself," Taras Kuzio from Henry Jackson Society told the Atlantic Council.
"It is also arguably the closest of the former Soviet republics to Russia in terms of ethnicity, culture, history, and religion."
Last year, Mr Putin wrote a 7,000-word essay in which he claimed Ukraine was "entirely the product of the Soviet era" and that Russians and Ukrainians were "one people".
When the Soviet Union collapsed, according to Mr Putin, Russia was "robbed, indeed".
Cold hard geopolitics — the promise of 'not one inch closer'
One of the key grievances seemingly driving Mr Putin's decisions today harks back to the end of the Soviet era.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there was a series of negotiations between the USSR and Western leaders about how to end the Cold War.
The Russian leader says that as part of a deal to allow Germany to reunify, the West made a promise that NATO would not expand even "one inch" further east towards Moscow.
Since then, the alliance has expanded five times, including to Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which share land borders with Russia — and Ukraine's neighbours Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
Ukraine itself has been a NATO partner since 1992, and it was promised eventual membership at the 2008 summit.
But the Kremlin does not want its closest neighbour to ever become a fully fledged member of the alliance.
The US and other NATO members dispute that the "not-one-inch" promise was ever formally made, but Mr Putin has repeated this claim time and time again as justification for flexing Russia’s diplomatic and military muscle.
Mr Putin made a similar argument in 2014, before annexing the Crimean peninsula.
In a bid to end the resulting war in the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, leaders put their heads together to sign a truce — the Minsk agreement.
It called for a ceasefire, a prisoner exchange and a pullback of all foreign fighters, but ultimately it didn't stick. Another attempt in 2015, Minsk 2, made much stronger demands for Ukraine to give the eastern regions special status and hold elections in Donbas.
Ukrainian and Russian leaders did sign a declaration agreeing to Minsk 2, but fighting has continued to this day. Analysts say the stalemate comes down to an impossible compromise.
"The Minsk agreements rest on an unresolvable contradiction — what could be called the 'Minsk conundrum': Is Ukraine sovereign, as Ukrainians insist, or should its sovereignty be limited, as Russia's leaders demand?" said Duncan Allen, associate fellow at think tank Chatham House.
In recognising the breakaway regions, Mr Putin has effectively walked away from the Minsk peace process, determined to pursue his own interpretation of restoring order in eastern Ukraine.
A man who likes a high-risk, high-reward gamble
It is difficult to predict what happens next in Ukraine because Vladimir Putin himself has always been so unpredictable.
"Putin has enhanced his image as the guy who calls the shots and the poker player with all the cards," Europe expert Timothy Ash wrote for the Atlantic Council.
"More than ever, he is seen as a leader who everyone has to contend with if they want solutions to the geopolitical problems that he typically creates himself."
He has dominated the world stage for more than two decades, but analysts and experts still find the Russian leader mystifying.
"Some observers say that Vladimir Putin has no face, no substance, no soul. He is a 'man from nowhere', who can appear to be anybody to anyone," Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy wrote in their book Mr Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.
While some analysts say Mr Putin is playing a game of 3D chess with the West, others insist the leader has become irrational and isolated during the pandemic.
"Vladimir Putin is possibly thinking illogically about this and doesn't see the disaster ahead," UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this week.
Whether he is motivated by personal grievance or a shrewd plan, it is clear Mr Putin thinks the time to act on Ukraine is now.
US President Joe Biden, fresh from a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, has ruled out any military intervention in Ukraine.
"Timing matters, and many factors come into play, the most important being the perception the US has disengaged from the European theatre and turned towards the Asia-Pacific, leaving a void," Mathieu Boulègue, a research fellow at Chatham House, said.
And while Mr Putin has passed a law to ensure he can maintain his grip on power until at least 2036, the 69-year-old also appears to be thinking about how he is remembered by history.
"It's about him personally — his legacy, his view of himself, his view of Russian history," Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and former White House adviser told the New York Times.
"Putin clearly sees himself as a protagonist in Russian history, and is putting himself in the place of previous Russian leaders who've tried to gather in what he sees as the Russian land.
"Ukraine is the outlier, the one that got away that he's got to bring back."
