Four years into the Ukraine war, Moscow sees vindication, not failure

What many in the West perceived as a strategic blunder is increasingly seen in Moscow as a costly but necessary and ultimately successful gamble.

As the all-out war in Ukraine enters its fifth year, Russian political elites remain convinced that their leader, Vladimir Putin, did not make a grave error by launching it in February 2022. Instead, they are looking back with a sense of achievement, and they have good reason to believe that the war is ending on their terms, perhaps even soon.

A striking feature of this conflict is the discrepancy between Russia’s real expectations of it and how these are interpreted by the Western media and expert community. The latter tend to describe Russia’s motives as a manifestation of its allegedly inherent imperialism and an ambition to re-establish control over half of Europe, as in Soviet times.